Nearly There!

Hi friends!! I'm doing much better this week so hopefully this will be a little less emo.

This semester was (is? I'm still not done with my 40-page paper, so is) super hard and it definitely was not my favorite of my time at Smith so far. But I also think it's been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done.

I'm super burnt out right now but now that I'm a few days removed from it (passed in my badge on Thursday!), I'm able to already get a little nostalgic. I don't think I made the most of my time here but I did make some things of it that I'm pretty happy with, and it was a really cool experience no matter what. And to be honest, even though DC kind of bums me out on the whole, there is a whole lot of culture, art, and history here that I feel super lucky to have lived around for these past 3 months. I got to see some really cool movies, events, and concerts and take in a ton of art. Plus some super cool stuff has been happening in the museum profession recently (especially at the Smithsonian) so it's definitely a cool time to be getting into this work (ok maybe, I still don't know if I want to do this forever but...maybe I could see myself doing something connected to it? Yeah, that sounds right)

The carousel is free for employees and we had to get something out of our unpaid internships

Anyway, on Thursday, after work ended, Kira, Laura, and I went to Zoo Lights at the National Zoo! It was super pretty and the light displays were way more elaborate than I was expecting. They had some cool chameleons I was a fan of.

Zoo lights!

Then on Friday, we had a dinner with a bunch of the other students from my program at this Korean restaurant. To be honest, I think this group of students are my favorite group of classmates I've ever had. They're all really smart and nice. Usually I feel overwhelmed in my Smith classes because I feel like all the other students are a lot smarter than me so I lose all my confidence, but with these folk, I just felt excited to hear what they had to say. Honestly, I learned more in this semester than I think I have in any of my other Smith classes.

The group I ate lunch with everyday (swedish chef was usually too busy to join us tho) our group selfie skills need some work

Then Saturday, I went to a dinner party in Maryland with my friend Laura. The party was thrown by a woman who's a friend of Laura's mom from college. Apparently when they were in college, they used to have these Charles Dickens-themed parties every year, so the theme of the party was The Christmas Carol. The only person I knew there was Laura and I think the only people she knew were this woman and her daughter, but it ended up being pretty fun.

All the guests pretty much were older Jewish people (I think they all met at the same congregation) and some people were in costume (I ended up becoming Jacob Marley after the host gave me a chain to wear and...a red fedora for some reason?) I wish I had pictures it was a wild time. It was, like, a five-course meal with readings from A Christmas Carol in between (obviously, I read the part where Jacob Marley warns Scrooge about the ghosts). They also made a really pretty Buche de Noel. And then after the dinner, we played "traditional" Dickens games including one where we passed a toy hedgehog to each other behind our backs.

It was definitely one of the more interesting and also more fun evenings I've had in a while.

Anyway, I cannot wait to be home with nothing to do except watch Christmas movies and sleep. My dad just got here today and I'm trying to finish this 40-page paper but so far it is not happening...wish me luck.