A panda shot for you, just coz....The Washington Zoo has a couple of famous pandas, one of whom (Tian Tian) is leaving the zoo in a couple of months - I'm not sure which if this is him or not, but let's just say it is...

Yesterday it rained as promised and I hit the National Museum of the American Indian - which has been recommended to me repeatedly (Smithsonian #5 if any of you are keeping track - only 14 more to do!). The building was designed by Douglas Cardinal, the same architect as the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. I have to say that while the building was beautiful, the exhibits themselves left something to be desired. There was a lot of information, but no order to any of it, so I ended up feeling dizzy, going in circles to pick out things I'd missed. And each display itself was actually in a circle, so it was more than just a feeling of going in circles. There were circles within circles within circles.

However, there was a special exhibit by a Canadian artist, Brian Jungen, a member of the Dunne-za tribe, that was just amazing. The photo is of totem poles made entirely from golf club bags. All of his sculpture was of found objects or trash that he turned into these huge, impressive sculpture. I couldn't get a good picture of his turtle made of large green recycling bins, it took up an entire room and you could walk inside the turtle shell.

After the museum, was a quick trip to Trader Joe's and then to my friend's for an evening of the Golden Globes (we had been cultured dammit!! so it's okay. Lots of truly awful wardrobe choices this year I thought...). Today is MLK day so a strange January day off. I still have the apartment to myself so it's quite decadent, sipping tea and watching some really bad home reno show on HGTV. Apparently lots of Americans volunteer today, but since I hadn't heard of that until yesterday, I'm being the lazy foreigner...