Washington D.C. Day 2

Here we go! My day started at 5:45A.M. As chaperones we had to get ourselves ready and then knock all the doors to get the kids up. We had to be to breakfast by 6:45 and on the buses at 7:30. This picture is me trying to take a picture of myself with the trucker hat. It may just be a little more sporty on my head than on Dreyton's??Our first stop was Mt. Vernon. It must have been on ALL the tour buses itineray that day because there were bus load after bus load of people there at the same time we visited. Mt. Vernon is where George Washington and his family lived. This is a picture of his home. We were able to walk around the grounds and see his tombstone, the farming grounds and the museum.

This is the other side of George Washington's home.

Our second stop was visiting the Air and Space Museum. McDonald's is located inside the museum, so this was where the kids had lunch. I think they were more excited to eat lunch at McDonalds then tour the museum. How can the scientific discoveries of aviation compete with a Big Mac and fries?

We only had an hour and a half to tour the Air and Space museum before we had to load up on the bus. Here we are outside of the museum waiting for the bus. It was a day FULL of orange.

Our next stop was an outside visit to the White House. Unfortunately, it took a long time to drive to the White House due to several roads being blocked that day because of the shooting that occured at the Holocaust Museum. An 80-year-old white supremist walked in the museum and shot a black security guard. The sad thing is that the white supremist had already served time for another crime. It's unfortunate that the security guard died and the old man lived (he was shot twice by other guards and taken to the hospital). The museum has only been open for seven weeks. We had the option to tour the museum on Tuesday, but our principal decided to not visit this museum. She felt like the museum would be too deep for the fifth graders. I know other groups were supposed to tour the Museum on Wednesday (the day the shooting took place), but the museum closed. On Wednesday, Donovan called me on my cell phone and asked where I was. I told him we were trying to find our way to the white house. The streets had been blocked due to a shooting. He was calling to tell me that he had read about the shooting online, and he was making sure we were ok.

We made it to the White House. Here is a group picture of the kids. The public has not been able to tour this inside of the White House for several years, but we did see protesters on the outside.
Next stop: Ford Theatre. This is the theatre were President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Boothe. The picture below is were Lincoln was sitting at the time of the play.

Next stop: Dinner at the Great American Buffet. It was pretty good buffet food. The waitresses kept refilling the kids drinks. As a chaperone, I had to make sure the kids didn't have coffee for breakfast, and we had to make sure the kids ate something besides dessert for dinner. I know I lived quite a sheltered childhood, but I can't believe parents let their elementary age children drink coffee. Aren't children already hyper enough? Isn't adding caffeine like throwing gas on a fire? Anywho...

We left dinner and went to the Metro Station. The children were so excited to ride the subway. Most of the children have never seen a subway. There was a small problem with the ride on the subway. Since the children drank so much for dinner, they had to pee REALLY BAD. Who would want to use the bathroom in the subway? When we exited the subway we could not find the bathrooms anywhere. These kids had to pee so bad I thought we were going to have a few accidents. We finally did make it to the bus, and several kids were lined up to use the bathoorm on the bus. The flusher broke, so I decided I could wait!!

After dinner, we were able to visit several war memorials. This is a picture of the Korean Memorial.

This is the Lincoln Memorial.

This is a picture of the Washington Monument. We didn't get tickets to go to the top, but we saw the outside. This monument stands 555 feet tall.

These are the three soilders representing the Vietnam Memorial.

This is The Wall that lists all of the soldiers who fought and died in the Vietnam War.

We didn't get back to the hotel until 9:30pm. I climbed into bed at 11:00, but I couldn't fall asleep. I really wanted to be asleep after a long day of walking and childhood antics.

Day 3 will be forthcoming...