3/13: A Little of Everything

The staff at TPC warned us that time would start flying by once we started our internships, and boy, were they right! I almost couldn’t believe it when I checked the date to see that it’s already the 12th of March–it feels like the month just started yesterday! Since my program does not have a spring break, we end on April 29th, meaning that I only have about 7 weeks left. My time here suddenly feels so short… Though I admit I’ll be happy to go home and see my friends and family, I am also terrified that I will run out of time to do everything I wanted to do in Philly. After all, who knows when I will ever be here again?

…But enough with the mini panic attack. A lot has happened in the last few weeks, and I feel like I haven’t yet covered it all. So, here’s a little of everything:

Internships: I’m at the Rosenbach three days a week, from about 9:30 am to 4:30 pm, where I’ve been working on several different projects. I’ve been looking through old newspaper clippings to find info related to the 150th Anniversary of Alice in Wonderland; reading letters from early missionaries in Washington state so I can write a blog post about the massacre at the Whitman Mission (Walla Walla shoutout!); and researching how different museums and libraries use social media so that I can help develop a long-term strategy for the Rosenbach’s social media presence. For my one-day-a-week internship with Food Nerd Jr., I’ve been going to weekly team meetings and working on designing a template for their very first email newsletter. We hope to have the first edition done around the end of March (!!!).

Classes: I haven’t written at all about my two classes at TPC, so I’m remedying that now. Both are with my advisor Mark (simply by coincidence), and they’re very reading and writing-heavy. My seminar, which is about 3-4 hours on Monday mornings (ouch), is called Power & Authority. It’s very different from any other class that I’ve taken, since we are looking at broad, abstract concepts–like how things such as place, space, site, voice, etc. play into power and authority–and then trying to apply them to very concrete examples, like our workplace or locations in Philadelphia. My elective, which takes up about 3 hours on Tuesday evenings, is called Exploring Relationships in Fiction & Film. We cover a variety of topics relating to gender, sexuality, and–of course–relationships, and it’s also a challenging class in that it forces us to confront our own opinions and experiences on these issues.

In the City: Up until this weekend, the weather had been absolutely terrible here. Maybe I’m just a West Coast wimp, but I got pretty sick of the snow, ice, and constant below-freezing temps. But magically, this week decided to jump straight into spring, and now temps are in the 40s-60s range. I was about ready to cry with joy when I saw the predicted 47-degree high!

IMG_2104

After my last post, I’ve been making a conscious effort to get out and do stuff each weekend. Last Friday, my friend and I got to go to the Philadelphia Flower Show thanks to the generosity of my wonderful grandmother (thanks Grandma!). It’s a major event that draws people from around the world every year, and it’s held in the Pennsylvania Convention Center just a couple blocks from our loft. This year the theme was “At the Movies,” so all the major displays were based on Disney or Pixar movies. Here are a couple of my favorites:

IMG_2106

Prince of Persia: dumb movie, beautiful display

IMG_2134

Frozen

IMG_2128

Mulan

As you can probably tell from the photos, the displays were huge, and included real plants, flowers, trees, and water…I can’t even imagine how long it took to build each one!

Then, on Sunday, my roommate and I went to a documentary screening about the early punk rock scene in Washington, D.C. The movie was Salad Days, and it was shown in the basement of our building at a venue called Underground Arts. It was a pretty good documentary, though I’ll admit that I don’t know anything about punk music, but mostly it was just fun to go to an arts event without even having to walk outside.

Well, that’s the recap for now…stay tuned for more blog posts about eating in Philly and East Coast culture!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *