:)well, the airplane ride there was pretty uneventful.......lots of sitting......more sitting........and even more sitting.
when we finally got to Washington D.C. we drove past the new Air Force memorial, it's really cool. there are 3 metal spires heading up into the sky in a certain flying formation, i think it's called the "bomb burst" hehe. we also saw the Pentagon on the way in. after dinner we had a tour of 5 memorials. we visited the Iwo Jima memorial, the Lincoln memorial, the Vietnam Veterans memorial, the WWII memorial and the Korean war memorial. Our guide was cool, she gave us trivia for a lot of the memorials and things, and our trivia for the Lincoln memorial was to find the misspelled word in his second inaugural address, which is carved on the wall to your right when you are facing the statue. the word was Future, accidentally spelled Euture. poor guy, he messed it up
lol people have tried to make it less noticeable by sanding it down and stuff, but you can still tell.
After all that we had to wait for the school we shared a bus with to finish watching a play at the Kennedy Center. we got to walk around on the balconies and stuff, but we still had to wait too long, like an hour or so. it was pretty cool to see the city at night though.
second day was pretty cool, it still felt like we'd be in D. C. forever, so nobody was thinking much about only having 3 days left. first off we went to Arlington National Cemetery. Our guide was great, and I really liked it. It was one of my favorite places on the whole trip. we got to see John F. Kennedy's grave with the eternal flame representing living forever. (in people's memory
) Robert F. Kennedy's grave was there also. He has just a plain white cross to mark his grave because that's exactly what he wanted. We also got to see the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. that was really neat. did you know that the guard can't bend down below the waist because his uniform is so tight?!?!?! he has to call someone if his shoelace is untied!!!!!!!! the new guard gets inspected and then there is a small part where both the old and new guard walk together, then the old one leaves. The guard is an honorary guard, so his gun is not loaded, and he always keeps it on the side away from the tomb. the guard can see the pentagon really well from where he stands, and on 9/11, when it was hit, he didn't even move from his duties to call someone! now that's discipline.
Arlington National Cemetery used to be General Robert E. Lee's house and plantation and when war broke out between the North and the South, he was offered a spot as a general of the Union, but he didn't feel that he could fight against his friends, and consequently joined the Confederate Army. the property tax law at the time was that you had to go into Washington to pay it in person. now General Lee's wife, who legally owned the property, didn't feel safe going into Washington to pay her taxes, so she sent a maid to do it. This was breaking the law, so the government took over the property and made it into a camp for the Union soldiers. A few years later, when Lincoln decided that we needed a National Cemetery, he asked someone to pick a spot for it. (i can't remember the guys name, forgive me). This man was very angry at General Lee for joining the Confederate Army, and he wanted to insult him by burring bodies in front of his house!! so that's where he picked for a graveyard.
After the cemetery was our White House tour!!!!!!!!!
I was really excited, but the tour its self was a bit disappointing. we only got to go in the first 2 floors, not the 3rd and 4th where the president works and lives. We saw the Green, Red, and Blue rooms as well as a very large dining room, a ball room and the bottom of the grand staircase. one of our leaders got the Secret Service men talking and that was pretty interesting. One of the guys didn't seem to like George Bush all that much, and was looking forward to being transferred to the Vice President's house. Which he said is a lot more relaxed. another secret service agent had worked there since George H. W. Bush was in office!!!!
Lunch was pretty yummy. we went to a food court and could get anything that was on this little food ticket thingy that World Strides, the program we went with, provided. i had the yummiest pod tigh ever!! well it wasn't the yummiest ever, but it was really good.
After lunch was the International Spy Museum!!!!!!! that was totally awesome!!!!! it was my favorite museum. they had you pick a secret identity when you walked in, which you had to remember for a quiz later on. there were all sorts of awesome gadgets that spys use like a lipstick gun, a pin that is a camera, and other awesome things like that. once we finished with the museum, we walked down the street to Ford's Theatre where we were told the story of Lincoln's assasination by a ranger, then we went across the street to the patterson house where we only got to see the room where he died.
That night we went to an army pageant sort of thing called "Twilight Tattoo" lol kinda silly name if you ask me. it was really cool. they had the army drill team, the fife and drum corps and a little history of the US thingy. during the show a helecopter flew over us and landed in front of the White House!!! everyone said that it was the Vice-President's helecopter!!!!!!! i got a really awesome picture of it in front of the Washington Monument, which i'll try to post later.
