Whirlwind Weekend in Review

Hello Again!
It's been so long since I've posted that I'm afraid I might have to spare some of the details of the last few days. I can't let myself get behind on this!

Late last week, as class finished up and everyone started making plans for the weekend, I decided to head over the the Museum of Natural History and poke around for a while. I arrived fairly early on Friday morning, and already, there were crowds of school children and tourists. The lobby was huge with vaulted marble ceilings and a gigantic T-Rex stood threateningly above our heads. I got in line for tickets, as the museum is one of the few in the city that is not free for Columbia students (the nerve!). After purchasing my ticket, I decided to take the free highlights tour led by a museum volunteer. I joined the group almost immediately, and realized at once that I was the only semi-New York resident. People had come from all over the see the sights, the farthest being from Tokyo and Australia (I can't imagine how long that flight must have been). We departed and arrived first at the museum's dinosaur exhibit. Huge fossil dinos loomed over the crowd including another T-Rex, and many flying creatures which the tour guide specifically called "prehistoric birds" because apparently they are not considered actual dinosaurs. The tour group squished into corners throughout the tour to avoid blocking traffic, and I began to get annoyed with some of the men in the group. What is it about men that compel them to push to the front of every gathering? Aren't they tall enough to see from the back? Of course they are, but they MUST fight for the best view. Our tour guide eventually had to ask the men to move to the back as all the women craned our necks to see around them. I guess that's why businessmen are much more likely to survive plane crashes and other disasters--they push to the front! Of course, all of the men reading this are exceptions to this rule....
After this exhibit, we saw the hall of human origins where models of prehistoric humans stood about five feet tall, and the hall of biodiversity filled with frighteningly lifelike models of all sorts of animals hung from the walls. Overall, the museum was an anthropologists dream, and I spent a good four hours looking around at everything.

After my museum jaunt, I crossed the street to central park, where I walked around the lake and watched people paddling small boats across the water. The lake was beautiful surrounded by the greenery of the park with the city in the background. Central Park is the most amazing place--it's an oasis in the middle of this thriving, hectic, and chaotic city--and it's almost a vacation spot all on its own. Soon, Valerie called and invited me to meet her on 34th to do some shopping. She said she had to get "club clothes," which I found out later meant getting skirts and dresses that barely covered her, and looked as if they were struggling against all odds to hold-in her rear (I sound so old-fashioned). And then I saw a side of Valerie, that I hadn't expected, and did not like.

Valerie cursed in French as we sped around strolling tourists, "These fat Americans can hardly walk, and they take up half the street!", she yelled as a few passers-by gawked at her; appalled. She sprang from store to store, leaving paths of clothes she did not want in a wake behind her, piling my hands full of things to try-on, and fighting with almost every salesperson we came in contact with. At one point, a manager asked her not to try on dresses over her clothes, and she blatantly challenged him to remove her from the store. "I'm not going to wait in that line for the dressing room," she spat, "it will take hours"! At this point, I became so embarrassed to even be associated with her, that I realized I would be having much more fun by myself (the very thing I had been bemoaning this whole week). Around 6:30pm I reminded Valerie that we needed to get to the Times Square ticket office where we had agreed to get tickets to a show for the evening. Just then, her cell rang. "Oui, je pense que....Oui, je peux aller," she spoke quickly, and I could only pick out parts of her conversation, but it sounded as if I was about to get ditched. "I'm going to the Hamptons this weekend!" she announced when she hung up. She told me of the lavish home her friend had rented and how she could eat and drink whatever she wanted and they would pay for the whole weekend. And then she left me there, on the street alone, with no one to see a show with. I ran over to the ticket booth anyhow, but I was too late to get tickets. At that moment, I decided I would leave the city too. I called my friend Sarah from home who goes to George Washington in DC, and asked if I could come visit.

