Staycation

Happy New Year. あけましておめでとうございます. 新年快樂. С Новым годом! 

In any language, here's hoping this year will be a good one for you. But hold off just yet in welcoming in the Year of the Monkey - that doesn't kick off until February 8, according to the lunar calendar. You still have a few more weeks of the Goat left.

A new year has begun, and a winter vacation is soon coming to an end. As there were no classes held at FSI during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, students had the option of taking annual leave or adhering to a self-studying program at home. The idea of spending several hours a day working on Russian didn't sound very appealing, so I opted to use some of my vacation time to relax and chill out (even if the weather itself hasn't been very chilly). Actually, I have been setting aside 1½-2 hours every day to review grammar rules and vocabulary, and to my great surprise, so far I've stuck to that schedule. But at least I've been doing so on my terms, and therefore haven't had to submit any work to the language tsars and tsarinas for their condemnation review. The rest of the time has been used in trying to catch up on some personal business and just lazing about at home. These past few days haven't been spent entirely indoors, however, and what follows are some of the things I've been doing over the break:

The day after Christmas (aka Boxing Day for my friends and acquaintances in the Commonwealth) we drove to the National Harbor, by the Potomac River in Prince George's County, Maryland. Despite its name, the harbor is not a part of the National Park System, nor does it have any historical connections that I'm aware of. Rather, it's a multi-use development consisting of condos, a convention center, hotels, restaurants and shops. There's even some public art, in the form of The Awakening, a 70 foot (21 meters)-long statue of a struggling giant embedded in the sand:

We spent our time there having lunch and doing some window shopping...:

...but the impetus for visiting the National Harbor was that it's the site of a Build-A-Bear Workshop. My daughter wanted to use some of her Christmas cash reserves to make her own reindeer. Mission accomplished:

Amber and I took advantage of the unseasonably warm temperatures and sunny skies to go for a bike road along part of the W&OD Trail: 

The weather was also cooperative when the two of us (my wife preferred to stay indoors) went to see the Winter Walk of Lights at the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens last Sunday. It rained heavily on the drive over there and and on the trip back home, but stopped pouring while we walked around the gardens, taking in the light decorations. Amber even got to try her hand at roasting (or is it toasting?) marshmallows over an open fire, then using them to make s'mores, part of the ongoing Americanization of my born-and-raised in-Taiwan offspring:

While the staycation has been nice, I had to get out of this area at least once during the break, so on Wednesday the three of us made the hour-long drive down I-95 to Fredericksburg, Virginia, site of a bloody battle during the American Civil War. Nearly 19,000 soldiers on both sides were either killed or wounded during a series of futile Union attacks on well-fortified Confederate positions during four days of fighting in mid-December 1862. The Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitors Center does an excellent job presenting what transpired before, during and after the battle:

After the visitor center, we took a walk along the Sunken Road trail, where some of the fiercest fighting took place. The misty weather that day set an appropriate mood:

The Innis House survived the battle, but was riddled with bullets. Though most of the outdoor panels were subsequently replaced, leaving only a few bullet holes visible, the interior walls were retained and showed just how fierce the fighting had been. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good photo of the inside from the outside:

The large brick house known as Brompton also survived the battle. It's now a private residence for the president of the University of Mary Washington:

This is the view Confederate soldiers had looking down at the Innis House, as they mowed down the advancing columns of Union troops:

The trail loops back to a fitting conclusion at the Fredericksburg National Cemetery, where the remains of more than 15,000 Federal soldiers are interred. Fewer than 3000 of them were positively identified before burial:

Crows are associated with death in many cultures:

In addition to its Civil War connections, Fredericksburg's history is also tied in with the American Revolution, as it was an important port and trading center during the colonial days. The downtown area makes for a pleasant stroll, but the first thing we did there was to have lunch, where I opted for crayfish étouffée:

The Fredericksburg Area Museum, housed in the 1816 town hall building, is closed until further notice, but the downtown business district, with its many antique shops, still makes for a nice walk:

The highlight for both Amber and me was a visit to the Rising Sun Tavern on Caroline Street. Built by George Washington's younger brother Charles in 1760, it operated as a tavern/inn from 1792 to 1827, and in that incarnation has been restored and presented as a living history museum. A guide gave an extremely interesting overview of life in Fredericksburg during that period, with its class distinctions and segregation of the sexes, and focusing on what people ate and drank, how they paid for it etc. My daughter and I both came away from the museum glad we didn't live during those days, when everybody drank alcohol or tea because the water was too filthy, when you only bathed once a year (during the summer) and, if you were a woman staying at the tavern, you answered nature's call by sitting on a chair with a hole in the center (and a chamber pot underneath) and thus did your business in full view of everyone else in the room, much as you would today in a prison cell (men got to use outhouses). It's a wonder anybody survived at all during those days, much less procreated:

