some things that have got me feeling like a champion lately (in no particular order):

-i was biking past the sand volleyball courts that are down by the potomac river, in between the lincoln memorial and the kennedy centre, when one of the volleyballs started bouncing in big bounces over to me. while still biking, i kicked it perfectly back towards the people who were playing, and they all cheered for me. haha. it was awesome.

-my former coworkers at the museum were telling me about how there might be non-native people who will be trained to give tours at the museum. my coworkers said they were dreading it, but had specifically agreed in a staff meeting, and told me later, that "if someone like you were doing it, it would be okay. we love you!" that was probably one of the biggest compliments/validations of my life. confirmation that i can be culturally sensitive without appropriating anyone else's culture! that's exciting!

-a dreamy boy has been sending me lengthy letters lately.

-my core team at work now consists of four people: one full-time girl who just earned her ph.d., after spending a couple of years working with a language revitalization program in the northwest coast; and two other interns. one intern in a navajo woman working on her m.a. in social work, i think (i can't remember - she just arrived last week); and the other is an undergrad student who has been working with language revitalization programs with the passamaquoddy (an algonquian language - like cree!). we are a pretty awesome team. our skills are really complementary, we all have the same hopes for this project, we can voice our opinions and disagreements with each other without taking any of it personally, and we just laugh together a lot. i am bummed that i only have 2.5 more weeks left to work with them. we would be such a force if we worked together full-time. anyway, i've been walking on clouds because ALL those girls, whose work and perspectives i really admire and value a lot, have told me that they are very glad i am here and don't want me to leave because of what i bring to the project. wow! they are these bright, sensitive, hardworking women, who really understand the work that i want to do, and they see value in me! that's amazing!

-my boss, the full-time core member of our team, and i met the bureaucrat--who is actually a really neat, bright guy!--in charge of the project we are working on for this bureau (i don't like writing names of organizations, in case people do internet searches for them) last week, when we were in st. louis for the bureau's annual summer conference. we spent a considerable amount of time with him during breakfast/lunch/dinner meetings, and had really amazing conversations about language revitalization and education (he wrote his doctoral thesis on the boarding schools, and he's one of the top dogs in that bureau). it turns out that the guy really likes us and the work we've been doing, which is nice because: (a) i guess i never really consider myself that "fun," but he told us numerous times that hanging out with us was super enjoyable for him; (b) i think his support of our work means that he will continue to push the bureau to financially and... what? morally?... support more culturally-appropriate language revitalization in the states, which will likely trickle over to canada, and all of that is great in a myriad of ways; and (c) i think he will be a great contact to have for the work that i'm hoping to do for the next two years with my master's. it seems like sometimes the bureaucratic parts of his job really bog him down, but he was super interested and animated when we talked about our project. he didn't grow up speaking much of his family's languages (michif and ojibwe), so he's quite passionate about making sure that kids today have the opportunity to learn their heritage languages. that's exciting. i'm glad that there can be something in his job that he can be really passionate about.

-i came up with this really awesome rating scale/template thing for my job, to be used in assessing individual and class proficiency in oral language skills. it is awesome and (i think) culturally appropriate, and i feel really really good about it. everyone that we've shown it to seems to really like it too. i hope teachers and assessors will actually use it! let's talk about it in real life!

-my boss gave me a raise today, because he has been impressed with my work.

-friends have been kind and generous with their words lately, which is pretty special because my friends are amazing people.

in conclusion: i am a happy little clam.

here are some things i've done in the past few weeks:

-i went to new york (again). bus tickets are between $1 and $20 from here, so i am just trying to not pass up opportunities to go there. i found a place to stay in brooklyn, through

airbnb.com. basically, airbnb is a site that pairs up travelers with people who have a couch or air mattress available for travelers to stay on, for a price that's usually cheaper than a hotel

or hostel. i had a really good experience with the girls i stayed with, and i will probably do some

more accommodations arrangements through there in the future.

while i was in new york, i found an AMAZING stationery store (their website doesn't show their best stationery, but trust me, it's great); ate fruit and granola and yogurt for breakfast at my new favourite new york breakfast place; rented a bike and biked down broadway from central park to the brooklyn bridge, then across brooklyn bridge, then up along the hudson river; and visited the bamboo bike shop (more on that later).

-i've been playing kickball every wednesday on a league that plays in columbia heights. i joined it because I LOVE KICKBALL, but pretty much everyone on my team (and in the entire league) is more about the drinking afterwards (and even during the game) than the actual kickball. some of the girls just sit around and don't play any innings and just drink beers. ugh. by contrast, i keep begging my team to keep playing for fun even after the 5 innings that make up each game are done. yeesh. i'm planning on hosting some kickball games when i get back to edmonton, so hopefully they will be more kickball-focused than these ones.

-i've had some good hangouts with various new-ish friends, including:

1. a boy named joe, who i met over craigslist before i came to DC the first time, because i posted an ad there asking if anyone would be willing to write letters with me before i arrived in DC, and then be friends when i got there. so we hung out a bit when i was first here in the fall, and then we hung out again a few times. he's neat. he works in sustainable energy, and he's really bright and kind.

2. a boy named bryson, who i met over craigslist when i posted an ad for a bikeriding partner. he's probably the person i've hung out most with in DC. he's in the military - coast guard, i think - which is preeeetty strange for someone that i would associate with. but he is very bright, and a critical thinker, and he likes doing a lot of the same things that i do (biking, canoeing, going to airshows, and eating indian food), so he's good company.

