Gymboree

GTL

I'm a little concerned about what a dominant presence The Jersey Shore has become in our society. I've actually never seen the show before, but even I know about the infamous trifecta - Gym, Tan, Laundry.

Actually, add food to that, and you've got the top 4 concerns of the average college student.

Tan:

Well, right now, my friends and I are sitting next to the soccer field at Tenley Campus, praying that one of these I-play-soccer-but-only-on-the-weekends-and-slightly-too-competitively boys next to which we sit doesn't wack us in the face with one of his oh-so-sexily orchestrated kicks - in our swimsuits (I'm aware that this sentence has no grammatic structure whatsoever.)

I'm fairly certain that our little pink bikinis are not socially acceptable, but what are we supposed to do when we live in such a conservative city?!
Anyhowwww...

Laundry:
Last night, at 1:00 AM, I came to the pleasant realization that I had completely forgotten to take my laundry out of the wash. This was great, esepcially since the laundry room is on the second floor, which is coed, and I was in a tiny little not-at-all appropriate bathrobe.

Ok. Food:

We'll cover this later, as there's a whole array of thoughts to be added on the subject of college cuisine - a topic for which I'd much prefer to allot an entire blog post.

And finally, GYM:

American's main campus (to which you can take a shuttle - that comes roughly once every 10 mins) has a pretty nice gym. Whether or not it's "state of the art" is debatable, but it's a nice place to sweat, nonetheless. The gym is in the "tunnel", next to an ALWAYS disgustingly good smelling Subway (the sandwich shop, not the underground tunnels) - which has on multiple occasions nearly deterred me from entering the gym, if not only to sit and smell the famous bread that's aroma far far far surpasses it's mediocre taste.

It's two stories, with the first floor set up for stretching and weight training, and the second consisting of treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, and an array of other devices created by the modern man to simulate real activity.

You have to sign out a machine on this big white board, (although SOMMMEE people don't adhere to this would-be-really-useful-if-people-followed-it rule). After which you can begin to pump it up.

So, here are some pics to help any prospective American/Washington Semester students visualize their future setting...enjoy (special thanks to Mine for modeling)

Wait for shuttle here (or walk)

Enter tunnel

Enter gym

Give front desk your card to swipe

Get a locker

favorite picture ever

Frangipani Plumeria

Cacti and Succulents 


Spuds Unearthed


Heroes of Horticulture.


      Really bad band names? Superhero slogans?
Wrong! Something far more earth shattering;  Three of the temporary exhibits at the United States Botanic Gardens!


[Disclaimer: earth shattering is used here as a blatant pun and by no means implies the colloquial meaning of  a life altering event]

C'monnnnn, who doesn't love a good tropical plant?? I know I do! Especially when it's 955 degrees out and the exhibit says, 'NO!, I'll raise you 20 - let's make it 975. Beat that Washington I-used-to-be-a-swamp DC.'


Actually, though, it was kind of cool - walking from Hawaii to Garden Primeval to Jungle, all in a matter of mere seconds. I felt like God (Allah, Bahá, Satnam...), roaming through my mini insignificant earthly creations. Or like a giant. Same thing. 

It would have, however, been much more enjoyable if aforementioned heat had not been so excruciatingly painful. I'm definitely going there in winter to pretend that I could be happy once again - that the sun will indeed shine once more. (Winter in Wisconsin creates a terrible melodramatic outlook on winter in general).


OK! Moral of story - go to Botanic Gardens, but not in blazing heat. 

The End. 

Dinos and Diamonds and Dead men, OH MY!

I love museums.

Not all museums, of course. There are those in which I feel very ill at ease - as if a wee twitch or slip of the hand would end me in exhibit-offender's prison...Forever.

But seriously, museums are so great. They're like a giant compilation of all things great. They're just so, great.

There's a museum for everything. Happy things - like dinosaurs, sad things - like the Holocaust, and weird, kind of not-so-socially-acceptable-things, like mustard.

But you want to know what's especially great? Almost ALL of them in DC are FREE. That means you can wander around the city, stopping in museum after museum at your leisure (or whenever you're on the verge of a heat stroke), all while being pretty darn sure that you won't ever have to pull out your wallet. (unless of course is sets off one of the tens of billions of security check-points within the city).

