This trip was so much fun! We went in early June, at the beginning of the summer after 8th grade. I shared a room with Hazel, and two other girls I didn't know, Brielle and Ingrid. I hung out a lot with Hazel and Elizabeth S. Elizabeth and Izzy came too, but they were a different group. My group leaders were Mr. Smallcanyon, Mrs. McCurdy, and Mrs. Moreira. Mr. Smallcanyon is really funny. He was always teasing us and saying silly stuff. Mrs. McCurdy is so awesome! Hazel, Aliza, Elodie, Elizabeth, and I talked to her a lot while we were walking around the city. She told us the story of the book she wrote, and a few other stories. Mrs. Moreira I honestly didn't see very much because she had family in the city and got a lot of our tickets and stuff. At the beginning of the trip, we got orange lanyards to hold our metro cards on. I also had my phone on it. A really fun surprise was that Mrs. McCurdy made us a bunch of pins with our favorite stuff on them.
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| Elizabeth S., me, and Hazel! |
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| I saw Ever After and Emma both for the first time on the plane. They were really fun! |
To go on the trip, I applied in October. For the next couple of months, we had lessons the first Monday of the month about various parts of the trip, like the history of African-Americans in the US. It was fun to go to the classes with my friends, and I learned a lot about things like 9/11 that I had never heard before. The last two classes were my favorite, though. They were about the logistics of the trip, and it was so exciting! At first, when I learned who my group leaders were, I was disappointed, but Mr. Smallcanyon and Mrs. McCurdy were so fun! Mrs. McCurdy always walked in front, and we would chat with her, and she told us the Cinderella story she wrote. We did so much walking! Over the whole week, it was about 70 miles.  |
| Right after we landed, we rode the metro to a building and walked through this little garden area that was really pretty. It was so humid and hot! |
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| The baseball game was so fun! Hazel and I decided that we would cheer for this guy named Alex Call. I can't even remember which team he was on, but it was really funny. In my journal, I wrote that he played middle outfield. We got a yummy dinner and didn't pay any attention to the game at all. The baseball itself was honestly really boring. It was the Arizona Diamondbacks against the Washington Nats. I'm pretty sure the Diamondbacks won. I didn't even notice when they shifted from warm ups to the real game! The only noticeable difference was that there was more people wearing different colors. Apparently, it was British-American Friendship Day, so there was some funny announcements about that. You can kind of see in this picture how bad the air quality was. The sun was literally orange. |
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| The hotel breakfast was so yummy! |
Every day, the teachers gave us a time we needed to be in the lobby totally ready to go, so we planned our wake up time off of that. We woke up an hour and a half before that time so we would have enough time to get ready. We were talking with Gavin and Calvin, two boys in our group, and they only woke up a half an hour before the meet time.
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| The White House was so cool! They had these cool groupings of pictures of important moments in one hallway. |
On the second day, the first thing we did was go to the White house. It was so opulent! We had to wait in a line that literally stretched for an entire block. Some of the people on the street were really weird. There was a guy preaching, and always just strange people walking around. While we were in line, a huge bee landed on Adamells (one of the crazier people in my group.) He screamed and jumped so high! It was really funny. Later, Ingrid told him there was another bee on his back, and he shrieked!
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| I would love to visit the White House gardens! They look really pretty. |
The White House felt so big! It is 55,000 square feet and has 35 bathrooms. When I was coming in, they told us to remove everything from our pockets, but I was so nervous I forgot. Because of this, I had to be screened by hand by a Secret Service agent! It was so scary!
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| There was all these rooms that were very color themed. All the rooms have the same color palette, and it was so fun to walk through! This room was a library or a study. |
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| A mustard yellow sitting room? I love the orchids! Also, that table is so shiny. |
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| This is the red room where they keep the china. I'm not sure what that weird alter thing in the middle is supposed to be. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed in very many rooms, just to peek in the doorway. |
There were a lot of portraits of First Ladies around. Some of them didn't get a name though. I saw a huge portrait of a First Lady, and all it said was Mrs. Ronald Reagan.
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| I called this one the Green Portrait Room. Even though it doesn't really look like it, it had a really tall ceiling. |
All of the rooms had really fancy molding on the ceiling. Also,
every single room had a unique fancy chandelier. Everything was coordinating and ridiculously fancy.
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| Welcome to Blue and Yellow President Circle! Apparently oval rooms were in style, so there was a handful of rooms like that. There were a few at Mount Vernon as well. |
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| This is by far the most fancy piano I have ever seen. |
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| The White House's "front yard" would probably be better described as gardens. |
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This was some of the best food I had the whole trip! This restaurant was called GCDC (Grilled Cheese DC). I got a bacon jam and jalapeño sandwich, and it was amazing! It inspired a new grilled cheese at our house when I got home.
 | | It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but the front of the Capitol Building was under construction while I was here. It was so hot here, with no shade! |
 | | Mrs. McCurdy told us that this is the city hall of DC, so it's the capital of the capitol. |
 | | This bison was so big! |
After the White House and GCDC, we went to the Museum of Natural History. It was my favorite! Hazel, Elizabeth and I spent most of our time in the geology section, so I have all the pictures of sparkly rocks.
 | | The Hope Diamond was so pretty! It is the most sparkly thing I have ever seen. The entire chain has diamonds on it. |
 | | This reminded me of a mini awesome disco ball. |
 | | They also had jewels set in jewelry, and it was so pretty! All the stuff looked really ornate, expensive, and heavy. |
 | | This amethyst was so huge! It was way fun because I was allowed to touch it. |
 | | Sadly, I only walked through this hall because we only got 1.5 hours to do the entire museum. It was so cool though! |
 | | I found the best heart rock ever. |
 | This fish was so weird!