Sarah told me about a bus service that runs round-trip from New York's Chinatown to DC's. The ticket only cost $35, and I left my dorm around 6am the next morning. The cab drove me into Chinatown, but it felt as if I had just stepped off a plane IN China. Dead pigs were being loaded off trucks and hung in the windows of meat shops, huge moving boxes labeled "broccoli" and "green onions" passed by, and I remember thinking that they didn't look too fresh. The street was already packed with Chinese people, and as I turned the corner, six huge buses were parked in front of me with no signs as to which one was headed for DC. Small Chinese men ushered me around, waved me down the street, and shook their heads at my requests for information, and I finally got on the bus where most people were asking, "DC? Is this the bus to DC?" Turns out I was right, and four hours later, Sarah picked me up at the bus station in DC's Chinatown. This one was very different--filled with American businesses that simply had Chinese subtext underneath their English names.
We dropped our things at Sarah's sorority and headed out to the Museum of the American Indian, where Sarah had heard great food was to be had. She was right. The food court was separated by American Indian regions, and the food was so authentic. I had salmon from the Northwest region, and a potato leek salad from the Southwest. Many visitors were eating chicken strips and hamburgers from the "Great Plains" (a.k.a. reservation).

On our way home, we passed the Capitol building where a rally was getting started. As we got closer we realized that it was a rally for Ron Paul, a libertarian candidate whose campaign was recently suspended. The gathering held probably one of the most eclectic (that's a polite way of saying WEIRD) group of people I have ever seen in one place. There were hippies, bikers, moms with their kids, young people, old people, blacks, whites and Asians, etc. Some held signs saying "Ron Paul--the Revolution". Another had a sign that read, "Down with the Queen!" and another read, "Fall Babylon Fall". One man held a sign saying "Back the Unholy Dollar with Gold," and another man ran around yelling "9/11 was an inside job!" Sarah and I were confused to say the least. Then Ron Paul actually got up to speak, and it became clear that Sarah and I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently he's for a strict interpretation of the Constitution and very little government involvement in personal affairs, but it seems hypocritical to me. On the one hand, he's pro-gun, but he's anti-war. I don't know...it was interesting to say the least.

Sarah and I had a great time for the rest of the weekend hanging out with her friends and walking around the city. DC is a very interesting place. On the one hand, it's filled with the promise of future progress, but on the other hand, it's torn apart by crime and poverty. Sarah and and I walked the six mile monument loop at night on my last evening in DC. We left her room around 10:30pm and went straight to the white house. It was so surreal seeing it in person. It's almost like a fictional place to me. I hear about it, and I know that it exists, but seeing it in person is so unreal. From there, we walked to the Washington Monument, and then to the Jefferson Memorial. Sarah was really moved by the Jefferson, and the quotes from him on the wall were really thought-provoking. Going at night was such an amazing experience. The monuments and memorials were almost deserted except for a few guards, and standing in each place in near silence was incredible. It felt as if we were seeing them the way they were meant to be seen. From the Jefferson, we headed over to the Lincoln Memorial, and even from far away, we could see the massive white statue of Lincoln peering through the columns out onto the city. As we approached the memorial, it began to rain, and just as we made it up the steps, the sky opened up and the rain poured down, smacking against the marble steps. The silence inside the monument was broken by the patter of the rain outside, but it added a drama to the scene that was almost magical. As I stood and looked up at Lincoln, and read his famous address, I felt so small. I was reminded of the last time I had stood in that spot almost twelve years ago.

Mom and I had visited the monuments on a trip to DC for spring break when I was seven or eight. She tells the story today, and she remembers me standing in front of the statue with my mouth open for minutes. I had just learned about Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. in school, and I was struck by the power of the site even as a child. I remember that day. I remember having such respect for my country--such respect for those who came before me and had the vision and imagination to create a free nation like the U.S. I remember being truly proud and fortunate to be American.

The experience I had this weekend was very different, but very much the same in some ways. I stood there, twelve years older, in that same space with a similar sense of awe and respect. I realized that this place had been there all those years, even though I had not re-visited. It stands there everyday, frequented by thousands of people every year. As the rain poured outside, and Lincoln's words filled my head and my heart, I caught a glimpse of that little girl--free of cynicism, of distrust and concern--and filled with admiration and hope.



There's more to this story, but for now, I'll stop.


And so another year begins....