Patriotic
The 4th of July was a beautiful sunny day. Of 90+ degree weather. A good day to go wandering, wouldn't you say?
I met a group of other NIH summer interns for an organ recital of patriotic music at the National Cathedral. I didn't know we had a National Cathedral. But there it was, larger than life. Very cathedral-ish, including flying buttresses and all. Organ music is funny and entrancing, so the recital was pretty amazing, and the brass band helped to wake us up from our waiting stupor in the beginning. After, we marched outside and took a nice leisurely sweaty stroll to eat some Thai food. They say you should eat spicy to cool off, but the iced tea also helped.
Next stop, the mall to try to figure out what next. Our group found more interns, then split up. Some headed for the art gallery, some, to the air and space museum. I opted for art, with a walk through the statue garden thingy first. We also dipped our feet into the pool in the middle and stayed for a while, cooling off. Can you sense a theme here?
The art gallery was a hoot and we may have both amused and terrified. It all started off calmly enough. We looked at art, checked out the only piece by Da Vinci on display in the U.S. And that's where it started. Two of the girls decided to pose next to the shot with the same morose face as the woman in the painting. And we were off. Posing next to paintings, in profile and head on, posing as the subjects posed. We were Napoleon, and Hermes, soldiers, seamstresses, angels, boxers, sharks, any and every painting we liked, there was someone willing to pose next to it looking silly. Some of the security guards seemed confused, while others were clearly snickering. Some tourists took our pictures. It was a blast.
After that adventure, we walked to the Smithsonian folk life festival on the mall. It was closing down, so we grabbed a ridiculous amount of watermelon (why else, to cool off) and went to frolic under the water hose someone thoughtfully set up for the passers by. It was great, until my jeans were fully soaked and gained about 10 pounds (that might be hyperbole). I ate some BBQ and we barreled through the Washington monument grounds to claim a spot near where the fireworks would be let off. This was both good and bad because they were amazing from that distance, the best I've ever seen, and I'm not a huge fireworks fan. It was entrancing, mesmerizing, to watch them right above your head, in a crowd of 300,000 people, in the nation's capital. On the negative side, the smoke blanketed the ground and my nose was stuffed so badly by the time I got home, I couldn't sleep for two and a half hours.
It was an amazing day, an exhausting day, a patriotic day.
I met a group of other NIH summer interns for an organ recital of patriotic music at the National Cathedral. I didn't know we had a National Cathedral. But there it was, larger than life. Very cathedral-ish, including flying buttresses and all. Organ music is funny and entrancing, so the recital was pretty amazing, and the brass band helped to wake us up from our waiting stupor in the beginning. After, we marched outside and took a nice leisurely sweaty stroll to eat some Thai food. They say you should eat spicy to cool off, but the iced tea also helped.
Next stop, the mall to try to figure out what next. Our group found more interns, then split up. Some headed for the art gallery, some, to the air and space museum. I opted for art, with a walk through the statue garden thingy first. We also dipped our feet into the pool in the middle and stayed for a while, cooling off. Can you sense a theme here?
The art gallery was a hoot and we may have both amused and terrified. It all started off calmly enough. We looked at art, checked out the only piece by Da Vinci on display in the U.S. And that's where it started. Two of the girls decided to pose next to the shot with the same morose face as the woman in the painting. And we were off. Posing next to paintings, in profile and head on, posing as the subjects posed. We were Napoleon, and Hermes, soldiers, seamstresses, angels, boxers, sharks, any and every painting we liked, there was someone willing to pose next to it looking silly. Some of the security guards seemed confused, while others were clearly snickering. Some tourists took our pictures. It was a blast.
After that adventure, we walked to the Smithsonian folk life festival on the mall. It was closing down, so we grabbed a ridiculous amount of watermelon (why else, to cool off) and went to frolic under the water hose someone thoughtfully set up for the passers by. It was great, until my jeans were fully soaked and gained about 10 pounds (that might be hyperbole). I ate some BBQ and we barreled through the Washington monument grounds to claim a spot near where the fireworks would be let off. This was both good and bad because they were amazing from that distance, the best I've ever seen, and I'm not a huge fireworks fan. It was entrancing, mesmerizing, to watch them right above your head, in a crowd of 300,000 people, in the nation's capital. On the negative side, the smoke blanketed the ground and my nose was stuffed so badly by the time I got home, I couldn't sleep for two and a half hours.
It was an amazing day, an exhausting day, a patriotic day.