www.magiedarling.wordpress.com

I've had trouble getting the blogger website to work on my phone. So, for the duration of my Europe trip, I will be using wordpress, as it is accessable via my phone. So if you want to read what Mallory and I are up to, you can check it out by typing the address listed above into your browser! Enjoy!

NYC Highlights

So it’s been a while since I’ve written. Since Thanksgiving, it’s been all-too easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of planning – and doing – future adventures and trips. It is coming down to the final days of my time in the United States for a while, and so Mallory and I have been busy tying up loose ends with regards to that. And as if I wasn’t busy enough, I decided to take a few days in New York City with Aaron as a sort-of “sign-off” to the semester. As I type, I am on the bus back to Washington, D.C. , from NYC. Here’s an account of my last few days:

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On Saturday, I had a hectic few hours of packing the apartment. For at least a week and and half, I had been stowing away things, but two things made my efforts at preparation moot: 1) my ability to justify leaving things unpacked because of the possibility I may use them, and 2) the fact that I was packing bags with three separate destinations (NYC, Europe, and home).

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But after I fully checked out of my apartment (leaving behind all of my shampoo conditioner and washes, I would realize later), Aaron and I headed to the metro toward Union Stations to board our bus for NYC. The ride was about four hours, but seeing as though I have the talent of being able to easily pass out in any moving vehicle within minutes of boarding, the ride wasn’t all that bad.

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When we arrived in NYC, we met up with a friend of Aaron’s family, who would be our tour guide for the next few days. The three of us, with bags in hand, headed toward Times Square, pushing through the onslaught of people on the streets. Coming from a city with a cleaner, tamer demeanor, the numerous people on littered streets with seemingly endless flashing lights and billboards overhead, I was excited and overwhelmed.

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That night, we walked around Times Square and eventually made our way, via taxi, to Tom’s Restaurant, which, if you are a Seinfeld connoisseur, you will know that this is the place where many a conversation took place between Jerry, George, Cramer, and Elaine. The outside sign of the restaurant appears just as it does in the series; however, the interior was renovated and bears no resemblance to the original.

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The next morning, we got up and visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we saw various Roman and Greek pottery, beads, sculptures, and, believe it or not, safety pins the size of my spread-out hand. We didn’t have much time though, so what we were able to see was extremely limited. Also, we didn’t make it to MoMa, although we were told to visit more than once.

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From there, we walked around, seeing St. Patrick’s Cathedral and many high-end shops. At one point, we went into Armani, where we had drinks upstairs in the Armani Café. While shopping, we popped into the American Girl store, where we snuck a couple shots of the café located on the third floor, where girls and their parents can dine with their dolls. And if the dolls weren’t pampered enough, having a dinner they wouldn’t consume, they could visit the hair salon and get their hair done. For dinner, we ate at a small Italian restaurant with some of Aaron’s distant relatives.

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The next day was packed. We left the house at 8:30 a.m. and had a nearly hour-long dab ride to the place where we would take a ferry to Ellis Island and to the Statue of Liberty.

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After we visited each, we made our way to Grand Central Station. While I thought Union Station was pretty, I was in awe of the beauty of GCS, as it was fully decorated for Christmas. Years ago, GCS was, in a word, ugly. Its ceiling and windows were black with soot and everything was dirty and dark, and there was pressure to tear it down. But Jackie Kennedy sought to make it a historic landmark so that it could be preserved. As a result, the ceiling was cleaned, which revealed a marvelous painting of a starry sky with constellations – a painting that no one knew was there. During the renovation process, tons of black tiles were removed, but one was left in the corner of the ceiling to remind people of the treasures that can be lost when they are not taken care of and preserved.

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Afterward, Aaron and I made our way to Rockefeller Center, where we spent an hour skating in the middle of the city. This was the highlight of the trip.

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With the evening came our shows: the Radio City Christmas Show and the Phantom of the Opera. While we had to race to fit them both into our evening, our quick pace was well worth it, as both were fantastic expericnces.

