Week 2, part three

 

The above photo was taken a while ago. Since then it has been raining for days, monsoon-style. A few nights ago everyone's phones began to ring simultaneously, which was weird. It turned out to be an emergency weather alert, which continued from 3am until 6am (overriding "silent" and "meeting" settings) saying that several inches of rain were due in a very concerntrated region of the city.

 

 Thunder and lightning storms continued for hours, and although everyone told me it was nothing to worry about, I kept getting up and watching the pavements flood. The thunder was loud enough to wake me up, and the lightning illuminated the entire room, with the blinds closed. The good news is, there were no serious floods, just a lot of rain, unusual for this time of year.

 

Currently the weather varies between overcast and sunny intervals. The humidity is the main problem though, it hovers between 80-90%, meaning that the air feels heavy, and nothing dries, because water doesn't evaporate without a lot of effort (e.g. using a hairdryer to dry wet towels...). Seeing as Washington D.C was built on a swamp, the climare here is oddly tropical.

 

 

A lot of my posts have focused around cultural insights, thoughts, etc. I think I should talk a bit about other aspects of contemporary culture that I have witnessed. Me, some other interns, and their roomates decided to watch Sharknado a film so bad that it was good. Live sharks fall from the sky, tornados form in the Pacific (they form in the Atlantic in reality!) and people decide to leave houses (in which sharks clearly cannot enter) and enter streams where the sharks actually are. Oh, and sharks tend to live in salt water, not fresh water. The film negates science to show scenes of a woman in a bikini running along beaches, supposedly to outrun the sharks. Either way, the film was a great example of self-mocking modern American culture.

 

So this week I've seen the benefits of working on an active Naval base. Seeing people in official uniforms is cool, getting free ice cream (given out to everyone who works on the base "for morale") is even cooler. The best was listening to the cannon fire as part of the retirement ceremony for an Admiral. The number of cannon blasts (which made a booming noise that rebounded around the entire site) signifies the rank of the person retiring from service. It's something most civilians will never get to experience.

 

Interesting things I've learnt in the last few days;

1. In Washington D.C apartments cannot have more than 8 girls living in them without being inspected, due to concerns over illegal brothels. This explains the gender imbalance in all of the student/ intern housing here.

2. Americans call "crocodile clips" "alligator clips". I find this interesting because it's obviously the same concept as in England, with the teeth, but who adapted the concept first?

3. Squid is not Kosher because it doesn't have fins and scales. I guess this is obvious from the Old Testament, but I didn't put two and two together.

Week 1, part three, 4th of July

 

"America's Birthday", complete with a special edition "flavor" in Baskin Robbin's ice cream parlour. Being British and observing the 4th of July is a strange experience in itself, but it seems especially ironic as a history student. However, I still found the events of the day extremely entertaining, and even more enlightening for being an "outside" observer on the scene. We decided to watch the Independence Day parade along Independence Avenue, close to the Washington Monument. Shops were closed, street sellers had set up to sell American merchandise, ice cream, hot dogs, and other fast food. Roads were closed, Metro stations full, and there was a general carnival atmosphere around the Capitol.

 

There was a heavy military element to the parade, with all parts of the Armed forces represented. I would say the soldiers and other army personnel attracted the loudest applause, and once again I was reminded that this nation's identity comes very much from their historic debt to their troops, who helped to win independence.

 

There were also colourful floats like these, someone said that they were supposed to represent each state, and I think this was somewhere rural, maybe Kansas, if had a lot of balloons on it and then some fields.

 

The American Eagle

 

One of many marching bands. Each "College" here has it's own colours and marching band, especially to perform at sports matches, which are taken at least as seriously as academia, and in some places more seriously. I think this is one of the biggest contrasts between U.S and U.K tertiary education.

 

More interesting floats. The people holding up the giant Tweety bird balloon had a routine in which they ran in a circle to spin the balloon, whilst keeping the strings untangled.

 

At first I thought that this was just another case of flag overload. Actually each flag on the float is one of the individual state's own flags, carried together with the flag of the United States on top. I don't think I knew that each state had its own flag, although the Italian states etc. have their own flag, so I probably just didn't think of it.

 

 

The stars & stripes are a central part of the parade. Strange, in Britain, although the flag is seen at events, e.g. Diamond Jubilee (some Americans don't know what the word "Jubilee" means, I guess that should have been obvious, but I found it an amusing concept to explain to them, that people should celebrate being ruled over by a monarchy) or the Olympics, it would never be a central focus of celebrations. Apparently (if my American housemates are being serious) it is illegal to leave the flag out in the rain, or to set it on fire, or to leave it on the ground for  more than 3 days.