3. my coworker lauren and her husband. they invited me over for dinner one day, and usually dinner parties make me pretty uneasy, but this one was really enjoyable. another older couple was there too, and we talked a lot about the american education system, which is pretty fascinating.

4. my former coworkers sharyl and adrienne, from the museum i used to work at. i met up with them and their boyfriends at the rosslyn film festival, where we watched cry-baby outside in a park. nice.

5. my coworker erin and her husband. we met up at the rosslyn film festival (on a different friday than the one i just mentioned) and watched mrs. doubtfire. ha.

6. some edmontonian girls named brianna and julie, who just moved to DC to do the same smithsonian internship program that i did the last time i was here. i hadn't known either of them until a really random connection a few months ago, but brianna and i have been facebooking each other so i could help the two of them get prepared for DC life. now that they're here, we've hung out a little bit, and i'm really glad to have them here. i'm hoping we'll get to hang out lots before i leave DC, and then lots again once we're all in edmonton. interestingly, my love jessica just got a job with them at blackbyrd (where they work when they are not in DC). neat.

i also had some good skype talks with nathan and claire, which made me feel not so alone.

i'm still biking a lot, which feels good but makes me constantly sweaty. that part makes me feel not-so-good.

i watched micmacs (which was directed by the same guy who did amélie). not quite as good as amélie, but it was still pretty visually pleasing.

here are the ways i've been spending my free time in DC:

-bike rides into downtown on the capitol crescent trail, which is about 20 kms each way

-visit to some of the european embassies when they all were having their open house day

-airshow! a few weekends ago, the nearby air force base put on an airshow, and i went both days. and it was so awesome. i love airshows. fighter jets (when they're not actually fighting anything) and magic shows are the two things that make me instantly giddy. i know it's trashy. the people narrating the performances made a TON of super pro-american, pro-military, crazy statements (like a pilot, saying over the radio from his cockpit as he spun through the air, "i'm about to say the three best words in the english language: god bless america!" and the woman narrating a helicopter demonstration saying (in a thick southern accent), "these, folks, are the people who protect our great american way of life"). good lord. i think there needs to be some deep, critical thought about whether the "american way of life" is even worth protecting. but i've got to admit, the rhetoric was almost convincing when it was coupled with the awesomeness of some of those jets and little planes. have you ever seen or heard about a harrier jet? it can STOP in the air, BACK UP, turn 360 degrees while hovering in one spot, and glide from side to side. i know it's MOSTLY just a useless trick (unless, of course, they have to take off and land somewhere that there is no runway... and a helicopter isn't around to do the same job...) and a huge waste of fuel, but... it was totally awesome. i went by myself the first day, and i met up with my new friend bryson there the second day. i ate hamburgers and drank coke and got a sunburn and just had a good time being a little more irresponsible (health-wise and intellectually) than normal.

-film festival! there's a place in arlington (just across the river from DC, and still easily accessible by metro or bike) that is showing 90s movies for free on an inflatable screen in a park on friday nights. i've gone once so far--to see "wayne's world," which i had never seen before--and i've been meaning to go since then but it keeps getting rained out. i'm hoping the next few fridays will be sunny so that the movies can be shown.

-new york trip! there are a couple bus companies that sell $1, one-way bus tickets between DC and new york. i went two weekends ago to hang out with my friend robin, who was leading RDC students on an art tour there. i mostly hung out in chelsea, but i did manage to sneak in a bike ride around central park. i'm going back to the city again this weekend, so hopefully i'll be able to spend a bike more time biking around manhattan. oh, and i also watched exit through the gift shop. it was really good, but also sort of

made me feel yucky in my stomach. you should watch it.

-tours of the capitol building and library of congress! at the latter, i saw one of the only three remaining full copies of the gutenberg bible printed on vellum (there are a number of other ones that are printed on paper). at the capitol building, the tour guide talked about how the painter of one of the murals on the inside of the dome (just under the windows in this picture) slipped while he was painting, and managed to grab onto something as he slipped, but had to just dangle in the air for 15 minutes until somebody saved him. yikes. he quit after that, and somebody else had to finish the mural. that day made me feel kind of strange, though. it's funny (in a strange way, not a hilarious way) to hear perspectives on "freedom"/democracy/history from some of these "official" institutions. the more i think about it, the formation of governments in "the new world" was just so ill-conceived. i mean, i don't necessarily think people had bad intentions (although some did). it just blows my mind that a bunch of men, with not much of a common background or a ton of knowledge/experience with how people work, just got together and decided how things would be run. someone has recommended that i read eric wolf's "europe and the people without history." i haven't read it yet, but i'm going to go ahead and recommend it to everyone else anyway. i think the western world's lack of a common history is probably what has created many of our biggest problems. ugh, that's so vague. let's talk about this in person instead. but on a similar, mind-blowing note, it was interesting to be in the library of congress and be re-immersed in a place that had such reverence for the written word. my native studies degree, and the work i've been involved/interested in regarding indigenous languages, sometimes really questions and even criticizes the value of the written word. my two degrees - english and native studies - sometimes feel conflicting. it was just nice to be back in the mindframe i was in when i did my english degree, i guess. i don't read a ton of books, mostly because i am too restless and because i just read so much academic lit. that i don't have the mental energy for more reading, but i miss talking/thinking about how wonderful literature is. hmm. i might edit this post later, because i am tired and this is not expressing exactly what i mean for it to say. but i thought i should post anyway, because i haven't for a while.