I'm especially a sucker for old-timey exhibits, like at the Museum of Natural History. There were exhibits on Sea-life (both modern and archaic), Human Origins, Dinosaurs, Mammals, and Gemstones (which was, very tellingly, the most crowded). I thought it was funny how there were these incredible fossils and really labor-intensive exhibits, and yet the most jam-packed room I went into was the one displaying some rich woman's heirloom of (admittedly incredible, from what I could glimpse through the jabbering mass of bobbling womens' heads) precious jewels/jewelry. No cultural barrier here - worldwide interest.

Crowded jewl room (observe cultural diversity)

cursed Hope Diamond

Thanks to the "Evolution and Extinction" course I took last year, I feel quite proud to say that I impressed myself with my knowledge of the material in so many of the exhibits, and it took all I had not to quietly lean over to inform innocent passers by of just why the discovery of the Tiktaalik fossil was so important in the search for our species' origins.

I'm in constant awe of my superior intelligence.

Attempt to become a neanderthal (horrifically embarrassing when done alone, might I mention) Failure = result of unwillingness to retry, due to aforementioned humiliation.

The only negative part was the bounty of weird museum workers with clipboards sleuthing around every exhibit. I'd be dallying about, just checkin out different things, when all of a sudden I would catch a glimpse of a middle-aged, nicely dressed, creeper-employee clutching a clipboard from the corner of my eye , leering at me from an uncomfortably close distance.

I understand you're observing and all, but seriously, respect the Western guidelines for personal space. [Public Space = 12 ft (3.7 m) or more, for strangers]

I love elephants

Benderful

I'm in Bender Library learning about the search system and all the available resources for students! It's incredible - our tuition covers access to so much! The best is newspaper archives-for which you are typically charged.That means you can get past issues of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other big timers, all for free. 

I love librarians too - they're always so excited to help. Angels, really. Our current one, Melissa Becher, is so helpful, and really patient as well.

Melissa Becher, our helpful friend

We can rent Kindles/Nooks too! I'd like to see if I could tolerate reading that way. I'm a bit old school - I'm a big fan of the old library book smell.

I'm actually excited to come to this library, everyone's nice and it's clean and just has a really good atmosphere. The ones at my home school are nice, but get a little dungeon-y at some points. Everything is really simple here too - not a lot of hoops to jump through to get what you need - my kind of place.

Our intro ended in a complimentary entry into the library's raffle. $100 on my SmartCard sounds very nice. Then again, so does a membership in the cookie of the month club (also a prize). Tough call. Cookies, or more incentive to roam the depths of the metro.

Now I'm hungry.

Attack of the Zomployee: Part 1

 [Disclaimer: This story requires a slight sense of humor. In actuality, I'm really feelin' DC - and all the people have been much more likable than one would expect from a town of politicians.)

Today, I was wandering aimlessly around downtown DC, thinking only of how horrifically and unnaturally hot every inch of my body was very quickly becoming, when all of a sudden - the clock struck 5:00...

and so it began.

All at once - not slowly, not bit by bit, not even in alternating shifts - the entire workforce of Washington, DC emerged from the secret holes in which they'd been laboring, and crawled purposefully into the blazing sunlight - like zombies infected, now unavoidably programmed to kill.

Droves and droves of pallid men and women, clad in business suits spanning an endless array of neutral tones, quickly filled the vacant streets, covering the ground that only seconds before lay bereft of all life.

With eyes faced determinedly ahead, limbs swinging in unison, and feet moving at an eerily steady pace, the enormous mass of DC employees made their way from their offices of toil towards the nearest point of departure - Union Station.

Unaware that I would be caught in this strange cultural ritual, I failed to dress at all accordingly. My skin-tight yoga pants and arm-bearing spaghetti strap tank-top drew attention to my outsider status, a dangerous scent on which I feared the zombies would pick up - a signal to move in for the kill.

So I did what any fearful human being would in such a situation - I took refuge in camoflauge.
Though I could not alter what I was wearing, I could change my mannerisms, my thoughts, my objective.
Immediately I fell in line with the others, proceeding steadily towards the ultimate destination for which so many of the goal-oriented natives were bound.

Upon my arrival at Union Station, I descended for cover into the deeps of the metro, a place where my odd attire and all-too-alert mental state would be easily hidden among the eclectic swarms of travelers.

