Art in Silver Spring

Helllooo! It is me and I'm back with another blog post! This metro journey, we went to downtown Silver Spring to look at art. Not art in a museum, but art on the street that you can easily see right outside! I will be talking about these places out of order, due to my terrible memory, and the fact that the end of this journey was so terrible for me, I forgot most of what happened in the beginning. 

So first up is a cafe, named after an African goat herder who in fact, discovered the coffee bean. This place has a 4.5 out of 5 stars on Yelp! Kaldi's Coffee Bar was extremely nice. Comfortable seating, yummy croissants, spacious and just a nice feel. I would recommend it. There's free Wi-Fi for those who need a place to work.

Next are the Sisyphus, steel orbs. Created by Wendy Ross, this sculpture is based on the Greek mythology story of King Sisyphus, son of Egyptian king, Aeolus, Sisyphus thought he was just as clever as Zeus, which made Zeus pretty unhappy. To punish him for being prideful and deceitful, Zeus made Sisyphus made him roll a huge boulder up a steep hill. This doesn't seem so awful if he only had to do it once, but Zeus enchanted the boulder, causing it to roll down the hill away from Sisyphus right before reaching the top. So King Sisyphus spent eternity constantly rolling the boulder up the hill in frustration. 

Next up is "Fear the Turtle: Wisdom of Einstein." A sculpture created by Kali Cornelius, this is a random sculpture of a standing turtle painted like a sky of fluffy clouds with Einstein quotes all over it. 

The Botero Ballerinas are a stainless steel sculpture that represents life and community. Created by Barton Rubenstein, the Botero Ballerinas move in the wind, changing light patterns. This was awesome!

This next mural tells the stories of three refugees living in Maryland. The Global Refugee Muralis awesome because the mural is based on actual interviews with the refugees. 

"The first section of the mural tells the story of Georges, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who was once the mayor of his city.  When a violent rebel group attacked his region, he took his family and escaped to a refugee camp in Kenya, and eventually came to the US.  The second section shows the story of Mai, a refugee from Burma.  When the repressive government discovered that she had visited a Christian church group in the US, she and her family were persecuted and she was unable to return to her country.  The third refugee, a woman from the south of Iraq who wishes to remain anonymous, explained how her brother, a young and educated man with democratic ideals, was murdered by a local fundamentalist militia group.  She was targeted by the group as well, and escaped and came to the US."

 

Right next to this (in the picture!) is Kefa Cafe, An organic, Ethiopian coffee shop. Host of Space 7:10 (an organic art-space). 

This next place is home to the original Silver Spring. Acorn Park, the final remains of Francis Preston Blair's estate called "Silver Spring." It was named after close mica-speckled spring he found in 1840. 


The Hand of NOAA was created by Ray Kaksey, who worked with NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to create a sculpture that would "reflect their vision." What came out of this was a bronze hand, releasing seagulls into the air.



This next sculpture is named after a beloved homeless man who "lived" in Silver Spring for 25 years. The man, Norman Lane, looked around florist shops and funeral homes, in search of flowers. The sculpture is called "The Mayor" (his nickname). 



Next we saw The Arc. Reminiscent of formation of rocks in an Arizona desert, Thom Ashcroft and David Chung created this sculpture. 


We have the East/West Beacon. The East/West Beacon stands 35 feet high, freestanding. Created by artist Ray King, this sculpture is constructed of stainless steel holographic glass, with a film laminated over it, giving it that iridescent glow. 

 


The next stop was this super cool, new library. The Silver Spring Library was huge.


Lastly, (FINALLY!) we have a Narcissus Quaglilata (that was hard to spell) painting.  A mural, actually. 


I am almost certain I forgot some things and it was completely out of order but the end of the journey was so terrible I forgot what else happened (I got lost for an hour and a half and got a huge nosebleed in the middle of the street whilst being lost).

I hope you have a nice week and I also hope that you come back next time!

Zoo trip!

Hello readers! I am here with another journey this week!

This week we went to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. The day started off cold. I don't normally get very cold but I was freezing. I bare;y even talked to anyone because I was focused on trying to walk in such cold. It was a pretty miserable hour and a half but it warmed up, plus Sil gave me her coat (she wasn't cold anymore) and it helped me warm up. First we saw the tigers in lions in their habitats. Tigers personally are my favorite big cat. They're so beautiful. 

Next up we headed to the Amazonia exhibit! The Amazonia exhibit was full of animals from above the Amazon waters and some below! Above the waters we have giant arapaima, pacu, red-tailed catfish, and piranhas swim in shallow water, and poison arrow frogs, titi monkeys, and tanagers . The Amazonia exhibit is the biggest exhibit in the zoo. They also stated on their website that it is the most complex exhibit they have built as well.
Next up we went to see the seals! They were more entertaining than I thought they would be. 

