72 HOURS until "IGIA" (Not "Inauguration," but "I Get Internet Access")

Valerie and I are here at the Gelman Library, and I had the good sense to transfer my journal to my USB drive, so you will have something to tide you over until I’m back to regular blog-posting at the right time in the right place on Wednesday. Enjoy my Friday entry, and my Saturday entry up to a certain point. I actually haven’t finished typing it, so the rest will have to come later…

FIRE and WATER (January 16, 2009)

So yesterday, as you might remember, we had to get by without any kind of hot water for showers or washing dishes. Naturally, there was a little bit of moaning and groaning, but on the whole no one was terribly inconvenienced. Br. Blanchard called in someone to fix the water, and ta-da! Life was hot and steamy once more. Basking in my toughness after enduring a day (or two or three) without washing my hair or taking a hot shower, I decided to wait until tonight before taking and relishing that delicious moment. And then it happened.

The FIRE ALARM went off! Like, at 9 something at night! I had made myself some pasta (it was quicker than the soup, and I was hungry, and, whatever. It was probably a good thing I didn’t make the soup since it would have still been on the stove) and was just about to dig in in my room, when all of sudden the little light started flashing and the bell started beeping.

Ironically, it was FREEZING cold outside, but we all were fleeing from the “fire,” so I had only a few minutes to grab my coat, scarf, gloves, and hat, and head out into the chilly dark night with the others. Poor Andy didn’t even grab a jacket—I was afraid he was going to get hypothermia from just standing out there in his jeans and shirt! Michael quipped that if there was a fire, he would be standing as close as he could to it to try to get warm.

A few interesting things happened while we were waiting. Some random guys smoking ciggarettes came out of the place (bar?) next to the building and started talking with a few of us. I wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying, but it sounds like they were wondering what had happened and who on Earth we were, etc. Elise, who is a firm believer in missionary work and also one of the genuinely sweetest girls I’ve ever met, actually talked to them for a good long while! But I heard later that they thought she was “high” and were unable to shake off that impression. When they invited her in for a drink and she explained that Mormons don’t drink (liquor), one exclaimed in disbelief, “You SMOKE POT but you don’t DRINK!?” I thought about stepping closer and telling him we didn’t drink coffee, either, but I was afraid it might give the poor guy a heart attack and he would die. Or that I would get second-hand smoke poisoning and I would die. As we learned in today’s briefing, “you don’t want to kill anyone.”

The next interesting thing that happened was that the fire truck came literally within ten minutes! I didn’t have my camera with me, or I would have taken a picture. It was quite cool to observe the efficient manner in which they navigated their humongous truck into our teeny street and got all their men in full regalia to scout out the building. They found, as we expected, that there was NO fire, but that when the guy who “fixed” our water came, he apparently “broke” it. There was some water leakage downstairs, and that’s what set the fire alarm off. Yeah, right. I know what you’re thinking. A fire alarm caused by water? We should call it the “water alarm.” Firemen or fighters will become watermen or waterfighters, watertrucks will be painted blue, inner tubes and lifejackets will replace ladders, mops will replace hoses, scuba masks will replace gas masks, and the spotted seal will become the mascot in place of the dalmation. Next you know, there will be signs everywhere saying “Don’t play with water” and it will be taboo to shout “Water!” in the streets or late at night. This could be the start of something HUGE, people.

But back to the present. Which is actually the past now. The firemen handily solved our water problem by turning off our water. “Someone” will be coming to fix it, but until that happens, we are unable to take showers, do laundry, wash dishes, wash our hands, or (the ultimatum) use the bathroom. I am pretty flexible when it comes to most of these activities, but the last one is going to be extremely difficult, particularly since the more I place constraints on my ability to make use of the “facilities,” the more that part of my daily routine arouses and asserts its priority over all other issues. Basically, I’m like a naughty child. Telling me I can’t have something makes me want it MORE THAN EVERRRRRR. So it’s going to be a long, rough night here. Not to mention the fact that my hair is gross, I’m sweaty, and won’t be washing my laundry early tomorrow as planned. A spot of good news is that we can head to the gym tomorrow morning (well, 8:00 am—they open later on Saturdays) to take showers...

And now that we’re past THAT annoying issue, I’ll try to describe the rest of my day in as brief and succint a manner as possible. I woke up. I ate breakfast. I attended class from 9:45—2:00 pm. I wasted time and ate lunch from 2:00 pm—4:00 pm. I went shopping, went to the Smithsonian Castle and a few galleries, took the picture of a very sweet couple in front of the castle, met up with some friends and waited in line to get free tickets for “Three Women,” an Iranian film which was supposed to be great and turned out to be long and without an ending, saw aforementioned film despite the occasional drowsiness and the extremely annoying presence of a tall bald-headed gentleman seated DIRECTLY in front of me, and went home with the others on the Metro.

