Entry 10 (July 8 - 14) Curiosity, Oranges, and Water Flogging
Featured Photo:
Monday, July 8
Today, I felt a bit off..
but I decided I'd take that to the museums for self reflection.
I started the day with nabbing a first come first serve ticket to the National Air and Space Museum on The Mall.
It was under construction, and not as grand as I remembered when I last came in 6th grade. But, it was still very cool! There were these immersive experiences like VR but without the headset. And this beautiful, giant solar system hanging from the celieng. They also had lots of Star Wars and Barbie (respectivley) themed stuff, which I could respect. I even bought a ticket to the planetarium show. I sat next to this family of Virginia farmers showing their French foreign exchange student DC. They were all very sweet.
Now I love planetarium shows. Always have. They have always stoked my love for astronomy.
However, as I have been studying astronomy in uni, it turns our that I have actually learned quite a bit and exceeded what I could learn in a general astronomy planetarium show...and the lack of new content mixed with the darkness and comfy chair, I ended up falling asleep. The good news is that it was a great nap!
Ok I've saved the best news for later. This may just be the highlight of the summer, nay, my life:
Ready?
I met.....
My celebrity crush,
Mi amor,
love of my life:
Curiosity The Mars Rover!!!!!!!!!
Ahhhh!! Can you believe it??? Right there in front of me, behind plexiglass. I was just wandering and trying to get out the way of some German tourists, and then I turn around and BAM there he is. Beautiful and so tall. So handsome. I am still just so excited about it.
It wasn't truly The Curiosity but the matching prototype they kept on earth. So lovely.
I really can't top anything after this, but I decided to keep checking out the museums still.
I also saw the coolest space artifacts. I love NASA. One of my favorites was seeing the sewing machine that helped sew together the space suits and reading the statements from the seamstresses about how the seam allowance was so finite.
I got the pictures with the X Wings for my friend who loves Star Wars.
Later on, I went to The Holocaust Museum.
Talk about change of pace.
I took a pre-breather but didn't realize that my ticket time slot was so specific. I missed it, but the workers were kind and still let me through.
If you haven't been through before, it's hard to explain the weight. But it was heavy. I'm in a bit of a late night silly mood as I write this and I don't want to do it wrong by writing about it while in a silly mood, so I just won't. But suffice to say, I highly recommend it.
When I was in 6th grade, and came to DC, I couldn't handle it at all. I hardly knew anything about the Holocaust, but even a kid can feel the weight. I ran to the end while my mom frantically tried to chase me down and cried while she sat with me at the end and we waited for the rest of the group.
I was glad to face it again, 9 years later, with a broader understanding and more emotional capacity.
Later, on my way home, something shifted internally and I was able to work through the emotions that had me feeling a bit off earlier in the day.
It was a good day.
Tuesday, July 9
All my potential bridesmaid dresses came in the mail today! A sea of sage green fabric covered my room haha
Also, while online shopping for dresses, I figured why not replace my headphones since I lost one of them last week.
HOWEVER, somewhere en route to me, someone carefully and only slightly sliced open the amazon box and stole the contents of the box right out. So when I carried the box back to my room and opened it, it was not light because the contents was small, but it was light because the only thing in it was bubble wrap.
I was so mad. Thank goodness that Amazon seems prepared for this and just sent me another package with no extra pay. However, the tax was taken on my mental because as frequent flyer on Spotify who often was blocking out the fact I'm living with 50 other people, not having two headphones was driving me nuts! Waiting even longer is gonna drive me up the wall.
After a somewhat excruciating day: working on my internship in order to block out my frustration with thieves, one of my roomies and I went out on another hot girl to chick fil a for a drink. She is seriously so funny, and I love spending time with her!
Wednesday, July 10
Today was orange.
Everything was orange today.
I mean literally.
I spent a majority of the day hand juicing and zesting oranges for a new orange pancake recipe I found. I painted the whole kitchen in orange juice. My hands, the counters, the dishes, my clothes.
Then in the late afternoon, a huge rainstorm came through. Pouring on the Hatch House. Lots of us went to the rooftop to see it.
I had changed out of my orange soaked clothes and into my pre-pajamas. They got drenched as I danced on the rooftop in the rain.
The desert rat in me still gets excited over rain, who cares if it's so common in The East. Right before golden hour, and after the rainstorm, a ginormous rainbow came through the clouds.
Magnificent and in it's natural habitat over DuPont, it settled like a crown over DC.
I was on the front roof observing both the rainbow and the people in the balcony across the street:
They were these teenagers/young adults. And they were carefully slipping over the hand rail on their roof in order to get a better shot of the rainbow. Part of their building was in the way, but I had a clearer shot. I was so worried about them slipping over the edge of the building - 5 stories up - and onto the concrete below. So I shouted across the road to them that I could take the picture for them and air drop it.
We're strangers shouting across a road, 5 stories in the air "I can't find your airdrop!" "What's the name of your phone?!" "I think we're out of range!" "Can I text it to you?!" "Sure!" "What's your number?!" "*they shouted their number across the road*!"
I shout back, "Ok I'm going to run to the other roof so I can get you guys a better shot!"
And I did, I ran quickly through the hallway and I could see they were relieved I wasn't just messing with them when I emerged onto the back rooftop, and I texted them the picture as they shouted across the street, and now at a sharp angle if they could get some in landscape and portrait.
I texted it to them and I could see from across the way that they were all crowded over the one person I was shouting with's phone, and they were happy with the pictures. I was glad to help make sure no one died for a rainbow picture today.
Texting with them a bit later I found out it was a Bible Study group. Which information I swiftly disbursed throughout the Hatch House because we had all been so curious as to what that huge group of people were talking about every Wednesday evening in the glass room across from our rooftop.
