Today was a long, busy day, but quite adventurous for me. I only went to one class of the conference, but for good reason. The classes today were in 3 hour blocks with an hour and a half lunch in between. I went to the AM class and absolutely loved it! It may be my favorite class of the conference, but it's only my first one! It was about open-ended art activities and there were so many great ideas, it was a little overwhelming. It was great to see what can be done with simple materials like paper and tape or foil and a pipe cleaner.
Lunch time was absolutely crazy! Everyone was looking for someplace to eat and the lines were really long. It still plains me to see the prices of food, so standing in a long line for food at a ridiculous price wasn't very appealing to me. So, we decided to head off to the holocaust museum hoping there would be food near there. Nope. Good thing I was beyond the point of hunger pains and somehow managed to go through the whole museum without much complaint. That didn't stop me from checking out Yelp while I was in there waiting for my coworker to look at stuff. Yelp is my best friend here. Seriously. I can look up the cheapest places to eat that have good reviews, which was super helpful. I found a bar and grill called the bottom line to eat at. I almost took a picture of my food but it was gone before I got the chance. ;) It was heaven on a plate, which is ironic because I was in a bar. That was the first bar I've been to in my life. I thought it was super ironic that I changed my clothes there to go to the temple from there.
The holocaust museum wasn't quite the experience I expected based on what people told me about it, but it was really interesting. I'm currently reading the book called The Book Thief which takes place in Germany at that time, so it was kind of cool to see the connections with that. I had several "wow" experiences on this trip so far and a few of them happened in this museum. First was seeing a tower of pictures of Jews taken by a Jewish couple that went up into a Skylight. The museum was somewhat dark, so approaching this really hit me. To think that most, if not all, of those in the pictures died is heartbreaking. Then there were the shoes. On another floor, there were hundreds of pairs of shoes of the actual holocaust victims. You could smell them and it only added to the sickening feeling I had inside of me regarding all that I was learning about the holocaust. Another wow moment was hearing and warning the holocaust survivors tell their stories. It really made it come alive. The purpose of the museum is to make people think and have a desire to prevent something like the holocaust happening again. As unlikely as it seems, if you really think about it, things similar are happening today, except only in different ways. It's good to be aware and do what we can to not let it happen anymore.
From dinner at the bar, I hailed my very first taxi on my own. It costs a lot to go across town in a taxi, especially during rush hour, but I'd rather do that than drive in that craziness. If I had cash, it would have been cheaper because the driver was nice and said I could pay him less, but I don't have cash on me (yet). Better late than never. Then I had my first experience going on he metro. Kind of another wow experience, but I know that if any of you saw me you would have laughed. I get so scared/nervous when I do things like that for the first time by myself. I am not a city girl and today that was obvious. I barely made it onto the metro I wanted. What I didn't know was that another one would come in 2 minutes and that it would arrive at my desired destination a lot faster than I thought it would. So, I ended up stressing out for no reason, as usual. On the bright side, I got to talk to my mom on the phone for a little bit while I waited for an hour for the temple shuttle to come. I did some family name sealing, which didn't take long, so I had time to look around the temple and have yet nobler wow experience. It is one of the most beautiful temples I've ever seen. It's huge and on the inside made me think of the White House or something, but 10 times better. When I went outside, it as only. Few minutes before someone got dropped off by the shuttle so I didn't get a great picture of the temple, but I got some closer up. I'm glad I went back when I did because I decided to get off at Union Station. It is really big and has awesome architecture. It was dark so it was a little creepy to be out there by myself, probably not safe either. I took lots of pictures then did my best to quickly walk back to my hotel without getting mugged or something.
Alright, time for bed for me.
Before I forget to mention it, pretty much ant government building I enter I feel like I'm at the airport because I gave to go through a security scan just like I do there. We even had to do it to go the the cafe at the holocaust museum.
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