Gay Charlotte - Natalie - Day 4

Day four was boss.

We finally woke up on time and decided to make yet another Target run due to our lack of bananas. It was just as amazing as the first time. We then decided to go visit the second Mint Museum that's just a few blocks from the church we are staying at. This museum is less contemporary than the one we went to yesterday, but it was a really amazing experience. There was an exhibit about Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III and the and this city’s namesake. We also saw some pretty cool masks, costumes and an intriguing bamboo thing (below).

I just couldn’t resist.

Some of the costumes from the Mint Museum. #swag

A very nice lady at the gift shop who we had also seen at the other Mint Museum gift shop yesterday had a little crush on Mitch. She complimented his eyes and then decided to give us all free souvenir books that featured art from both museums. People are so generous here.

We had a bit of time before we needed to head on over to the community center for the day, so we decided to play Cranium in a park nearby. We have played this game a total of three times, and we keep getting more and more into it. Just sayin’, but I’ve won every game. All of the games.

After our Cranium times we went to the LGBT community center and put together over 500 safe sex kits. While we were doing that, Solita from SMASH gave us a two hour teaching session about safe sex and STIs. I definitely learned things I hadn’t been aware of before and it was great to be doing something helpful while we were soaking up all of that information.

Also, shout out to Colom, a volunteer at the LGBT center who brought his pug, Smokey, to meet us and made us raspberry chocolate cheesecake FROM SCRATCH. There is no shortness of generosity here - from the lady at the museum to people here at St. John's Baptist Church.

Case in point, O’Neale, the center’s administrator, got us free tickets to a comedy club nearby to see Pauly Shore perform! We all had a lot of fun, despite Pauly’s poor rendition of the Party Rock Anthem and some rantings against Hilary Clinton.

We got Pauly to sign Flat Jay!

When we got back we decided to try out some of the church’s roller skates. Though none of us are particularly athletic, we thought it would be a good idea. We may have incorrectly judged that one though, as two of us (the same two who got hurt at kickball last night, actually) ended up getting hurt. Still fun!

-Natalie Parker