Later in the evening, I facetimed mom (the cat) just to say hi (to the cat). Even she was orange, for a black cat.
Thursday, July 11
The thing about working remote is that there is not enough excuses to get up and look cute. So today I got up and looked cute just for me (and the internship zoom later today). Just incase they could just use The Force to sense how cute it was that I paired my yellow blouse with my yellow-ey solar system socks.
But the even better news is that the meeting finished early enough so that I could still catch the free-dinner position of institute and show off my cute yellow-ness there too.
Friday, July 12
There is this phenomenon in my life where my either dyslexia or lack of word-awareness shines through.
My first memory of this was at the beach when I was 14, when I discovered that compound words typically indicate a function or two words that slightly resemble the object at hand. That day at the beach, I discovered that 'seaweed' was called seaweed because they were like weeds from the sea. Since that day, every day is a new discovery: eyeliner, eyeshadow, backpack, snowflake, just now while recalling compound words I figured out 'basketball'.
Just to paint you an idea.
Today, I pondered over if a sweater is called a sweater because it makes you sweat?
Big day for me intellectually.
Besides pondering the secrets of the English language (I apologize to my English teacher parents), I cooked more breakfast burritos which are my main food group - they keep me sharp haha
Later, I researched astronomy professors in the local Universities I'd like to reach out to for a tour and to network with to prep for grad school.
Later later, I almost squared up with the postman when my new batch of headphones were delivered. Just in case the last postman was the one who stole it. Turned out to be a postwoman though..and she looked like a former basketball player so I didn't square up, probably for the best:)
In the afternoon, the Hatch House hosted a guest speaker as well as Jason Perry and Gina Shipley. They are in charge of the Hinckley Institute of Politics. Jason is in charge of the Institute as a whole and Gina is in charge of the national internship program. They come over every semester to inspect the house and visit us. We had a massive room clean. Right before they came into our room, my roommate and I were being super punchy and she caught a video of our silliness. I can't post videos on this format, but I included a still frame.
In the evening, I found a new work spot in the House and locked in on an annotated bibliography for my internship. Here's also a still frame of my timelapse I like to take while I'm working.
Saturday, July 13
Today was a temple trip dayyyy!!!!🥳
It was so dang humid that the second I stepped out of the car, my glasses fogged up immediately.
It was just a people from the Hatch House trip. This is one of the most memorable temple trips because I got flogged.
So for those of you not familiar with baptisms inside an LDS temple, let me paint a picture:
We believe that people who are alive can proxy receive saving ordinances like baptisms for those who have died, with an emphasis on our own ancestors. We believe this is possible through priesthood power. The men are the holders of this priesthood, though the priesthood is just another word for God's power and everyone has access to His power.
Anyways, ok so this guy - he's from BYU so you know could explain it - he's baptizing me in this font. I'll attach stock photos of the DC font for a visual.
And he's supposed to let me under the water fully - but you know gently.
INSTEAD.
THIS MAN SLAMS ME INTO THE WATER.
but no no, don't fret too quickly because he yanks me out of the water just as quickly.
Have you ever been pulled through water at a fast pace? It's like opening a window going 80 down the highway and sticking your head out of the window while the wind slaps you in the face. But instead, it's water and it's trying to drown you and rip the contacts right out of your eyes.
And even though I'm about as tall as this man and probably heavier, he has no qualms.
The other thing about temple baptisms is that you typically get baptized for multiple people in a succession. So for like 6 or 7 more times, this man is slamming me into the water and pulling me out just as quickly. The water around the sides is slashing out like a pool when you do a cannonball, and it is slashing so far over that it is going over the extra extra water gaurds onto the 12 oxen statues below that are common in all temple fonts. No water is supposed to go on those. And for the 30 seconds I'm above water and catching my breath - mind you I have to hold onto his arms and then use my other hand to plug my nose, and he's holding that hand's wrist so I don't have any free hands to wipe my eyes - but between the tears and chlorine I can see everyone in the entire baptistry just staring. Gaping. Watching this man Chinese water torture me in this holy space.
I'm not sure why I didn't or no one in general told him to chill out - I think because he wasn't taking a breath for anyone to interrupt anyways - but either way we all were just so taken aback at his complete lack of baptizing skills.
Now also mind you, this man just got back from a mission too. Did he do this to his converts there? Who knows! All I knew is that I think I saw God, but not just because I was in the temple.
Afterwards, in the dressing room, I talked with the girls who also got baptized by him and we all were dying laughing and still coughing on water.
The whole group gave this boy soooo much crap once we got out of the temple. He honestly didn't realize. He's a very sweet and tender kid otherwise, and he wasn't being aggressive but holy moly it was memorable alright!
We went to the visitor center where we gave him more crap and watched a beautiful show about God & astronomy while we waited for the other half of our group.
I was much more excited about the astronomy video than the group, as I was the only astro major in a sea of business and polisci, but they tried to be supportive of my excitement.
I was supposed to go to a taco party that I had rsvp'd messily to last second but despite the effort to rsvp I needed to go home and collect myself after this temple trip. The humidity with the flogging, watered down my party mood lol
Later in the day, I also turned down an invite to a birthday party of a friend in the ward. I regret that now, but I was super tired. I did go to chick fil a again though and saw a cool street sign!
Oh and as I'm writing this and looking out the window to the alley between the Hatch House and apartment building, I want to mention I think that someone in that apartment building's weiner dog had puppies because I have seen 5 different people walking little baby weiner dogs now. AND LET ME TELL YOU, each one is absolutely adorable.
Sunday, July 14