Next we went to see some birds. I don't remember very much of this part of the journey (so sorry!). 

Next was lunch time. We found an area with benches and tables to eat. I ate a sandwich and some pretzels I packed from home. I was still hungry after but there's no way to change that now.  The next thing we saw was...elephants? I'm blanking so much on this journey and I have no clue why! 

Next up were the pandas! I love pandas. 

 

After this we went to a couple of other exhibits to see other animals, like naked mole rats. We also went to a sloth bear information demo thing. It was cool. Sloth bears are actually not related to sloths. They aren't slow either. They call them sloth bears because they look a bit like sloths and they like to hang in the same areas as sloths. 

After the zoo we had to take an unpleasantly long walk to Peirce Mill, a corn, wheat, and rye mill, built by Isaac Peirce in 1829. 

We were here for a very short time (it was closing). This was unfortunate because after what felt like a very long day of walking, there was even more. I am not a fan of walking, so this was terrible. I was so beat once we got to the metro station. 

Well that's all for today. I don't know why I was blanking so much on the things that happened. Maybe some event there distracted me from the rest. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed! :D

Cherry blossoms!

Hello all! It's Kendra and I'm back with another blog post! This journey was tons of fun. It was super nice out, so many beautiful cherry blossoms, and really good food!

The journey started off at the Smithsonian metro station. We waited for a few of our classmates and then we were on our way. 
The first place we went to was the Tidal Basin. We went here to see the Japanese Cherry Blossom trees. Originating from Japan, the Tokyo mayor gifted them to America. He gifted them because of the growing friendship between Japan and the US that he wanted to strengthen...

Things definitely changed after that, but now we have festivals (the National Cherry Blossom Festival, The National Kite Festival) and parades celebrating the blooming of the trees. 

The blossoms were so beautiful and I got so many awesome pictures (like the one above)!

Next up was a trip to Adams Morgan, a culturally diverse neighborhood in DC with lots of restaurants, clubs and bars, making it a great nightlife spot. The name Adams Morgan comes from the names of two once segregated schools, the all-black Thomas P. Morgan Elementary School and the all-white John Quincy Adams Elementary School. The schools both desegregated in 1955 due to Bolling v. Sharpe Supreme Court ruling in 1954. John Quincy Adams Elementary is still functioning, while the older thomas P. Morgan Elementary isn't anymore. 

John Quincy Adams Elementary^. 

Next was Jumbo Slice Pizza! I loooved the pizza there! It was really good and a very good price for such a big slice of pizza.

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Lastly, we attempted to interview different countries. Sadly, none of them seemed very interested and were busy at the time. 

In all, it was an awesome journey! I hope you come back to read again!

Acts of kindness in DC!

Hello everyone! Kendra here with another blog post! So this week required a lot of planning and a lot of improvising as well. It required helping people, talking to people, and a lot of discussing the next move. 

So the goal was for everyone to prepare 3 lunches to give out to people who needed them. We ended up all bringing different components to the lunches and then putting them together. Someone even asked for a lunch while we were making them! This took a while, but it worked out. I didn't expect to give out as many as we did. In the end, all of them were gone! I was so surprised that so many people needed lunches. It's pretty sad. 

Homelessness is a huge problem in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. in general. In 2013, there were roughly 528,424 homeless people in the U.S. overall. That's a big number. That means that the population of homeless people in America is probably very close to the population of Wyoming now. That's an entire state. That's really sad. 

We started off at Eastern Market. Only a few people went in for the interviews. Some stayed out to give out lunches. Easter market was built by a German man named Adolf Cluss. He designed other things too. Like the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building. In the early 20th century, Capitol Hill's population grew. This caused for new additions to be made to Eastern Market. It became the first unofficial town center. In 2007 the market was damaged horribly by a fire. To this day, they still don't know the cause of the fire. Easter Market is a historic building in DC and it's the only one whose purpose has stayed the same. It's been operating since 1873.

















If you want fresh farm food, events, arts and crafts, etc., then you might want to check this place out.

Next up was the U.S. Postal Museum. Me and the one other girl in class, Sil, didn't go into this place. Somehow the lunches got squished and all the bags were ripped. We spent the entire time of the boys being in the museum re-organizing the lunches. We also came across a rude guy. He was completely ungrateful and didn't even thank us for the lunch. I'm not even sure if he really needed one.


Next up was Capitol Hill Bookstore. This isn't like any bookstore. This is used book bookstore. There are first edition books and rare books too. If you're claustrophobic, this probably really isn't the place for you. But there were a lot of cool books.