Oh, and tonight after the whole fire alarm scare, some of us went to the boys’ lounge and learned how to play “Nerds” from Brad and Andy. It was supposed to be a very fast-paced card game, but was actually pretty slow for the first little while. Andy and I did quite well as a team, but I think the final game was won by Valerie and Emily. It’s okay—I’m content in my state of nerdlessness. While there, we had an interesting discussion about the briefings and our feelings on the Friday class periods so far. Most of us shared the same concerns and confusion over what was expected of us and why we agreed or disagreed with things the briefers had said. It hit me while we were talking that our discussion was much more interesting than anything that was said in class today, and I felt almost sorry that we missed out on so much by keeping all our opinions to ourselves... But at the same time, I was glad that we did at least have access to the free sharing of opinions in an informal context. It strengthened our “network of mutual trust,” if you will. I would write more about the topics discussed in the briefings and the briefers themselves, but I’m afraid most of you would find it rather boring, and I would find it rather boring to write about, so I won’t. Not now, at any rate. It’s 12:44 am, and I’m going to bed.

P.s. This probably won’t be posted until sometime later, for which I apologize. Since the fire/water thing, the internet has been down over here and I’m not sure how soon it will be able to fix itself/be fixed.

P.p.s. WEDNESDAY!!?!?!??! NOooooOOOOOOOOooooooO!

Saturday Sights! (January 18, 2009)

Well, I have a lot of catching up to do here. Saturday was a difficult day, mostly because we were without Internet and hot water for the most of it (well, Internet = all of it). Apparently my suspicions regarding my addiction to the net are confirmed—connection to the Internet is directly related to my happiness here. I’m already feeling blue and blah and lifeless, and it’s only 6:15 pm!

I slept in Saturday morning for a long time, but did go downstairs and exercise when I got up. It was almost noon when Valerie, Brad, Andy, and I headed out to do our weekly “sight-seeing” trip. We got off at the right Metro stop this time, fortunately, and had some fun moseying through the Museum of American History. I had already seen a good deal of it, but was very excited to see the stuff I had missed—including Dorothy’s ruby red slippers from the Wizard of Oz! It was easy to see that they were the most popular item in their general area. There was always a group of people clustered around them at any given moment—making exclusive “photos of Ruth with the slippers” difficult, but that’s life.

*************Here I was going to put all my pictures, but, well, we’re at the Library and I didn’t bring my camera converter thingamajig. Sorry—remind me to come back and post them on Wednesday!*************

I got to peer really close at them through the glass, and was surprised to see how old and non-sparkly they looked in the dull light of the room, and also impressed with the level of detail in the little red circles that made up the covering. The plaque said that the shoes were a size 5, but Valerie said she heard they were size 7 (her size), sooo.... who knows? Do you know how frustrating it is not to be able to resort to Google right now and settle the whole thing right now?
Aaarargargah! How shall I survive until Wednesday!?!?!??

After our browsing of the sections of the museum that I had not seen, and peering in briefly on a presentation being carried on the main floor by “George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln” (which was funny at first since I only recognized Abraham Lincoln, and so was trying to figure out if Thomas Jefferson was George McClellan or Steven Douglas), we went downstairs to the museum cafeteria, which turned out to be delicious and not that pricey (especially when we found out that Valerie could get us a group discount of 20% off with her special “I-work-for-the-Smithsonian” card). It was crowded (as was, well, everything, with the Inauguration and all), but we didn’t have trouble finding a table. The only real thing I can find to complain about is that the cups for water were so small that it took about three trips just to get the equivalent of one glass. Yikes! Valerie and Andy and Brad all ordered meat dishes, while I went the slightly cheaper route of ordering macaroni and cheese with potato salad and a “Cheddar cornbread roll,” which tasted very cornbready and not very cheddary, and very very good. The macaroni and cheese was overpriced for the small serving they gave me, but I ate it all very slowly and relished it. Oh, and we got two desserts and split them among the four of us: New York Cheesecake (I don’t know what was specifically “New York” about it, but it was good!) and a HUGE lemon bar (like four of the regular kind put together). Delicious!

After lunch, we split up: Andy, Brad, and Valerie saw the rest of the museum while I took off to visit the Holocaust Museum for the remaining two and half or so hours before they closed (I can’t tell you how frustrating it is that all these amazing museums have to close so early!!!). Fortunately, due to my printing up TWO maps of it and studying the area quite rigorously from the top of the Washington Monument, I did NOT get lost and made it to the museum in under ten minutes. As with most other museums, there was a long line of people trying to get in, but the line moved surprisingly fast and the nice guard walking up and down outside gave us reading material, so I was not bored.

The line was due to the fact that we all had to pass our bags through an X-ray machine and then walk through a metal detector. This can be a problem when, like me, you have a fear of having your purse snatched, and so keep all kinds of items about your person in various coat pockets. Fortunately, I did HAVE my purse with me, so in line I unloaded everything into the ol’ bag (making for some panic attacks later on when I was frantically feeling through all my pockets for important items before remembering that they were all in my purse!) and made it through security without any other delays. Thankfully, I had left my water bottle home!
The Holocaust Museum had by far the most things to do of any museum I’ve seen here so far, and each exhibit was so overwhelmingly horrific and breathtakingly powerful that even the most overblown adjectives can’t describe it. I was touched, moved, impressed, and shocked by almost everything in the museum, but wasn’t able to tear myself away from it either, and was sad when closing time came and I had to walk away. Like a surprisingly large number of people (many of the girls I’ve talked to here, and a few other people in my own family), I went through a period of time when I was extremely interested in reading everything and watching everything I could find about the Holocaust. To an extent, all that information was helpful in preparing me to handle and understand what had happened, but it hardly compared with the experience of being able to literally see, listen to, and touch actual artifacts from this tragic time period. At every exhibit, I was blown away by the vast scale and scope of the Holocaust: 6 million is an easy enough number to say, but to actually see photos, shoes, and locks of hair from the heads of individual people is a different thing entirely. To imagine and even to see photos of bodies piled high enough to form roadblocks, fill huge ditches, and fit into rows and rows of cars is a near incomprehensible thing. So many things looked as if they could not be real, as if they had to have been done by a computer or for a film, because surely nothing so terrible would ever actually be allowed to happen to a human being. And yet it had, and it did.

I saw as many exhibitions as I could in the time I had. I highly, highly, highly reccomend the “Daniel’s Story” exhibit, even though it was sort of aimed more towards kids than adults. Basically it’s a self-guided tour, a walkway that leads through Daniel’s life in various stages. You entered enclosed environments that were made to look like his home, the streets of Germany before and after Hitler’s discriminatory tactics against Jews began to be enforced, the ghetto house and camp where he and his family lived for a while, and then finally the concentration camp where his mother and sister were killed. There were sound effects and pieces of Daniel’s journal throughout the whole thing, and many realistic details, like a broken window and rock through their house, Daniel’s father’s medal in his bedroom, even some fake “soup” (an onion and water) in the ghetto house. I was in line behind a young boy and his friend, who very diligently read every entry of Daniel’s journal out loud to his friend; it was interesting to hear the words of one young boy from the lips of another, and wonder what each one must have been thinking.

Other exhibitions were more disturbing; there was a whole section on the experiments performed by Nazi doctors, and another on the groups other than Jews targeted by Nazis to be sterilized or executed (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Romanians, and mentally retarded people). I wasn’t able to read or watch everything in each exhibit, but the sad images and sad music was very powerful, and haunting at the same time.

In addition to exhibitions, there were a LOT of films to see. Most were about 12 minutes long, so I saw all of maybe two, and then smaller chunks from two others. Some of the films related the genocide in Rwanda to the Holocaust, and others traced the rise of Adolf Hitler. My favorite was entitled Liberation, 1945, which consisted of accounts from American soldiers and prisoners of concentration camps who were freed by the Allied forces. One man’s story in particular touched me: he said that when he saw Jewish soldiers among the Allied groups, carrying guns and driving cars and doing things with authority, it struck him suddenly that he was “equal,” and that this idea changed his life. Another man said that he had asked his friend many times in the camp if he thought they were going to make it, and his friend had always answered “Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll be free.” But when the time came, neither of them could believe it, and he couldn’t stop asking his friend if it was really true, that they were really free. Many people didn’t know what to do with themselves after getting out of the camps, but one American soldier who was interviewed in the film said he had talked to one man who was very firm about saying he was “going home.” Wow.

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Well, that’s all for now. I’ll try to give the family a phone call when I get back from the library. It’s going to be an interesting week… I’m going to try to do as much writing as possible on all my insightful Inaugural experiences and observations…which could be a little scary, considering I can’t remember the last time I’ve made written statements without the aid and support of Wikipedia and Google!