The concert was the National Symphony Orchestra with David
Hardy on the cello. I got to sit on the side with the harp. I couldn’t see
super well, but the harpist is amazing. Her name is Dotian Levalier and she
studied with Carlos Salzedo and Marilyn Costello. That’s amazing! She has
played for the National symphony for 44 years and she is retiring this year. It
reminded me of how much I love playing harp. I hope I can find a harp shop in
DC where I can go play a harp sometime.
I went to bed early Friday night so that I could meet up
with my friend, Julie, in the morning.
She came in from the West Falls Church Metro Station and I hopped on her
same car at Foggy Bottom at about 8:30 so we could go to Easter Market. We got
BlueBucks, or blueberry buckwheat pancakes, which are apparently famous. They
were really good. We then walked around the market. There was so much fresh produce;
I wanted to buy it all! We were heading to a museum after, so I couldn't buy
anything.
We decided to walk from Eastern Market to the Newseum. We
walked past the Capitol Building and the Library of Congress. We also walked
past a soap car derby down Capitol Hill. It was super cool to watch. We got to
the Newseum a little before the other interns. It was a really cool experience,
but it is quite pricey. I don’t know that it is worth going to again. They do
have a really cool hall of the front page of newspapers on important days
around the world. They also had a really cool exhibit on the FBI and another
one on 9/11.
We were getting hungry, so Julie, A, R and I went to the
Museum of the Native American Indian and had lunch. They have a cafeteria with
traditional Native American foods. I had salmon, with a corn and cherry sauce.
It was delicious. We grabbed ice cream at the ice cream truck outside before walking
down the national mall. A little way down, we found a metro station and headed
home, where we chilled for the rest of the evening.
Sunday, I went to church, like usual. The air conditioning
was still broken, so it was sweltering the whole time, but I felt more included
this week. R met me after church and he played some piano on the church
pianos. It was beautiful! He is an amazing pianist, he could be professional.
After he played for a while, I went home and skyped my family. Oh, and our
final intern arrived, F. It will be fun to get to know her in the next few
weeks.
Monday started my third week of work. What? How did that
happen? We had our first outreach on Tuesday at Tuckahoe Elementary, so Monday
was our day to prepare. It was midafternoon when we were starting to feel ready
for the three, one hour classes of 40 third graders the next morning. Then Toni
got a message from our Tuckahoe Elementary contact. Because it was the last
week of school, they only had time for one hour with all 120 third graders.
Eeeek! Some of the activities we were planning on doing would be chaos with
that large of a group.
We had to decide if we still wanted to do the outreach. We
decided we wanted to and we modified our activity, so that instead of measuring
the length of the room with different sized sticks, they would measure the
lengths of equally long ropes. We kept the LED vs. Laser demonstration we had
used before and the laser-sound demonstration. It was a little thrown together,
but we felt like we could pull it off when we left on Monday.
Tuesday, we arrived early to set up the cafeteria. R,
J, CA, C, Toni and I did the outreach. It went really well. I
was surprised at how excited the kids were about measuring rope. They were
really smart kids and I saw multiple methods for measuring. It was great. They
were very involved and I think they had a good time and learned a lot. It could
have been better organized on our part, but I was really happy with how well it
went.
Toni took us out to eat at Busboys and Poets, which was
really good. It is very hip and quite delicious. Our server, Noel, was super
awesome and we shared quite a few laughs with her over the course of the meal.
The rest of the afternoon and week was spent working on pricing and models for
the rest of our kits.
On Monday evening, we decided to get some Mexican food.
Clearly, I can’t read a map, because it told me that the food was only a mile
away from us, but it was more like two. Oops! It was pretty good though, and it
was fun to bond with J, F, D, and R. It was weird because we were
the only patrons in the restaurant, which was a little unnerving.
Tuesday evening, I went to institute. The BYU Barlow Center
is really close to my dorms, so I walked there and had a nice lesson. I think
it is really good for me to involve myself in more church activities. The rest
of the week has been pretty chill.
I went to work early on Wednesday because I wanted to stop
at the bank before it closed. It was really nice to have the office to myself
to get a few things done. I think I will come in earlier a few more times in
the next few days. On the way home from the bank, I was stopped by a man from
England named Gionne (I think?) who was talking to me about donating to a
charity to help children go to school and to have better food and water. He was
really nice and it seems like a really good charity, but I am a little
uncomfortable with signing up for something so spontaneously. It was a pleasure
to talk to him.
I went home from work early on Thursday because I wasn’t
feeling well, which is a bummer. Hopefully, I am not catching something and
just need a little more sleep. Anyway, it has been a fun week. I am really excited
for the adventures to come. Pretty soon it will be July and I will be working
at NIST. Crazy!
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