OTTAWA VACATION: THURSDAY (since obviously I can't fit all the days in one post)

Thursday

On Thursday morning we were planning to go to the Canadian War Museum, the National Gallery, Parliament Hill, and ByWard Market. We ended up going to the Canadian War Museum. And the mall. It just goes to show that you should never try to cram too much into one day, especially considering my family's strange love of museums, and my mom's insistence and reading every single thing.

Architecturally and aesthetically the War Museum was exactly the opposite of the Museum of Civilization. The outside was all angles and cement, with a triangular prism of glass jutting off of one side of the roof. We accessed it from the parking garage, which made the whole thing seem like a bunker, and then took an elevator up to the main lobby. The entire thing was so nearly empty that it was scary. Our hands were stamped and then we went to this hall thing where there was a mural on the wall with words about war and such, and a big map in the middle of the museum. We started through the galleries; gallery one was about the wars before the 20th century: European-Native conflicts, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the Loyalists, the War of 1812, etc. Surprisingly, there was a video playing on one of the screens built into the wall that had clips from Canada: A People's History. I had a really scary 7th grade history class flashback...Also, I got to see Isaac Brock's coat with the bullet hole in it, and a wooden cannon. Whose bright idea was that?

Next was the Boer War and WWI gallery. Highlights included the trench that you could walk into, with recreated sounds, mortar blasts, and moody lighting. Sorry it looks so bright in the picture, but I kept flash on. The trenches were really horrible, and reading some of the stories about the atrocities was almost sickening. Slightly less serious, and really amazing, actually, was a mini-exhibit on life in the trenches, which was tied into by a entire exhibit of Trench Life that we would see later. What I thought was really cool was this art that soldiers made in the trenches because they were really bored. There was a model airplane made out of shrapnel and bullet casings, a shell casing made into a pitcher, and a carving done in a block of chalk that was taken from the side of the trench.

In the WWII gallery there were exhibits about D-Day, Sicily, and work on the Home Front, among others. We saw Hitler's limo, a huge amount of tanks (I think I must have taken at least 20 pictures of random tanks that day), a model of a house in Italy that had been taken over as a battlefield, and the kitchen from a house for war veterans coming back home and settling down. I liked reading about the home effort especially, which included ration stamps, children's board games, and propaganda posters.

Fourth was a gallery on the Cold War, the Korean War, Peacekeeping, etc. It ended with an echoing gallery where on either side there were stations where you could answer questions such as "What is war?", "Can we ever have peace?" and "When is killing justified?". In the middle there was a bilingual magnetic board where you could say what your fears for the future were. We went out from here into a small, round, room that opened onto all the galleries and briefly summarized Canada and war. In the center of it was a scale model of the War Memorial, the real thing which I will have a picture of later.

We went back to the introductory gallery and through this thing into the Regeneration Hall. You start at the top of these stairs. The walls slope and narrow in a sort of upside down 3-D "V" shape towards a narrow window that spans both stories. On the left, sloping wall, spaces have been punched out so that the sun shines through as the Morse code for "Lest We Forget". (I had a little question about this: Does it say "Lest We Forget" bilingually in Morse code, or just in English? I mean, how many people can read Morse code anyway. In fact, I had to wonder if the French brochure said it said N'oublions jamais, and the English one said that it said Lest we forget. I looked it up on the website; apparently it says both. Bilingual Morse code...you don't find that everyday.)

The hall is designed so that as you go down the stairs you get a fleeting view of the Peace Tower through the slit of a window, then it is blotted out, as peace is blotted out. But as you continue down the stairs, the statue of Hope, a plaster model of the one in Vimy, is illuminated from behind.

When you reach the bottom of the stairs, there are statues on your right representing Knowledge and Peace and Love and Mercy and such. You go through the doors and find yoursjelf in...a huge cavernours room filled with tanks and airplanes, sort of like the War Museum in Mt. Hope. It's a bit jarring, and I was thoroughly bored in this gallery, so I amused myself by finding tanks, cars, guns, etc that were pretty colours. I know, I know, I'm pathetic, but my feet *hurt* and the special exhibit I wanted to go to was closing soon, and my dad and brother were taking their own sweet time. So I found one pretty artillery-gun-thing that was powder blue and chocolate brown, and a tank that was painted white.

My mom and I eventually decided to go ahead to the special exhibit, Trench Life, that we wanted to see, because it closed at 4 and my bro and dad showed no signs of coming.

