2/20/2011- Boston

2/20

Today, I went to the Museum of Science. It was amazing! I went to many different exhibits that were all really well-organized and interactive.

I liked Seeing is Deceiving because I studied Psychology at Oxford Royale Academy for two weeks over the summer, and I loved learning about optical illusions.

Mathematica was really interesting, because it featured lots of different mathematical diagrams and cool 3-D objects that illustrated theorems and other math-related things that people had come up with.

Take a Closer Look was also really cool: it had LOTS of interactive things, as I said before, and it was probably my favorite exhibit.

Underneath the sign above ^, there was a sign that I immediately noticed had replaced the sense "taste" with time... I kind of took a double take...

In another exhibit, I saw a skeleton and I adjusted its arms, which were pointing down, to make it look like he was really happy, because I believe that optimism is just... awesome. xD

We left soon after to get ready to go to the airport and leave. Bye, Boston!

-Cora

PS: Sorry that this was such a short blog post... I hope the pictures make up for it!

2/19/2011- Boston

2/19

I arrived in Boston yesterday, so there isn't much to tell. It was a day of last-minute packing, of waiting, and of flying in airplanes.

Today- while I wasn't reading The Tension of Opposites (by Kristina McBride) eagerly, which I did whenever I had a chance- my mom and I went to the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

The first exhibit we saw was a display called Minerals, Gems, and Meteorites. The minerals and gems were beautiful and very intricate. Below is a picture of one of my favorites, called Calcite, from England.

Next, we went to the Glass Flowers exhibit, which has thousands of models of plant life, all made from glass! The first picture below is a model of a plant that I thought to look especially life-like, and the second pictures depicts one of the many rows of models that were in the exhibit.

After that, I went to some interesting exhibits on evolution, one about color, and another about arthropods.

Then, we left the museum, got a bite to eat at Au Bon Pain, and endured the cold winds outside for the shortest amount of time possible and took a taxi back to our hotel. Eventually, we met up with my dad, who had been volunteering at my brother's college in the meantime, and he took us to meet up with my brother.

We had dinner there, watched a Fire Arts demonstration performed by some students at the college (in which they twirled around poles, hoops, and chains that were aflame, which looked spectacular), and then we went to my brother's dorm room.

Sadly, though, we had to leave, and we headed off back to our hotel and got a good night's sleep, ready for the next day's adventures. :)

-Cora