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Tuesday, Aaron and I were on our own. Having seen the city with a guide for the first few days and having spent a bit of time looking at maps, we were able to get ourselves around with considerable ease. We made our way from the ferry to the Hop-on Hop-off bus, where we rode for about 10 minutes before we got off to see the Empire State Building. While we were on, however, I learned that the reason that there is a star in the Macy’s logo, is because the founder had a star tattooed to his wrist/hand because he thought they brought him luck.

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The 86^th floor of the ESB was frigid, but the view was spectacular. We quickly snapped pictures before running inside to warm our faces and fingers. This process was repeated three or four times before we called it a day.

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We did a bit of shopping; got to see the old, wooden escalators in Macy’s; and saw the business of NYC shopping days before Christmas.

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As an end to our day, we went to Temple Bar on the recommendation of one of Aaron’s coworkers this fall. Its black walls and awning and its 5in./12in. sign matched the dark, polished interior. While the room was darkly lit, each table had a focused light on it, providing enough light to carry on conversation while staying hidden away. We shared a bottle of wine and had a great time. Noticing the couple next to us – an older man and a 20-something woman wearing fishnets – and they were talking about making poker bets and other casual topics clued me into aspects of the city I would otherwise like to remain ignorant of.

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On our last day, we ate Magnolia cupcakes, walked around Central Park, saw Bergdorf Goodman and the Plaza, and quickly ran off to catch our bus back home.

A brief Thanksgiving

I apologize for not having kept up with my blog over the past week. With my family and a friend from college visiting me for Thanksgiving, I have been kept pretty busy.

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So to sum up my past week, I hurried to finish a much procrastinated paper on Tuesday. Ironically, I had decided to write about North Korea before there was any bombing. So as I was finishing my paper, I had to keep amending the history in order to keep it as up-to-date as possible. That evening, I took the metro to DCA to pick up my friend Alyse. Due to unfortunate timing, we would not be able to see each other at all during the coming year, save this Thanksgiving. I was elated to see her at the airport.

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The next morning, we got up, got ready for the day, and headed into the district. Before lunch with Aaron, we saw the White House, the top of the Old Post Office Tower, and the American History Museum. After lunch we headed to Georgetown, where Alyse was able to experience Georgetown shopping and cupcakes.

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Thursday we got ready, and I made my favorite Thanksgiving dinner dish – cranberry marshmallow salad. Around noon, we went to the airport to pick up my family, who had arrived over 30 minutes early. Their airline luck would later run out, as their return flight was delayed an hour. But later Thursday evening, we had dinner with my Aunt Bonnie, Uncle Ray, and their son Todd.

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The next morning we made our way to the Newseum, Ben’s Chili Bowl, the ice skating rink in the Sculpture Gardens, and Pizzeria Orso, which had apparently been rated as the best pizza place near the district.

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Saturday, Alyse, Ray, Lisa, and I got a tour of the National Cathedral. Afterward, we picked up Henry and went to have lunch at Five Guys. From there, Ray dropped us off at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. While Henry got a bit of running in on the National Mall, Alyse, my mom , and I saw the National Archives. Then we picked up William, went to the Kennedy Center for the night’s Millennium Stage performance featuring Chelsea Green and had dinner at Two Amy’s.

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Sunday started with breakfast with Ray and Bonnie, after which we went to Arlington National Cemetery to see Lee’s house and the grave of my great-great uncle, Walter Darling.

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Finally, after what seemed like not more than a day’s time, we arrived, once again, at the airport, concluding what had been a brief but extremely enjoyable few days with family and a friend.

Today, Friday, I was able to meet with Sara Gast, who is a career intern here at ED and, amazingly enough, is the first paid person at ED that I have met that is under 30. That being said, getting coffee with her and discussing her experiences during her senior year of college and her experiences so far at ED were a much-welcomed excursion. Now that is not to say that I do not appreciate the people I work with, but working with people my own age on a day-to-day basis is something I have realized that I miss a lot. In coming to D.C., I had assumed that wherever I ended up, I would be in an office filled with young, passionate thirty-somethings, not realizing that there are lots of career-agency workers. Having gone through this, I now know to be aware of this when I apply for jobs and future working experiences.