Trench life was both shocking and funny. The soldier's almost necessary callousness was scary; they often hung stuff on dead bodies jutting out of the sides, stole stuff from them, talked to them, etc. There were also funny and beautiful parts, like the pictures they drew and the graffiti they did. When they were on leave, a group of soldiers would put on comedy plays and sing and dance and such, and because there were no women, they would dress up as girls too. One captain fell in love with one of the girls dancing on stage, and had to be told that she was really a he. He spent the next month or so apologizing and making excuses!

In terms of tone, and the images and feelings it left you with, the other special exhibit we saw was exactly the opposite. Called "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race", it was about the Nazis and eugenics, and was sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was horrifying how they applied Darwinism and the survival of the fittest to the human race, at first forbidding marriage between Jews and Nordics, and Nordics and "unfit people"--those who had defects, were sickly, or were not of high intelligence, then eventually sterilyzing "weak" or "inferior" people, and finally gassing--murdering millions of Jews, disabled people, and people in insane asylums, including children. They even killed people who were simply poor, calling them "feebleminded" because they couldn't answer questions of knowledge. Coming out of the exhibit, one feels stunned, or, as my mom put it, "Shell-shocked", a perhaps grimly appropriate description considering where we were.

After leaving the museum we went to a tiny vegetarian place in a mall in the middle of ByWard market that had been recommended by our guidebook.

After supper we got gelato at a place called Sugar Mountain (very kitschy, colorful, retro, and fun...you can practically smell the sugar). Then, being proper females, my mom and I went to Rideau Center mall and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over super expensive dresses, despite the fact that we only had $15 with us because my mom had left her wallet at the hotel.

In my next post: our busiest day yet, with mounties, parliament buildings, wampum birds, and hamburger feet!

OTTAWA, THE FIRST 4 DAYS, continued

aturday.
Well, it's now Sunday night, and I'm at home. Vacation is over, but I'll try to pick up where I left off.
Wednesday (cont.)
Ah yes, the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The Hall of First Peoples was unfortunately a little boring, if only due to the fact that there weren't many photo opportunities. After all, since I was stuck with the camera all day, I had been using it.
One thing that was interesting about it was an exhibit on their creation myths. The one pictured on the right is a model of a story of how the Skywoman fell down to the turtle's back and created Earth. There was also a weird story about the birth of good and evil, where they were twins, and good was born first, the natural way, and then evil was jealous so he escaped out his mother's side instead of waiting his turn. There was a sculpture, but let's just say I don't want to include nudity here.
After lunch in the cafeteria I took some pictures of the parliament buildings and such across the river from the lawn. Then we raced upstairs to make it to a performance of a play called "On the Edge" at 1:30.
There was only one actress, alternating between three different characters with different accents and outfits, but wow can that lady monologue. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but afterwards we toured the exhibit that the play was part of and were allowed to try on different historical costumes, including a lady's 1600s headdress that I thought was a lace ruff for the chin, but turned out to be a headdress, which in turn was inspired by Louis the Fourteenth's mistress wearing a garter, of all things, on her head, so as not be uncovered when her hat fell off. (Sheesh, what about revealing the fact that she wore a big lacy garter on her fat leg?) Since we were already on the second floor, we visited the Canadian Children's Museum. Wow, I wished that I was little again because I would have had so much fun there. Come to think of it, I did have fun there anyway, taking a zillion pictures of my brother against his will, posing him cutting plastic vegetables and wearing a kaftan and trying on carnival masks and riding a camel. Since he's 11, and thinks himself superior to others his age, he was none too thrilled, and I think in the end I had more fun than he did.
Afterwards was a quick stop in the postal museum where, among the unfortunately uninteresting to me stamp collections and postal code histories I found a gem: Lord of the Rings stamps from New Zealand! My friend Jillian will love this. Sorry about the resolution, I was taking it through glass. Also, there was a potentially interesting exhibit about the post in culture, including TV, movies (i.e. You've Got Mail, The Lake House, Cyrano de Bergerac), books, etc. Unfortunately, I was rushed off to the Hall of Canada on the 3rd floor because there was supposed to be another play in the Quebec square there at 4:30. It was only there that my mom more closely reexamined the schedule and discovered that the play was only from Thursday to Saturday. So my exploration of "The Post Goes Pop!" was tragically and unjustifiably cut short, and I decided to make the best of things and enjoy the Hall of Canada. Now, the Hall is incredibly impressive. When you come up the escalator, you look up and there's a beautiful multicolored glass dome above you with detailed, abstract patterns and pictures. Then you go through these doors into the start of the hall. For anyone who doesn't know what the Hall of Canada is, it's this massive gallery that takes you through Canada's history, while simultaneously moving west. (In terms of the history's place in geography) It started with life-sized models of a Viking woman saying goodbye to her husband as he got on a boat, and progressed through fishermen and whalers, villagers in a 1600s Quebec town, shipbuilding, the mainstreet of a small town, a country area, a cafe in Northwest Territories, and a 50s airport in British Columbia, before ending up with a helicopter that seemed to be in Yukon. All of this was represented with scenes, vehicles, props, etc, and there was even part of a real church that had been donated for the small town mainstreet. Also, while the only one we saw was in French,there were actors who wandered around their respective areas and pretended to be from that time and place.
Last we went to this special exhibit on the Greeks, which was pretty cool, only my feet were so sore by then that I didn't enjoy it as much as I wish I had. There was one pair of earrings from the Byzantine period that had little gold ships hanging from them! I swear, they must have weighted a ton.
We walked to a pizza restaurant after we finished up at the museum, and that was another adventure in and of itself. Perhaps I forgot to mention that though the museum of Civilization is only about 5 minutes away from Ottawa, it's across the Ottawa River in the town of Gatineau, which means that it's in Quebec. Where they speak French. And in this particular restaurant, the menu was in French only. I was actually really excited, because it meant that I got to put all my years of taking French to use, but we ran into a few speed bumps when we realised that most of the words I didn't know on the menu were for different kinds of meat, and so would not be useful in avoiding them. Luckily, our waiter turned out to be bilingual, but it did take a lot of the adventure out of the experience.
After eating we jogged on back to the museum for our IMAX show on Ancient Greece (can anyone guess that the museum had a sort of theme going here?) It was okay, but nothing really spectacular compared to others I've seen. (But then, how can you expect ruins and coastline to measure up to NASCAR-in 3D!)
And that was my very long Wednesday. As I'm getting bored right now and would rather go do something else (such as unpack and sleep), I'll have to continue tomorrow.

