One of the best parts of the winter break for me was when my
friend Ginny came to Houston to spend a couple days with me. Besides just
hanging out at my house, we decided to go to the Houston Museum of Natural
Science, which is way cool by the way. The Houston Museum has completely
renovated the hall of paleontology, so now all the dinosaurs are in this really
cool room size might set up like a timeline moving you throughout history from
the time of the trilobites to modern man. (Plus, they gave the dinosaurs names!
Stan the T-Rex is my favorite) The museum also has a rather extensive Egyptian
exhibit which I always enjoy. One of the temporary exhibits was called Sharks!
where I learned a Bit about the sharks that swim in the Gulf of Mexico as well
as some major research projects various scientists and organizations are
involved in currently. Ginny and the other friends that we met at the museum
also got to pet small sharks in tanks.
While we were at the museum, we also went to the butterfly
exhibit. For those of you not from Houston or Houstonians who have yet to visit
the museum (shame on you! You need to go!), the butterfly exhibit is this huge atrium
that has a massive waterfall and is designed like the rain forest. It stays the
same temperature year-round (which is great because it was freezing outside
when we went, but more on that later) and is filled with butterflies from many
different species as well as a pretty chill iguana and beautiful flowers and
plants. Attached to the atrium, on the second level, is a massive insect
display where all different kinds of bugs species are in glass cages throughout
the room (it was kind of disturbing especially the jumbo bugs that I told Ginny
that I would probably sacrifice her and run away if one attacked us).
Lastly, while Ginny and I were at the museum, we decided to
see Night at the Museum 3. We both
really liked the movie, but thought the ending was a really sad (we didn’t care
that they put a somewhat happy reunion on the end. It didn’t matter; it was
still sad).
The worst part of my winter break was the freezing cold
weather. Because the weather was so cold and rainy and disgusting, Ginny and I
didn’t get to go to the zoo. We were really bummed out that we didn’t get to go
because we were both looking forward to feeding the giraffes and seeing the new
baby giraffe. I even got Ginny a giraffe for Christmas because after seeing a
picture of the baby giraffe, she decided she wanted a giraffe for Christmas.
So, genius that I am, I adopted a giraffe via the World Wildlife Fund (yes, I
know it’s really just donating money for a piece of paper) and got a Build a
Bear giraffe named GG (for Ginny’s giraffe).