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Things from our conversation that were worth noting, given the fact that I will be applying for jobs and working in the next two years, are as follows:

• Senior year, people will stress about having their jobs/futures ironed out to varying degrees. It’s best not to get caught up in it, especially if you’re looking to get into a field that is not in the financial industry, because those other jobs look to fill their postings a few weeks to a month after they’re posted.
• Taking a year or two off to work before going on to graduate/law school can be a really good thing. If you’re focused and know exactly what you want to do, fine, go on. But if you’re not sold on the idea of what you’re doing and where you’re going, it can become easy to drop out as it becomes harder and harder to justify the growing debt when you’re not working and you see many friends earning money. Also, there are many opportunities to have schooling paid for. For example, ED will pay for its employees to get higher education if it can be proven that it will add to the performance of your job in some way.

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In sum, it was great to have the opportunity to talk with someone who was so recently dealing with the same issues I’m thinking about now. She was able to recount the feeling/emotions/reactions she had during her senior year, how she dealt with them, how she planned for work post-undergrad, and how she feels being in the federal government now.

RTT

Thursday, I was able to speak with Jackie Gran, who is a leading policy advisor that works with Race to the Top. Here are a few of the ideas that came out of our intern luncheon:

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First of all, “access without excellence is an empty promise.” And to this point, that is essentially what we are guaranteeing: you can go to school somewhere, but the quality of that education may not be the best.

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The federal level needs to realize what its role is in education and in educating kids whose schools also have state and local regulations. ED would do better by being a warehouse of educational knowledge, providing states and local governments access to information from across the country that they would otherwise struggle to get or, even worse, not know of at all.

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NCLB was good in that it put a focus on the quality of education we are paying for and providing, and it did well to raise standards. Where it was weak, and is rightly criticized is in that it had no degree of accountability or extreme, but appropriate, course of action for schools that were seriously failing students. In an effort to address issues in a better way, RTT was designed to be “an outgrowth of state and local efforts, not a lay-it-over-the-top program.”

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Jackie said that an essential part of measuring whether or not RTT will be successful will be in assessing where the schools are/are not meeting their standards and providing them with the appropriate information and knowledge to be able to improve. It will not be successful if RTT reverts back to a system of merely measuring whether or not a school meets a standard. Consquently, this will also help to ensure that RTT is effective.

Calm explorations

Wednesday was significantly calmer. To start, I finished a paper in record time. In keeping with my procrastinating nature, I had put of writing a briefing on a protest or demonstration I had attended while In D.C. In my defense, I had written one in early September, but because my computer had crashed, I had lost the document – and since, had lost my drive/desire to write another. So I got up at 8 a.m., worked on my paper for an hour and a half, and had a completed protest paper done by 9:30 a.m. After that, I went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, which has an entire wing devoted to Disney. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I was only able to see the wings having to do with the American presidency and America’s involvement in wars.

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After that, I was able to meet with a friend over coffee to discuss books we had read. Sitting in a Caribou, drinking a warm cup of perfectly made – including the necessary sugar and cream -- coffee, and discussing all of the unique, interesting insights we had was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.

Bullfrog and beef stomach? Sure, throw it in.

To new tastes. Tuesday was the night for new foods, particularly new meats. Courtesy of David Lietz, a Luther alumnus, a couple other Luther students and I were able to go to Uncle Liu’s Hot Pot. There, you start with your basic broth, buy different vegetables and meats, toss them into the hot liquid, and eat! In a wild effort to make our experience as new and unique as possible, we ordered the following: scallops, fish balls, lobster and crab balls, meatballs, spinach, chicken, beef, noodles , and, wait for it, bullfrog and beef stomach. It was a fantastic time spent with friends, and I was surprised by my lack of aversion to the more off-the-beaten-path foods we tried!