OTTAWA VACATION: THE FIRST 4 DAYS

Hi from Ottawa!
I've decided to liveblog (is that the right word?) my vacation to Ottawa...but unfortunately my internet access didn't work until tonight so it sort of defeats the purpose. Today is Friday, and I'm sitting in my tiny hotel room next to a bottle of pickles on the little desk.
So I'll try to recap what's happened so far.
Tuesday
We drove for 5 hours. Driving conditions were normal. Highpoints included eating donuts and watching Stardust on the DVD player. We arrived at Comfort Inn Downtown (not actually downtown), checked in, hiked up the stairs, marvelled at the room smaller than my bedroom, the lovely inadequate lighting, and the bathroom so small that when I sat down on the toilet I scraped my elbow.
We hiked around the city for two hours on my father's demand before eating supper. It was getting dark, we were disoriented, and I was unjustifiably terrified by buskers. Well, terrified is a bit of a strong word...but uneasy at least. We finally found a food court that was closing down and bought some ricotta and spinach pizza things that were surprisingly good.
Then we were walking through the city and came out in front of Parliament Hill, and wow! Suddenly, Ottawa wasn't that bad. The entire capital buildings were lit up in multi, changing colours, and there was loud electronic music, and then this presentation thing started, with clips and narrators and quotes and poems and stuff, all talking about what it means to be Canadian. It turns out the show is called "Sound & Light on Parliament Hill", and it's every night at 9:30 and 10:30. It was around that point that I decided Ottawa wasn't that bad, and at least for a little while stopped comparing it to Boston and San Francisco and Washington D.C.
Wednesday
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is now officially the coolest museum in Canada, in my eyes. It is also very hard on the feet. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. The entire museum looks as if it's eroded out of a sandstone hill or something, all natural curves and lines and waves. It's also nicely placed on a ridge on the edge of the Ottawa River, so when we ate lunch in the museum cafeteria we had a great view of the Parliament buildings, Chateau Laurier, etc.
Our first stop was the Great Hall, a huge hall full of totem poles (the largest collection of totem poles indoors in all of Canada...or the most important...or something like that). There were facades of West Coast Native dwellings on the side, and you could enter doors to see artifacts and stuff on the inside. Then there was an exhibit about a really ancient tribe (I can't remember exactly which one) that used so many shells that the soil contains layers and layers of them, just piles of broken ones, some of the layers as much as 8 feet thick!
Oh, I've got to go to bed now...to be continued, with the unfortunately rather boring Aboriginal Exhibit, and then the really cool monologue play.