Third Day.
It felt like we'd been in D. C. forever by now, and still wouldn't be leaving any time soon. our first activity was a tour of Capitol Hill. It started off with the Supreme Court. We didn't get inside the actual Court Chambers, but we got a self tour of the building. there is an awesome spiral staircase that is held up by the wall!!! but it doesn't look like it's held up by anything at all!! second stop was the Library of Congress where we saw the Guttenburg Bible! it is humungus!!!! and the ceilings in the Library are really awesome! there are tons of neat quotes about books and knowledge on the walls too. and our guide said that any US Citizen 18 years or older can get a library card!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she actually had one!!! you can't take the books out of the library, but they will let you use them for reserch. after about 20 mins in the Library, we went to a congress building to get a guide for our capitol tour. she was one of Diane Fienstein's interns. we went through tunnels to the capitol, and in the tunnels was the plaster cast for "Freedom" the statue on top of the capitol building. she is 19 1/2 feet tall, and no statue in the city is supposed to be taller. one of our trivia questions was "If no statue in the city is supposed to be taller than Freedom, then why is the Iwo Jima memorial taller??"...........well it's not in the city!!! it's in Virginia!!
gotch! hehe
The Capitol building is really neat. one guy did almost all the artwork in the building!!!!! it's amazing. he did scenes of important historical moments in US history. and he left a lot of open spaces for us to fill in later. we got to see the old Supreme Court Chambers inside the capitol, and we actually got to sit in the House of Representitives!!!!! nothing was happening, but it was still pretty cool.
After lunch we went to the Holocaust museum. it was really sad. i don't really want to elaborate about all the dredfull things the nazis did. That night we went to see the FDR memorial and the Jefferson memorial. I really liked the FDR memorial because it's very outdoorsy. there is a lot of water, both still to signify death, and moving to signify how his spirit and values live on.
Fourth Day.
It feels like we leave REALLY soon. this is our last full day! We started the day off at Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. luckily we got to stay there until lunch, so we really had time to appreciate it. there was a video about George Washington's life when you walk in, so we all watched that. It was really good. I felt so stupid at one part, because i jumped about a foot during a battle scene, and the lady next to me looked at me like i was the dumbest girl in the whole world. after the movie we wanted to go to his house, but the line to get into it was an hour long, so we opted to just wonder the gardens, see his tomb and go through the museum. It was all really neat. They have real live pigs living there!!!!!!!! in the museum there were 3 life size reproductions of George Washington at age 19, 47 and 54. They have taken scans of a plaster mold of his face and studied all his portraits to make every detail as good as possible. i got pictures!! i'll try to post them too.
After the morning at Mount Vernon we went to the Natural History Museum. I thought it was boring. Dead animals just don't do it for me. after that museum was a stop at the National Archives! our guide said that only a month or so before we were there, Nicholas Cage was there filming National Treasure 2!!
We got to see the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and loads of other really important documents.
Day Five.
Last day!!!!!! NO!!!!!! it will be good to be home though.
The Air and Space museum was one of our first stops. I really liked it, but we didn't have enough time there. I got to see the Spirit of St. Luis, Apollo 11, Amelia Earheart's plane (not the one she went down in) and the Wright brother's plane! it was amazing.
After that short museum stop we went up in the Washington Monument!!!!! It was very impressive. I learned that the tip is made of solid tin! it was very valuble at the time. there is some sort of enscription on it, but everyone wanted to leave before i got a chance to read it.
That was our last stop! on the way to the airport our bus driver took us through Embassy Row and by the National Cathedral. we actually got out of the bus while at a red light to take pictures of it!!!!!! the security guard go soooo mad!! he's like "YOU CANNOT DO THIS!! YOU CANNOT DO THIS!! THE NEIGHBORS ARE CALLING THE POLICE THE MINUTE YOU OPEN YOUR DOORS!! YOU CANNOT DO THIS!!" it was really funny.
The plane ride home was totally uneventfull. We flew home on Jet Blue, the best airline ever!! everyone has a TV above their tray table, and you can watch just about anything you want. I watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean. it's an awesome movie! i had forgotten how good it is.
wow!! that's a lot of typing!!! my hands are tired now!! hope it's not too much for everyone!!