third week in DC

on sunday i went with my edmontonian friend mary to her friend lydia's apartment near U street. we had a really fantastic conversation about native studies (lydia did her master's on aboriginal incarcerations in canada, and mary's mom is a prof in native studies), with a pretty great view of the city from lydia's balcony. i had to leave early, though, so i could meet some of the other interns at the eastern market. from there i walked to the air and space museum to see if any good imax shows were playing (since interns get in free), but none were, so i took the metro back to union station where i bought a strawberry smoothie. i came home and napped before tutoring cree and going to an all-house meeting with all the girls and managers at my residence. hot topics included internet connections, flushing etiquette, and hand sanitizing procedures for when flu season starts. yeesh.

on monday at work brian jungen gave my department a tour of his new exhibit. neat. in the evening i met another edmonton intern at ben's chili bowl for a brief hangout before she went back to canada.

on tuesday the interns had a tour of african art museum & the smithsonian castle, led by the man who does the mounts for artifacts. it was pretty adorable how passionately he talked about displaying things in the best way and least invasive way possible. i skipped out on the rest of the afternoon and went to the natural history museum, where i watched an IMAX called wild oceans. it wasn't as good as the dinosaurs one i saw a few weeks before.

on thursday i ran over to the hirshhorn right after work and waited in line for an hour (passing the time by eating my ham sandwich and banana supper) to get tickets to the talk tim gunn was going to be moderating on anne truitt's work. i was surprised when i got in (the line in front of me was pretty long), and even more surprised that my coworker/co-interns (who had all left work before me) did not get tickets. oh well. i basked in tim gunn's glory for the hour and a half that the talk lasted, although even he could not convince me that truitt's work was "genius" or "all about life" or even worth giving a second thought to. i get pretty irritated when art world people insist that "the art should speak for itself." that works fine for people who know the whole history of art and movements and theory and stuff, and who therefore understand where a piece fits into that chronology and how it works with or against other pieces. but for the rest of us, we need a little bit of context to understand why anyone in their right mind would think painted rectangular columns are "genius." all of the panelists at the talk refused to talk about the meaning or processes or inspiration behind the art. they offered some anecdotes from truitt's life, but as far as making the art accessible to the general museum-going public, they did a pretty shitty job.

on saturday i went to dupont circle at 10:30 for cupcakes with one of my letter-writing friends, but she didn't show up. boo. the place IS hard to find because its signage is virtually non-existent, and she was running way later that day than she intended, so... no hangout. i came back to the neighbourhood later in the day with another letter-writing friend, and we walked around and went for italian food for lunch. i spent the evening with a third letter-writing friend: we got ice cream on E street, walked around, & watched "capitalism: a love story.

second week in DC

to start off my second week in DC, i ate breakfast with mary and a few other girls from the dorm. then i went for a long walk by myself around to the big touristy spots in DC: i walked down pennsylvania ave., walked past the white house, went to the lincoln memorial, walked by the washington monument, went to the museum of natural history and saw an awesome exhibit on ants (they're incredible!), watched a 3D imax on dinosaurs, and walked home in the rain. the maps and the movies make that distance seem really short. it's not. i finished the day by talking to my mom & dad on skype.

during the week i tutored cree online, visited the natural history museum's collections with the other interns, saw an exhibit on an amtrak train at union station about disney's "a christmas carol" (which included some of charles dickens' belongings, as well as neat videos on the process of making the movie. and all on a train! fun!), met up with brian jungen a couple of times so we (ie. the cultural interpreters and education department) could learn about his work for when the exhibit opens up and people want tours, went to see the pains of being pure at heart and the depreciation guild at the black cat with two of the other interns at my museum, watched "night at the museum: battle of the smithsonian" AT the smithsonian in imax (come on. how could i not?), and tried to make responsible dietary decisions (ie. choosing strawberry smoothies over cupcakes or giant pretzels. luckily, there's a good smoothie place at union station, which is just 4 blocks from where i live).

