last week

My project has been a lot of fun. I have learned a lot of great things and met a lot of great people. Last Friday I cooked a dinner for some people (Kerrin, Katelyn, and Aden). I made salad with homemade italian dressing, lasagna with garlic bread, and brownies. Everything turned out pretty good, everyone enjoyed the food, so overall it was a success. These last few days I have just been working on my final report and presentation, and also looking for a nice card to send to ICASI as a thanks for letting do my project there and for the really nice apron they gave me. These past 4 weeks have been a lot of fun and its been great to read all of your blog posts and see how all of you are doing. Good luck with the rest of your project!

Drive Home

Wednesday, due to a series of unfortunate and unforeseen events, was dedicated to driving home. Beyond escaping the hell on asphalt that is DC-area traffic, the drive was not too terrible. If nothing else, I’ve mastered highway driving, including the useful skills of getting within arms length of the toll booth and setting the cruise-control. The ride also provided a convenient opportunity to map out the remaining week of project. In talking amongst ourselves and with Mr. Breisch we came to an agreement that we would continue with the plan of putting together a guidebook with an Ohio girl’s perspective. Other than that the drive was rather uneventful and we clearly made it home safe and sound ready to unpack an endless sea of bags. 

Forgot About Friday

On Friday we received a dump truck load full of wood chips in the early morning.  Then Mr. Thoams and his advisory came and spread it over the cardboard that we had laid down.  The garden looks great now.  In the afternoon, Stuart had the sweet vision to begin constructing a concrete patio out of reclaimed wall from the greenhouse in the woods.  Pretty creative huh? Today we will finally get around to those tomato stakes and we will raise the beds with some dirt from Coach Wilson's parents that he dug up to plant pumpkins.  In hive news, I checked the bees on Saturday and it was pretty scary.  I reached down into the hive to retrieve the queen cage and I dug her out of it.  Now i'll let them be for a month before I check up on them again.

Have an enjoyable last couple days of project!

Liam

National Portrait Gallery/Chinatown

            Last Monday I had the pleasure of exploring the National Portrait Gallery and Chinatown – two places that will be included in our guidebook. Unfortunately by starting in the early America wing and was inundated in portraits of old white colonists which tired my museum tolerance, but before departing I enjoyed some wonderful impressionist pieces and a fun gallery of celebrities from the 30’s and 40’s. The featured temporary exhibit, a combination of different Asian-American artists was even furthur from the traditional portraits. The mélange of videos (of a woman performing strange tasks endlessly), photos (full body shots of the artist in different outfits), and paintings (of hair), were outside the box were compelling if not relatable or traditionally beautiful.

            The remainder of the day was devoted to Chinatown; the enclave of Asian culture located a few blocks from the museum. Trying to be adventurous we chose Burma, a Burmese restaurant, for lunch. The good news is that one dish was fantastic, and the bad was that other was on the grosser side of bland. Fueled by our exotic lunch we visited every souvenir shop we could find and succeeded in staying on our feet while confronting the terrible smells of each shop. 

Tragedy Strikes Farm

Just when we thought everything was perfect except for the absence of tomato stakes, a raccoon eats all eleven of our chickens. But setbacks are only opportunities for comebacks.  We've lived and learned.

RIP Chick-a-dees

Newsroom tour (last wednesday)

Sorry for the late update everyone. My life is still busy with senior project and other surprise events. Here is an account of last Wednesday.

I had the wonderful opportunity to tour a local news station. My project sponsor took me to Channel 3 Studio, which has a reputation for being one of the nicest looking studios in the nation. The building is situated right on the lake. It is not very tall or imposing as I thought it would be. Nevertheless, it looked spotless. After passing a security desk, I came into a large room filled with people working at computers. They were putting together the 7:00PM show. My project sponsor is well known in the industry, so she was going up to countless people to say hi and to introduce me to old contacts. Once we were done touring the production room, we got to watch a live newscast inside the studio room. The room is actually an elaborate set built into one side of the production space. The pacing felt much slower than watching it on tv. There was no dramatic music and no rapid layovers and cuts. The newscasters said their lines in between yells from a person following the production schedule. I chuckled quietly at one point as I watched some of the crew making strange faces while one of the newscasters was doing a story on some disgusting topic. I will post photos from the event in a little bit.

Jump Roping

 

I’ve always thought I hated jump roping.  Because I’m a runner I never felt the need to find another source of cardio workout.  But here at the Kuk Sul Do academy jump roping is standard fare.  It is not only a common boxing workout but Jason and his wife Kim love to use it in their morning fitness classes.  In these fitness classes they give the option to air rope instead of using an actually jump rope and I always took that out.  But one day Kim explained to Eve and I that jump roping is one of the best all body exercises as well the fact that it compliments plyo drills and isometric holds to make a more effective workout.  In addition it is always an extremely efficient cardio workout as 20 minutes of jump roping equates to approximately an hour of running.  So the next day at the morning fitness class, I used the jump rope when they told me to and found that I actually enjoyed it! I haven’t jump roped since I was a little kid but I found that I still know how and only miss a beat every once in a while.  It is also more manageable than I thought it would be, I didn’t keel over of exhaustion after two minutes and I felt great after.  I would say I am officially a fan of jump roping.