Today I had the opportunity to go up to Salt Lake to see the Body Worlds exhibit. See, at my school there is a MAPS (Medical Anatomy and Physiology Science) class taught by a certain Ms. Warner. That class, a chemistry class taught by Mrs. Smith (no idea why they went), a random sophomore in Biology (even though I’d heard that only juniors and seniors could go), and me, Savy, and Matt Vaughn from Earth Systems went. By the way, Earth Systems is the science class you’re supposed to get into when you’re a freshman, but somehow me and a few other people go away without having a science class at all in 9th grade. So now as juniors, we get to hang out with the freshman during 7th hour… whoo hoo! The three of us didn’t even have to go, we just really, really wanted to. And since Ms. Warner like loves us, she called it good. We’re just special like that. :)
I just realized that not everyone might know what the heck Body Worlds even is. I know Keith does, because he’s the one that got me all psyched to go! “This is a traveling exhibit (the one we went to is, like I said, in Salt Lake and will be there until January 11th, 2009… in case you’re interested.) of preserved human bodies and body parts that are prepared using a technique called plastination to reveal inner anatomical structures.“ (Wikipedia’s words, not mine.) In other words, it’s a big museum of the human body with actual human bodies which are plasticated so they don't smell and they last forever and ever. It was SO cool! There were 22 full body features, which showed all the muscles and tissues and internal organs and… other organs… The grossest part for me though was the fact that these people, who had donated their bodies to this after they died, still had their ears, lips, eyebrows, noses, fingernails, and BELLY BUTTONS. Yucky! But other than that, they were just amazing. They had people in different poses, like “The archer” and “The trapeze artist” etc.
The hardest part for me to see was actually optional. When we had our orientation before the tour, the lady warned us ahead of time that there was a section devoted to the progressive stages of the fetus during pregnancy, and that if you didn’t want to see it you could just keep going straight. Well, by the time me and my two friends got to the point where we had to decide if we wanted to see it or not, they had started to go in, so I just followed. In this little section, it was so much quieter than the rest of the museum (which was already pretty reverent considering how many people there were…). There was a counter that had some tall glass tubes lined up, each with like a glass shelf thing in the middle and cards at the bottom saying “Beginning of 5th week,” “Middle of 5th week,” “End of 5th week,” etc. On the shelves were actual fetuses that women who had miscarried had donated to this exhibit. The first few tubes were just kind of “meh” to me, because I didn’t recognize them. But once I saw like the end of the 10th week, it actually looked like a little person… and I just broke down crying. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen. But it was important, too I suppose.
Anyways… I just want to throw in a little tribute to Ms. Warner. As some of you might know, she and I got off to a rocky start at the beginning of last year when I had her for Biology. But after a while, she got slightly less crazy (only with the difficulty of the work… in no other way did she gain even a little bit of sanity.) and I got better at the work and now we’re friends! I am so sad I don’t get to have her this year. She is an amazing person who has traveled all over the world, built schools and clinics in Nepal, gotten an infection from a leech while hiking the Himalayas, etc. Also, she is the only person I know who can sit there with 4 chatty teenage girls (me being one of them) and explain how heart transplants work without being boring. She actually came to the back of the bus today because I guess we were being too loud, and “threatened” to sit back there with us. Little did she know that we LOVE hangin out with her, so we ended up sitting her down right next to Brianna and showing her pictures on all of our phones. GOOD TIMES!
After a few hours of Disney songs, the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme song, random sneak attacks from Tyler, and lots and LOTS of Laffy Taffys, we finally made it home. By the way, i am typing this at 12:23 AM because I really wanted to blog about it, but the next chance I get won't be until like Sunday. So... hopefully I can get up on time in the morning. :/
1 people find me hilarious:
That's so cool. Todd asked me if I wanted to see that after Thanksgiving when we come back up, so he, Kristen and I will be going through there. I'm glad you were brave enough to go through the pregnancy exibit, because I think that's important to us women.
Besides, who would want an abortion after seein THAT? Sad.
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