Yesterday I drove with Amber to Politics & Prose, one of Washington, D.C.'s most noted independent bookstores, where we both spent more of our Christmas money (in my case, on Japan and the Shackles of the Past by R. Taggart Murphy and Japan Restored by Clyde Prestowitz). After lunch and on the way home, I took my daughter to see the Marine Corps Memorial, aka the Iwo Jima Statue. Amber was impressed by the famous image, as well as of the view of the Capitol Building, Washington Monument, Smithsonian Castle and Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac in the distance (the Jefferson Memorial can also be seen from some angles):

To the south is the Netherlands Carillon, a 130 foot (40 meters)-high bell tower dedicated to the liberation of the Netherlands from Germany in 1945. Sadly, the monument is showing signs of rust and decay these days:

Finally, and fittingly, the two of us walked to downtown Falls Church last night (my wife prefers to stay home much of the time these days) to take in Watch Night, the city's annual New Year's Eve celebration. Amber had a great time, especially after meeting one of her classmates on Broad Street. It was a fun way to close out the old year...:

...especially when you have your own lightsaber. I think I was able to convince her to join me in seeing The Force Awakens.

Счастливых праздников! Taking leave...

Having ourselves a modest little Christmas

As the year draws to a close, it's time to step back and look at how things have transpired over the past fifty-two weeks. And all things considered, it hasn't been a bad year. We ended a successful and enjoyable two-year tour in Shanghai and returned to the familiar confines of Falls Church via Bremerton, Washington. During the year I was able to witness several volcanic eruptions up close (on Sakurajima 桜島 in Kagoshima 鹿児島 during the Lunar New Year), and realized two long-held travel ambitions: to finally visit Thailand (which we did in June) and to drive across the U.S. (accomplished at the end of August and into early September, taking in Yellowstone National Park, Mt. Rushmore, a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater en route). Most importantly, everyone here is in good health, and hopefully will remain so for a long time to come (knock on wood). Sure, there was the unpleasant surprise of having been unceremoniously pulled out of Lithuanian and placed instead in Russian, a language I never had an interest in learning and have struggled to master on a basic level since Labor Day. Still, I have made progress and am probably where I should be at this point in my studies, so I'm confident I'll eventually pass the final hurdle obstacle exam, and move to Vilnius as scheduled in early May of next year. 

Lithuania may have been part of the Soviet Union, but culturally it isn't Russian. Which is why I chose not to take part in the Christmas festivities organized by the Russian section last Friday. Instead, after a morning of listening to how form sentences in Russian using the present progressive tense, I rode the shuttle to the main State Department building, then took a walk along part of the Mall, passing the World War II Memorial and the Washington Monument, to the Freer Gallery of Art, next to the Smithsonian Castle. The Freer and the adjoining Arthur M. Sackler galleries house an impressive collection of Asian art, and I've visited several times. However, the Freer Gallery will be closed for renovations from January 4, and will not reopen until sometime after 2017 (the Stackler Gallery will remain open during that time, however). With time running out, last Friday afternoon seemed a good opportunity to check out the Freer's Japanese collection one last time. The current exhibitions, Bold and Beautiful: Rinpa in Japanese Art and Bold and Beautiful: Rinpa Screens, are centered around works of art from the Rinpa 琳派 school of Japanese painting. These exhibits are tied in with the ongoing Sōtatsu: Making Waves exhibition downstairs at the Stackler, which my family and I visited on Veterans Day. Seeing the various ceramics, paintings and screens on display (and using the time to better appreciate Sotatsu's Waves at Matsushima and Dragons and Clouds) proved to be perfect antidote to the stress that results from trying to understand how and when to use the accusative, prepositional and genitive cases.

How I feel everyday after five hours of Russian classes

Early 17th-century tea bowl by Hon'ami Kōetsu 本阿弥光悦

A pair of sliding door panels from the early 18th-century by Ogata Kōrin 尾形光琳, featuring a scene from The Tales of Ise 伊勢物語. 

That was a week ago. Today I had Christmas Eve off, thanks to a presidential proclamation. Well, technically, only a half-day free, but the Russian section didn't schedule any classes this morning, so there wasn't any point to going into FSI. Instead, I used the opportunity to ходить в природе, "walk in nature". I couldn't have picked a more opportune day for doing so. This winter has been unseasonably warm, and today was a record-breaker, the warmest December 24 ever recorded in the Washington, D.C. area, with temperatures in the low 70's (normally they would be in the mid-40's). Jim Inhofe has been strangely silent this season. 

So I left the apartment early this morning (with the girls still asleep) and drove to Black Hill Regional Park, located forty minutes from Falls Church in Boyds, Maryland. It was an easy walk in the park, covering 6.8 miles (10.9 kilometers) in 2½ hours. Black Hill is noted for its meadows which attract hundreds of monarch butterflies during their semiannual migrations in April and September. The butterflies have long since moved on, and the leaves have fallen from the trees, but the park is still starkly beautiful. It felt great being outdoors today:

The park surrounds the 500-acre (202 hectares) Little Seneca Lake. The view from the back porch of visitor center. 