And so I made it to safety - though the fear of being discovered by the drones of DC will never - ever - let me rest.

The End.
...or is it?

Ombuddy

First Seminar! woot woot. I will never, ever, forget this day.

(brief pause to reference my notes)

OK. Today, we had as our guest Mr. Andy Alexander, ombudsman from The Washington Post.

Mr. Alexander was actually a pretty likable guy. Instead of talking down or preaching to the lowly students, he basically let us amateurs spend the entire class asking him questions. And can I just say how proud I am of our essentially entirely German/Norwegian class for asking a slew of hard-hitting, A+ questions? (note: The foreigners asked disgustingly better ones than any of us Americans - way to represent, natives)

So Double-A (mmhmm, bffolife) was from Ohio, worked for a paper there, then headed to Aussieland for a "yonk", after which he flew to Vietnam, then eventually ended up in foreign correspondence - for which he's traveled to over 50 countries in the last 30 or so years.


Now, as ombudsman, he's sort of like one giant check for The Washington Post - he kind of represents the people, voices their concerns, and does some self-correcting/verifying of the paper as well. That means the poor man has to deal with an unfortunate number of very tactless, obnoxious, overly-eccentric (read psycho) Post readers, not to mention the staff, who often understandably does not approve of his good-intentioned corrections.

Good thing the time limit on ombudsman is 2 years. I seriously don't know how a person can take that much crap from everyone at once and still maintain his sanity. I'm sure he's probably about ready to retire on a desert island or in some forbidden forest completely secluded from the human kind.

I can barely stand the metro at rush hour, listening to one mind-numbing complaint after another, (granted a good 50% of that could very well be me mistaking my own whining for an external source), and this guy gets 90 calls from 'passionate' readers a day, ripping on how the middle name of someones great aunt Justine is Sara 'spelled with an A, NOT an H!' !?

Props, Mr. Alexander, I salute you.

And here's the lucky fellow with Professor Gil Klein - what charming fellows :)

PS: Did you know the most profitable year for newspapers was 2000? Who'dathunkit.

Pointless Pontificating

Today I do not feel witty or clever. At all. However, simply stating that may be witty and clever enough to fake my way through this post.

More than anything, I'd really like to be done writing and rewriting these tedious cover letters. No, I would not be honored to be a part of every single one of your institutions, and not every one of your companies would provide "an invaluable experience unobtainable elsewhere" ; however, pretending such is true has all but saved me during this difficult week of proving myself to countless managers and executives.

Honestly, my biggest concern at this point is which phone I should use my long-awaited AT&T upgrade on.

Iphone?
or
Blackberry?

yikes - life's heavy choices.
I mean, the Blackberry would give me marvelous access to my email, all while providing an acceptably easy keyboard to maneuver around

But the Iphone....

has apps.

This decision is actually surprisingly pertinent to my time in DC, as I have accessed and spent more time on my email during the past few days than I have over the past 3 years combined.

Anyhow, my friends and I went to Georgetown today to get in some good quality shopping time. My apparently overly ambitious goal was to find comfortable shoes, skinny khakis (that would not only work for seminar, but make a trendy & cute transition to street wear), and some sort of bottoms that didn't consist of yoga-wear/spandex material (of which 96.5% of my clothes are made). However, this mission terminated in a giant FAIL and a surrender to Subway - my new favorite spot for cheap, slightly-less-than-mediocre-food.

During our outing, however, we all addressed the fact that DC is a lot nicer/better/cooler and safer-feeling than any city we've been in. It's not so much a city as an institution in itself. It's cleaner than any place I've been, and the plethora of readily-available Chipotles is an unexpected, but nonetheless significant benefit.

In addition, there seems to be an obscene number of Whole Foods. You'd think that if the leaders of our nation lead such healthy lifestyles the rest of the obese country would follow suit.

But then you turn the corner and there's another Chipotle, and you understand that some temptations cannot be ignored.

All in all, it was a semi-successful day, culminating in a dorm-room gathering and the procrastination of yet another half-faked cover letter.

I apologize for the undirected nature of this post. The next shall have more purpose, I assure. But you know what kids? Sundays are allowed to be purposeless.


:)