first week in DC

on the first day of my internship i met the intern coordinator of my museum and the 5 other interns and we got a tour of the museum on the mall (where i'll be interning, along with 2 other girls) and the one in suitland (where the other 3 girls will be). my museum is actually one of three under the same name - mine is on the mall and has about 1% of the collection on display; the one in NYC is smaller but has lots of live performances and is there because the original owner of the collection required that some stay on display in his hometown; and the suitland site is where the rest of the collection is held. we went on a tour of the collection storage, and it was pretty incredible. there were thousands of amazing artifacts from aboriginal communities all over the western hemisphere. my top favourite artifacts are the boats: birch bark canoes, skin kayaks, reed boats, etc. so incredible. anyway, during our tour of the mall museum, we joined in on a little party that was happening on a balcony overlooking the mall and the capitol building. i felt like we were on the first episode of a season of project runway, and heidi klum and tim gunn were about to come out and tell us about our first challenge.

i spent the next few days getting paperwork figured out and getting settled in my internship. i've been placed with the cultural interpreters, so my tasks are to work with the education department's teaching collection; get trained on the family activities and start presenting some of them; and to come up with a presentation on an indigenous community of my choice. on my second day, i found that the teaching collection (about 400 articles, separate from the museum's real collection) was not as well organized as it could be (ie. each artifact had its own excel sheet, but there were no accession numbers on any of the articles AND there was no searchable database linking all the info), so i spent most of my first week making up a simple database and then entering all the data from the separate sheets, so that my coworkers can search the collection by material, culture group, social usage of the object, type of object, etc.

on my second saturday in DC, i went to the national zoological park and saw giant pandas, flamingos, giant tortoises, and lots of other neat animals. i got a milkshake at the johnny rockets at union station and silently reminisced about times kelsey and i would go to the one in west ed in our west ed phase. i ate supper in the residence cafeteria with a girl named mary, who is from edmonton and here through the same program that i am (but at a different museum). i usually eat most of my meals in the cafeteria by myself. i think the other girls in the residence might think i am a serial killer because that's what people think about other people who just like being alone ("yeah, she was strange. always kept to herself."). whatever. anyway, mary and i met up once in edmonton before we came here, and there's a good chance we'll hang out in edmonton once we return, and she's very bright and i like her company when she's around. she invited me to watch "dirty dancing" with her and some of the other girls in the tv room, sort of as a way to help me get to know new people. ha. i said yes, because i wanted to get out of my room. the DVD player wasn't working, though, so we ended up watching a VHS of "sliding doors" with gwyneth paltrow. it was an interesting concept, but not a very good movie. i sort of rage out at movies that have relationships i don't believe have any real foundation. this movie was full of that.

first days in DC

i left the montréal hostel around 8:00 a.m. on september 18th so i could get to the train station in time for my 9:30 train. jonathan met me there to say goodbye and to give me a cd he had made for me on "timelessness and time," a theme i had requested (based on a line from an edward estlin poem) when he had asked if he could make a themed cd for me.

the train was scheduled to leave montréal at 9:30 a.m., stop in NYC at 8:00 p.m., leave NYC around 10:00 p.m., and arrive in DC at 1:30 a.m. the next day. i was dreading spending 11 hours straight sitting on a cramped train, but the ride from montréal to NYC was probably my best train experience so far. most of the ride went through the adirondack park reserve along lake champlain, which i think i can safely call the most beautiful part of my entire train experience. it would be a nice place to live, i think. at any rate, if you are ever wanting to go for a little train ride, i would suggest this one. it is inexpensive ($68 from montréal to NYC!), and the seats were super roomy and comfortable. i switched back and forth between napping on my two seats and working on my cree books on my laptop (there was a plug-in next to my seat, thank goodness) while watching the scenery.

i got into DC at about 1:30 a.m. on saturday the 19th, and was exhausted. i got a cab to take me the 4 blocks from union station to my new residence, because i was just too tired to walk with my huge backpack on my back and my little backpack on my front.

i slept well, and spent my first weekend in DC visiting the national postal museum and buying stamps there; wandering around a few streets north of the mall (and being relieved to find an american apparel - with shockingly friendly and unpretentious staff (edmonton's AA staff: take note!)); checking out the café at my museum and eating duckling (for the first time - and it has immediately become my favourite meat. it's like red + white meat, together. unreal.) and wild rice johnny cakes with blackberry compote (which, unfortunately, have all been replaced with the new autumn menu); taking the metro to go buy laundry detergent; napping; skyping with cassidy; and trying to find somewhere to buy a coffee mug on a sunday so i wouldn't have to use the styrofoam cups provided at my residence. the only place nearby that was open & selling mugs was the my obama shop in union station, and a fox though he is, i just couldn't bring myself to buy a mug with his mug on it. (the next day, i ended up finding a starbucks (even though i hate the place, i knew they would what i wanted & i didn't want to spend more time looking around) and got a brown mug & brown water bottle. thanks, starbucks. i learned a few days later that there's a starbucks that i could have gone to at union station, which has cute washington cherry blossom mugs that the other didn't have. oh well.)

post script: as you can probably tell by now, i really only have one pose for pictures, and it has been featured in 3 of the last 4 posts. this is partially because i am highly unphotogenic and this is the only pose i can bear to see myself in, partially because i hate taking photos and having photos taken of me, and partially because i am a terrible photographer and have no one else around to take my picture. from now on i am just going to take photos of my surroundings and just photoshop myself in, because my "look" hasn't changed at all since 9th grade (except for the brief - and cute! ...in my opinion - style i fondly refer to as my "lesbian cut," circa late 2002-2005).

montréal/overwhelming you with hyperlinks

in the early evening on tuesday, september 15th, i flew from charlottetown to montréal. montréal is FANTASTIC in that its metro system connects fairly simply with its international airport. i get irritated every time i have to pay $15 for a shuttle from edmonton's international airport into the city. anyway, the fact that i didn't have to spend that much just to get from the airport to the hostel made me like the city immediately. jonathan met me at the hostel and we walked to his new apartment, where he made supper for us. it was nice to talk, but i was tired and didn't stay long.

the next morning, i took the metro to old montréal. i wanted to buy a cupcake before exploring museums with my montréal museums pass. i ended up getting sort of lost, and a friendly man helped me with directions. i said i was looking for a cupcake place, but that i should probably eat breakfast first. he suggested i try olive + gourmando, which was the same place he was going to be meeting someone for lunch. i went, and it was pretty incredible. you should go if you're in montréal any time soon. i just had a fruit salad, which is my favourite breakfast food, but it was one of the best i've ever had. then i went to the cupcake place across from the notre dame for a cupcake and a macaron, but neither were very good. after that, i took the metro to the biosphère. it was neat but not as neat as i had imagined. i also got a tour of their eco-house, and my tour guide for it made a few comments to me about language and how english people are assholes to the french. i guess i always knew that that opinion existed, but maybe because i'm from the west i never really realized how strongly people felt it. after that, i went to château ramezay, which had some GREAT artifacts on canadian history as well as a neat temporary display on the history of the bicycle. kelsey, i wish you could have seen that exhibit. for the most part, the museum was one of the best i've ever seen, BUT i was surprised to see a turtle shell rattle and something else (i think it was a pipe and pipestem put together, but it may have been a shaman's mask) that i was fairly certain should not be displayed for cultural sensitivity reasons. hmm. i then checked out the sir georges étienne cartier national historic site before heading back to the hostel. i had a nap because i had a massive headache, and then jonathan met me at a metro station and we went to schwartz's for supper (at levi's suggestion). the food was mediocre (despite its reputation for being a "can't-miss" spot in montréal) but it was fun to hear about jonathan's new crush.

the next day, i went to olive + gourmando again for breakfast, and then visited the biodôme and the mccord museum of civilization. both were pretty great. the biodôme's tropical forest made me miss guyana's rainforest, but my most favourite part was seeing the puffins and penguins. i LOVE puffins! and penguins! mccord had a great gift shop (as a repeat museum employee, this is something i quietly critique every time i visit a museum) that had a lot of good books, postcards of artifacts from their collection, and high quality crafts made by local artisans. i would have liked to see the redpath museum too, but the massive headaches that i'd been getting every day for the past couple of days hadn't let up, so i went back to the hostel in between the two museums i mentioned for a nap. jonathan met me for supper after i visited the mccord, and after we ate we went back to his place so we could watch michel gondry's portion of "Tokyo!" (which i had purchased from hmv earlier in the day). after that, i went home and packed and went to bed so i would be ready to catch my train to DC in the morning.