The mineshaft from an 1850's gold mine

On the Black Hill Trail

The only animals seen today were crows, geese and squirrels, but something else left this behind on the trail.

A bridge over Little Seneca Creek

The remains of a water mill, dating back to 1810. This one pressed flax seed in the production of linseed oil before it closed in 1895. 

Little Seneca Creek

No explanation is given for these stone ruins

Crossing Lake Ridge Drive

The sign says it all

Pausing by the lake

A pair of geese enjoy the warm weather

The last section of the trail becomes asphalt

A farm across the water

I'll be taking the next week off, a much-needed break from Russian, though I do intend to set aside time for review each day. As my break begins, I wish all of you and your families the happiest of holidays this season!

Air and space, the final frontiers

Last week was a rough one in Russian. I wasn't in the best of moods all week long, and I wasn't feeling very well, no doubt fueled by anxiety over my first progress evaluation, scheduled for Thursday afternoon. When it came time for the one-on-one evaluation, I went to the wrong room. By the time I realized the mistake and had tracked down the correct location, I had already missed nearly twenty minutes of the scheduled fifty-minute test. Looking at my phone and seeing that the next shuttle home was going to leave in just a few minutes, and facing the prospect of having to bide my time for another three-quarters of an hour until the next one was due to depart, I did the most sensible thing I could think of: like Elvis, I left the building. And with that, I suddenly felt a whole lot better, and the next day's classes went pretty well. As for the progress evaluation, these things can always be rescheduled, and mine has been for next week. Ба́бушка (гада́ла, да) на́двое сказа́ла ( — то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет) - or something along those lines.

Apropos for a space cadet, the family today visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, close to Dulles Airport. Home to eighty planes and sixty spacecraft housed in two huge airplane hangars, the center serves as an additional exhibit space for the more well-known National Air and Space Museum, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (which we visited three years ago). Like other Smithsonian museums, admission to this one is free, though it does cost $15 for parking. Its location in the northern Virginia suburbs, and the difficulty in reaching it via public transportation, means the museum isn't as crowded as the main facility in Washington:

The interior is huge:

One of the highlights is an SR-71 Blackbird, a legendary spy plane that could reach heights of 80,000 feet (24,384 meters) while traveling at speeds up to Mach 3.3:

Everywhere I go, it seems, I'm being dogged by the Reds:

The Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima 広島. No mention is made of the morality of the decision that resulted in the deaths of around 75,000 people, which is probably the way most American visitors would want it, at least judging by the reaction of some people (all of whom were Americans) when I shared my opinions on the subject on Facebook following my trip to Hiroshima in April 2012. One well-known blogger in Taiwan, who often criticizes the mainstream media for failing to think outside the conventional wisdom when it comes to China-Taiwan relations, and who is a strident critic of American foreign policy (and rightly so), surprised (disappointed) me by falling in line with the conventional American narrative on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 長崎: that the Japanese were "fanatics" who would've fought to the bitter end, therefore it was necessary to vaporize or irradiate up to 250,000 (by some estimates) men, women and children (not to mention opening up one hell of a Pandora's Box in the process). Which just goes to show that when the topic is Japan, some people know quite a lot about Taiwan:

They say the skies are getting crowded. My daughter wondered whether the wires were strong enough:

Another highlight is a Concorde, the Anglo-French supersonic jet that was in service from 1976 to 2003:

Pride of place in the space wing of the museum goes to the Space Shuttle Discovery. In 27 years of service it launched and landed 39 times, and the effects of all those fiery re-entries into Earth's atmosphere can be seen on its exterior:

The IMAX movie we saw this afternoon. Speaking of Harrison Ford, Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be shown in 3D at the museum's IMAX theater starting from the 17th:

After the movie, we ventured up to the observation tower, which provides a 360-degree view of Dulles Airport and the surrounding area. Planes coming in for landings are almost at eye-level:

Back on the ground, Amber tries out some of the controls on a real Cessna. She also took part in a paper airplane-throwing contest (finishing third), and the two of us took a ride on a Space Shuttle simulator:

Not all of the displays are related to huge flying machines:

Visitors can peer down onto the Restoration Hangar. Behind my daughter is a seaplane which searched for Japanese submarines after the attack on Pearl Harbor: 

A Lufthansa jet comes in for a landing as we walk back to our parked car. If you enjoyed the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, you will certainly like the Udvar-Hazy Center. We did. The only fault I could find with the museum is that the only source of food there is a McDonald's. Otherwise, if you're interested in airplanes and spacecraft, you owe yourself a visit: