Sunday, June 23, 2024
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The weeks here are going by so fast and are packed with making the most of the summer here. With Juneteenth off, a group of us enjoyed some morning brunch and then checked out the National Portrait Museum. I honestly didn’t think this museum would be as interesting as it turned out to be (I don’t typically care for portraits and I imagine I a lot of people would agree with me on this), but it was super cool seeing the portraits of various historical figures and reading about them. Yes, I am one of those people that likes to stand there and read about everything in a museum, it’s more enjoyable that way in my opinion.
To finish our day off, we held a potluck. I love food so potlucks are a favorite of mine, not to mention I can’t even count how many of these I’ve been to while growing up. Once showing up, I even learned how to prepare dumplings, which I was pretty bad at doing so I was thankful to have other people helping and Maia teaching us. They all turned out really good though and there was so much great food there. Best of all, we were able to surprise Charles for his birthday with an incredible cake made by Kai.
Friday night, a group of us went to the French Embassy for their World Music Day celebration. It was a great night to just hang around on the grass and listen to music. They had so many different performers and covered most genres of music, making for a great concert. Can’t forget that this was at the French Embassy, which alone makes it a memorable experience. The next morning, we went to the National BBQ Competition. As an avid food lover and Midwesterner, I am a big fan of BBQ food, so this was something I found very exciting. They gave out so many free samples and groceries for this event! I came out of it eating over a full meal and a bunch of fruit, rice, and snacks.
The rest of Saturday night was well spent showing physics and astronomy demons to kids at the Astronomy on the Mall event. I was running a demo on gravity wells (kids could throw marbles or other round objects into a fabric that had a weight in the center), which made for a lot of chasing marbles, tennis balls, and golf balls. Interestingly, at the same time and right next to us was one of the Smithsonian after hour parties that was going on that night, so it was a fun time teaching kids over the party music that was 10 feet away from us. It’s been an exciting week, and I can’t wait to see how my experience in D.C. will continue to grow.
Kaden Gammon