Charlene TS #5 Adult

Arrived early at the Museum of Florida History at the R.A. Gray Building in downtown Tallahassee. This museum tour is free, and museum attendees are given a free parking token at the end of their tour that allows exit from the parking garage next door. I had texted all of this information to Soon Gyu, along with a map. When she arrived, we signed the guest book and started the tour. Attendees walk through on their own; docent-guided tours are only provided to groups, usually school children. I had not been to this museum for several years, and it has since been renovated. All of the old favorites are here--the prehistoric giant armadillo and the reassembled bones of a giant mammoth--but, much more appears to have been added, and it took well over an hour for us to walk through. We viewed and read the Paleo-Indian period, the Spanish period, the English period, saw tons of shipwreck "booty," The American Civil War, the forestry exhibit, the citrus industry exhibit, a small exhibit devoted to the hurricane and yellow fever epidemic in Port St. Joe in the 19th century--and these are only the exhibits that I can remember. We were both left with the feeling that we had missed a lot, but we never stopped reading and ogling the exhibits. Soon Gyu was most interested in the prehistoric exhibits. She was able to read the posted verbiage with no help from me. Her reading level is quite high. I tried to add what information I knew, e.g., the mammoth was found in Wakulla County; in prehistoric times, a sea covered this part of Florida up to where the Leon County Fairgrounds are now located. The last exhibit is always a temporary one that focuses on some part of Florida's history not found in the museum. Today, there was a NASCAR exhibit. Soon Gyu was not familiar with car racing, but did find it mildly interesting. The "fun" of going round and round in a circle is a hard concept to get across unless you have "been there."  And, of course, the length of this visit left us both pretty weary by the time be got to the NASCAR room. Upon exiting the museum, we decided to meet again next week at Strozier Library to discuss some grammar and work on pronunciation.