Wishes

The band Superchick is probably my favourite Christian band...most people haven't heard of it, but they've probably heard some of their songs, which have shown up on The Hills, in Legally Blonde, and and in Ice Princess.
My favourite song by theirs is called "Wishes", and it's about a breakup, but when you think about it, a lot of it could be about unrequited love. It's pretty mainstream, it's not alternative or anything, and it doesn't use interesting instrumentation. It's just a song that expresses how I feel.

Newberry Recap pt. 1

I decided I may as well write short reviews of the 20 or so Newberry Medal winners I've read so far, with summaries and comments and stuff. Some of them will be rather sketchy, because it was a long time ago.
The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo (2005)
This is the most recent one I've read, so far the only one since I started my list.
The book ties together the story of three inhabitants of the castle: a tiny mouse with huge ears named Despereaux, who loves the princess Pea and can read, to the chagrin of his family; Roscuro, a dungeon rat who loves the light; and Miggery Sow, a servant girl with "cauliflower ears" who wants nothing more than to be a princess.
The book was simple, and sweet, and gave me a sort of contented feeling when I finished it. It's written in a "Dear Reader" style. So far, I was thankful that it was one of the few Newberry books I've read that haven't made me cry.

Crispin, the Cross of Lead, by Avi (2004)
What is it with long titles?
A boy named Crispin lives in a medieval village. His mother dies, he receives a mysterious cross, and stuff happens. Hey, I'm not amazon. This one didn't really stick in my mind very much. But Avi is a pretty good writer. Read "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle". I can remember that one.
The book was decent, an interesting view of Medieval life and superstitions. It didn't make me cry.

Holes, by Louis Sacher (1999)
Stanley Yelnats is sent to Camp Greenlake, an alternative to juevenile detention, in the middle of the desert. Every day he and his fellow inmates must dig holes: 5 feet by 5 feet by 5 feet. However, Stanley becomes suspicious. Are they really digging the holes to build character, or is the Warden looking for something?
I bought this book in a used bookshop in Napa, California. It had always looked weird, but I was curious, so I read it, and surprise, surprise, it was worthy of the honours it received. The book is hilarious, well-written, and suspensful, with quirkily drawn and engaging characters. The end made me go, "ah-ha!" though maybe I just missed all the clues leading up to the twist at the end. I'm slow. :)

The View From Saturday, by E.L. Konisburg (1997)
This book is a collection of four short stories about 4 kids who end up on the school academic bowl team together. Every Saturday they get together and the Bed & Breakfast run by one boy's parents and drink tea and practice for the bowl.
This book was interesting and very well written. It gets points for not making me cry. It's a quick read, and it has good characterization. It's interesting to note that it's by the same author as "The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler"...a book that was publishe more than 30 years earlier.

In Beginning

So I made this stupid list, right? I was bored, and I was feeling adventurous, so I sat down with a sheet of paper, and wrote "___ Things I Want to Do This Summer." I wasn't sure how many I could come up with. I started listing random, bizarre stuff that I didn't know if I could fulfill, that I didn't know if I wanted to fulfill, but it sounded more interesting than doing nothing. I ended up with 70. Now I'm two weeks into the summer and I've accomplished...let's see...oh yes, 0. Out of 70. I figure I'm going to have to average about one a day. But unfortunately lots of them are long term stuff. You try reading 5 of Shakespeare's plays in a day and then tell me how you feel.
I'm going to try to blog whenever I finish an item. It should be an adventure. Though I don't know how interesting some topics will be. You try writing several paragraphs about doing tie-dye.
One item, though, I think is extra ambitious, and of particular note. I'm planning to read all the Newberry Medal-Winning Books. Ever. So far I've read 21 of them, but 20 of those were before I got the idea. I'll try to write a review of each one. That would be a separate section.
I'm also planning to have a section about Culture and a section about Life in General.
Sorry that my first post was so boring. I wasn't sure what to write in it. And I promise not to use proper grammar all the time. :)
I've never really blogged before, so bear with me.