Lastly we had a performance. We probably could've planned this out better, considering we got no money. Sil brought her poi with her, and she was good, but no one was really around at that time of day, we had no speaker for music, and it wasn't very obvious that it was a performance.

In the end, we got rid of all of the lunches and it felt great! It felt amazing to help so many people that needed it.

MJ #8

Hello, everyone and welcome back to Kendra's Great DC Adventures! This week was week I'll be telling about our trip to Chinatown in D.C.! First I'll tell a little bit about Chinatown! Now this is journey #8 but this is my 7th journey.

Chinatown is a small neighborhood in Washington, DC. It has many Chinese businesses and restaurants as well as other Asian businesses as well. It's historic and is known for the Chinese New Year festival and parade that happens every year.

It's also known for the Friendship Arch, a traditional Chinese gate built by a local artifact (Alfred H. Lui). It’s worth 1 million dollars. The arch includes 272 painted dragons, 7000 tiles and 7, 60 foot high roofs.

The first place we went to on this journey was the National Building Museum. We went to one of the only not crowded exhibits, PLAY WORK BUILD. 

This exhibit was fun, but I'm not great at this engineering thing. It was cool, though. We stayed here for a while and built things, then had to go to our next stop, 

IT'SUGAR!

This place had so much awesome candy! I don't like a lot of different candies, but I love chocolate and they had A LOT of it. I bought some fin sized Reese's cups. 

It was kind of expensive for the small amount of candy I bought, almost 4 dollars, but it was worth it.

Next up was lunch! I started off excited for lunch, but got disappointed once we went to McDonald's. I got over it, though. After I finished some nuggets, and everyone else finished too, we headed to Ford Theater. We bought tickets and saw a few exhibits. It was cool.

" On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln visited Ford’s for his twelfth time for a performance of Our American Cousin. At this performance, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth; he died the next morning in the Petersen House, a boarding house located across the street. Ford’s Theatre remained closed for more than 100 years." - click here.

Yes, this is in fact the actual theater that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in, that opened back up in 1968. Also, that place in the quote, the Peterson House, yeah we went there too! It was small and kind of sad to see the bedroom where he died. 

Lastly was  this small Chinese trading company. It had plenty of cool things to buy. I thought it was nice. 

Now I know this was pretty short, but that's all that happened! It was still really fun. Thanks for reading! :D

Journey #7!

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I've made a blog post but I'm back!

This journey was accompanied by bad weather, like a few others, but it was fun nonetheless. This journey was filled with 2 museums (one by accident), a gallery, and a trip to Chick-Fil-A.

The day began at 7:22am for me. It took about 10 minutes to actually get up. I got ready and packed everything I would need for the day. I got to the Metro station a bit after the time I was supposed to, yet I still got there 25 minutes early. I came with 2 other people and we waited for a while for everyone. Turns out they were on the opposite side of the exit and they'd been there all along.
After a bit more waiting, we headed to our first destination. Well. It wasn't where we were supposed to go but it was still fun. We were instructed to go to the National history museum. We went to the Natural history museum by mistake. I got a bunch of pictures anyway.

After this accidental trip, we were off to the place we were actually supposed to be at. The National Museum of American History, a museum that collects different sentiments and artifacts of US history, with exhibits about different important time periods. There were really cool things, like a     C-3PO and Dorothy's ruby slippers. We also saw this awesome dollhouse created by Faith Bradford. There's even a backstory to the doll family living in it. The dollhouse is the home of Mr.Peter Doll and his wife Mrs. Doll. They have 10 children. 2 are out of town, visiting their grandparents.They also have 20 pets and 5 servants. The house has 23 rooms.

Next we were off to Renwick Gallery. This place had my favorite part of the journey in it. It had beautiful art exhibits. Like this index card forest.

It starts at the top, looking like snow on a mountain, then transitions to a gear look near the bottom. This took months for the artist, Tara Donovan to make, and you can't touch the art, our tour guide said the index card corners are sharp and pointy. 

There was a stick-weaving exhibit by Patrick Dougherty. It was nice also.

Now for my personal favorite part of the day. There were steps leading upstairs to another exhibit. We all went up and saw a bunch of people lying down. Then we saw why.

This beautiful masterpiece, created by Janet Echelman was definitely my favorite 30 minutes of the day. We layed on the floor and watched as it changed colors before our eyes. 

Through all of this, we noticed that we hadn't eaten food yet. A walk, metro stop, and another walk away, was Chick-Fil-A. I ordered some nuggets and fries. The woman asked for my name. I very clearly said "Kendra," but when my order was done, the woman called "Kendall" -_-. It was good food though. 

After a looooooooooooong bus ride, we got to our last destination, Ms. Anna's. Time for a meeting. 

All in all the day was good, other than the weather. The meeting was fun, and the museums were awesome. Can't wait for the next one!