ntcwashington-blog

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Protest and baseball ⚾️

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4/10 - 4/17

Hello, it’s me, back in action, by popular demand (or just ppl complaining that I don’t ever post anything) IM SORRY

Anyways, I shall do my best to keep up with what happened during these weeks that I missed, but even I am starting to forget what I’ve been up to so I’ll let some of the photos speak for themselves. During this week I attended a Nationals baseball game, celebrated Easter at a non-Catholic church (it was an honest mistake; who knew the National Cathedral wasn’t Catholic???) And also was witness to several protests (tax reform and such). I don’t have a ton of photos from this week because I am assuming it was a very busy one with work! Let’s continue... :)

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1.Steven, Katherine, me 2. Me and Julia doing god knows what 3.4. Basilica 5. Columbia Heights 6. Water 7. Stickers 8. &pizza

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4/9 - 4/10

Just about caught up now!

So Saturday I ended up going to Georgetown with my gal pals and roommate (Katherine) & friends, Allyson, Irene and Julia. We walked around there and had lunch there and went shopping in the areas around it. (I bought a skirt whippeeee) It was nicer that day and we had dresses on but for some odd reason all of us forgot to take a photo??? So I have like one pic, but it’s fine. We all went out again that night together so that was fun too :) and got in an Uber that was rear-ended! That was a fun like hour long detour 😅

Sunday, (today?, kinda, lol) I went to the Basilica of the national shrine of the immaculate conception for Palm Sunday with Wa’el and by golly was it beautiful. I really only went in and out for mass because they were cranking out services because of the Holiday, but I will certainly be back to just view it in it’s glory. Went out for brunch afterwards with other friends, went on a walk around the neighborhood and tried a chain pizza place here called &pizza. It’s REALLY good. Nothing extra special this weekend. Next weekend is Easter and a baseball game, so looking forward to more of that! TTYL and love all of you that actually view this thingy. <3 

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Buildings, monuments, selfies and a sign of peace that I could read in Spanish and Wa'el could read in Arabic.

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4/7

Friday! 

I went and visited the lovely town of Alexandria, Virginia with one of my best friends here, Wa’el (only lucky folks who get Fridays off!!). It takes quite a while to get there (about 45 minutes by metro) but is totally worth it because it’s got some of the only metro tracks that are not underground so you can look out the window a bit on your way there. 

This particular day was BY FAR the coldest day I have ever experienced in a long while and had some of the strongest winds that I have ever had to deal with. We went to lunch here, walked around some of the shops and the port area, visited Old Town, a famous church, got a Starbs, the usual. It was fun, but man was it cold. 10/10 would recommend visiting this beautiful place on a warm day. Lot’s of shopping here too!

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Hirshhorn museum pics, (by the way each color sticker is put on by someone visiting at the museum!) and then my favorite lunch that I bring to work = pork buns 😋

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4/3-4/6

ALRIGHTAYYYYY so I am back by popular demand and also because I know that if I do not keep up with this, I will forget everything, so here I am!

Monday through Thursday of last week I went to work and did some pretty spectacular stuff. Tomorrow, (Monday 4/11) will be my last work day on the Barbara Dane album before it goes to editing, and then I will move on to my next project with them! I have also been recruited to do some marketing pieces for the celebration of Ella and reviewing other outside designers work for the department. 

During this week, my computer also stopped working at work one day and so I got to leave early and visit the Hirchhorn Museum. Tickets to the museum are sold out pretty much at the beginning of every week in the first hour, so it’s pretty rad that I just get to show up with my Smithsonian badge and walk right into any museum at any time. 

Right now the Yayoi Kusama “Infinity Mirrors” exhibit is displaying there and lemme tell you that is something else. To walk into one of the mirror displays, (There’s 3-4?), you have to wait in line for about 20-30 minutes per each one and then you get a timed 20 second interval to walk in and see it. This artist truly has some fascinating and beautiful work, but because of the length of time it takes to see just one thing, I only got to see one mirror room and one regular room in about an hour and a half time. Would definitely recommend seeing this exhibit and I plan on stopping by in the future to see the rest of the rooms before this exhibit leaves!

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4/2/17

1. Me and Katherine 2. Jorge, Tara, Wa'el and me 3.4.5. Views near the Jefferson memorial 6. MLK memorial

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4/1/17

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I MUST take some time to explain these photos before I go.

Yesterday, a visiting ethnomusicologist from the University of Maryland took a tour of the Folkways Collections and Archives. My advisor told me I could go along with her because as much as I am free to roam my floor, the archival stuff is kinda off limits. This ethnomusicologist was specifically here to study music from Lebanon, but they showed her pretty much everything we had to offer. In the collections room, there are thousands and thousands of tapes, LP, CDs, letters, paintings, designs, etc. all reflecting the work of the department. All of the original work here is not at the Library of Congress, so it is very important that everything is handled well, the room remain at a certain temperature, etc. The second picture, where someone is holding up protective coverings of a drawing, is an original Woody Guthrie sketch that he used for his album artwork. Hopefully I will get to work a little more in this department! There is no online archival file of a photo in which I am in need of for one of my LPs, so I will get the opportunity to search for a photo and scan it for my project. Super cool!

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3/31 11AM

Hiya folks!

Well yesterday was pretty cool, but also really long which is why I am so glad that I do not have my internship today. I worked from 9-4 yesterday and then had my class from 6:30-9 on Washington Media last night. My professor is Steve Scully from CSPAN and let’s just say he literally knows everything about politics and I now realize I know nothing. So I will be spending some time this weekend figuring out some things!

I have finished the disc label and the disc inputs for my first album at work, and I will officially be receiving the redesign credit on that album! Which is great news for me to be “published”! (I think that’s more of an English majors dream, but that sounds cool!)

After class last night me and my group of like 15 homies went out to a place called The Front Page and then to The Café Citron (all of my friends are of Spanish decent lol) and enjoyed ourselves! Tonight they are wanting to go to a place called Bravo, Bravo. Which I may or may not go idk, the latin music is a little intense sometimes, but I did burn over 2000 calories yesterday because of it! (Or so my fitbit says)

But since it is my day off and it is a little rainy, I thought why not go explore indoors! In my adventures by myself, I try to visit things I think other people would not want to see with me. (Although everyone wants to see that neon USA map at the American Art museum now) So today I am headed off to the Smithsonian Postal Museum and the National Guard Memorial Museum. Both are free and next door to each other, and I have not been to either one before so this will be new! Adios for now. 

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3/30 12AM

Today I was an early riser for no apparent reason and was able to be at my internship with a Starbucks in hand by 8:30AM lol. 

My internship today mostly included learning about the major archival servers and sites that the Smithsonian has (and trust me this is not an easy nor fast task) Some of the servers have SO much information that it takes forever to find the thing you’re looking for. Anyways, there is the potential for 9 LPs to be released this year and I am beginning to do all the graphical and archival research behind them. It’s fairly simple because it is all categorized, but we have to transfer them from the massive archives to our “little” department servers and have them labeled and filed correctly so that we now understand them. 

After this for a couple hours, I switched and began the redesign for Barbara Dane’s album and have already completed and have the disc label done. (everyone could not believe how fast I was done - i.e. no one knows how to do the slightest bit of Adobe/design work and is just amazed at anything. But I felt really good about it all and they let me off at 4:30 due to me being done. 

I took advantage of this and decided to take a different Metro line into Chinatown and find the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I spent a good hour in here walking around and looking at the different works of art. Two things stood out to me the most: 1. Modern art is just an excuse to try to be as edgy as possible 2. American artists are really not famous as I think the only real names that I previously knew were Andy Warhol and Mary Cassatt (who lived a lot in Europe btw). Some of it was interesting however, there was a room where there was a portrait of every president and then a few short phrases/words that described the term of that president. I would maybe visit this place again, but there are too many other better things to see (in my personal opinion) Alas, it was free and one of the few museums open after 5pm on a weekday, more to come I hope!

After the museum I did a little shopping around the Chinatown area which is actually a really rough area of DC. I was out of there while the sun was still fully in the sky and there was still definitely a different vibe. There’s lots of homeless and random folks in D.C., but here is where it looks like the thugs come out at night, and the homeless were already belligerently yelling at strangers. 

I got out of there and headed back towards my area (which is completely surrounded by embassies and seems very safe) and decided to try a big chain restaurant in DC called Shake Shack. I got their basic burger and a mint shake and was honestly not that impressed with the burger, but would return for another frothy delight :)

More to come as always! 

P.S. I FINALLY have wi-fi on my phone and can start facetiming :)

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In particular

If you are really interested in knowing what I am doing, one of my main projects will be redesigning this CD cover to be an LP, which unfortunately we do not have any of this on file. We are also producing this on a leather bound slip instead of a cardboard slip, so the material will be very dense and it has been a challenge to find a company to produce this. I have to digitally scan and recreate the photos, font and coloring, creating a sleeve for the LP, a label to be on the actual disk and recreate the liner notes which has many type-os/grammatical issues and was typed on an actual typewriter and design the packaging for all of this. Meanwhile, updating the name of the record company, the archival number, the logo etc. 

One of many projects coming down the pipe!

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I got a Cherry Blossom Festival Collectors Pin (for $5!), my badge for Smithy & the orange monsters house @ night

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3/28 10:30PM

Today was my first day at the Smithsonian!

It was everything and more than what I expected. I started at 10 am, which means I woke up at 8 and was out the door by 9, just in case the metro and such was not up to the speeds that I wanted it to be. But, I actually ended up making it to work a half hour early (walking to the metro, switching trains and getting to my work only takes 30 minutes!). So, of course I got a Starbucks, which happens to be in my building :)

I mostly spent time with the internship coordinator and then my two advisors for the internship, Mary and Fred. Mary is the production manager of the department and knows everything and anything as she’s been there for over 20 years. Fred is less than a year old at the Smithsonian, and this is his first time being a supervisor for an intern, but he’s also a friendly guy to work with and has gnomes on his socks. 

Mostly today I got a tour of the floor, which is extremely decorative and filled with statues, paintings, relics, etc. from all over the world, since we are the cultural departments. Afterwards I watched an amazing one hour video on the history of the department and attended my first production meeting with the team. There will certainly be a lot this quarter, but I am more than willing to work hard and do some amazing work for this team! I can tell I am going to love it already!

After work, I finally ate a meal in my apt and not outside and then took a night stroll to the White House and back to get some more steps in. (Which by the way is an 8-10 minute walk :))

P.S. If you have any free time, look up Barbara Dane and the Chamber Brothers music. I will specifically be spending a lot of time recreating their LP this quarter!