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| After the Natural History Museum, we went to the Mary McLeod Bethune House. Her house was the headquarters for a society that fought for women's and civil rights. It felt shockingly like a normal, if old-fashioned, house. |
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| The Washington Monument is so pretty! |
After the Mary McLeod Bethune House, we went to the Lincoln Memorial. It was so pretty! There was a lot of people, all walking around looking and climbing all over the steps. There was a weird little visitor's center under it. In the bathrooms, literally all of the locks were broken, so you needed to come with a friend that could hold the door.
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| I love this panorama I took!!! |
The air quality was a level purple, which is the second worst one. It was also particularly bad at the Lincoln Memorial because it was prom that night. Apparently, it is tradition to come with your date to the Lincoln Memorial on prom, so there were all these teenagers smoking everywhere. The whole area smelled so bad!
One of the craziest things that happened was this night. A girl named Nile, who got switched out of our group because she was too crazy, tried to have a sleepover. She was hanging out in our room, telling stories and chatting, when someone knocked on the door. Nile looked through the peephole, and said very loudly, "It's the teachers!" We shoved her in the bathroom, where Brielle was showering, and opened the door. Mrs. McCurdy and Mrs. Moreira said, "We need to see all the girls-including Nile". I thought we were going to get in so much trouble! All they told us though was that Nile needed to go back to her room soon and they had a change in the wakeup time. Later, they tried to say that we should have the sleepover later, but I kind of shot that down. I don't want to get in trouble. I woke up pretty early every day anyway. I slept closest to the wall-sized window, and all the other girls like to sleep with the window all the way open. I spent over half an hour the first morning watching the shades in the building next to us move a little.
The next day, we went to Mt. Vernon! It reminded me of the White House, just smaller and a little less fancy. It was still so ornate and color-themed! It was George Washington's home from 1754-1799, for 45 years. The weathervane is a dove of peace. On the property, there was a tree that I saw with a plaque that said it has been alive since 1785!
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| It has a really pretty view of the Potomac River. |
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| The ceilings! |
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| Here we have the Blue Flower Bedroom. |
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| This is the White Misc. Pattern Room. |
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Some of George Washington's china. It was so fancy!
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After Mount Vernon, we had lunch at the food court and went to the museum of American History and Culture. The culture wing was so cool! My favorite exhibit was one of a lot of first ladies' dresses. They were so fancy and beautiful! When we were on the metro today, a high guy came through the door during the ride and started swearing at Adamells. Mr. Smallcanyon had to tell him to leave.
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| This picture is just Googled, because for some reason I don't have any pictures of it. It was so cool to see all the different styles! |
That night, we went to Walgreens and the girls in our group all got snacks, and Hazel got root beer. We had a mini party in our room. It was fun! Every night, we turned on HGTV and watched for a little while, which was fun.
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| There is the Lincoln Memorial in the background. It was actually a really big, cool memorial. |
The next day, we started off with the WW2 Memorial! It was so beautiful and peaceful! We walked around for like half an hour. There was 4 little pools.
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| I love the fountain so much! |
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| So pretty! |
After the WW2 memorial, we went to the National Archives. It was amazing! I saw the Constitution and Declaration of Independence! The papers were really big, and the ink was so faded! It was pretty much impossible to read anything. The National Archives had the tightest security, after the White House. We weren't allowed to take pictures at all, which is too bad. After the National Archives, we went to the Air and Space Museum! It was super cool! It was really big, but we didn't get very much time. Hazel, Elizabeth and I spent way too long messing with these migration interactives. It was so fun!
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| This is the command capsule for Apollo 11. They had the coolest stuff! |
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| Somewhat unsuccessfully trying to hold the flag.;) |
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| We had like half an hour for the American Art museum. It was cool! This was my favorite piece. It was all made of tinfoil! |
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| This is the MLK monument. I can't believe I cut off his face! Oh well, I got Hazel's.;) This was such a fun area on the National Mall, with Lincoln, Korean, Vietnam, MLK, Washington, and WW2 memorials within walking distance and Jefferson and FDR on the other side of a lake. |
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| The Jefferson memorial was so fancy! I love all the cool stone on everything. |
The next day, we started out with Arlington National Cemetery, in the hopes it would be less hot. (I about boiled to death). It was beautiful! I love how the graves are all arranged in lines.
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| According to the tour guide, there are so many people buried in Arlington a lot of the people who are buried now are cremated to save space. |
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| The whole Kennedy families' graves are there by Arlington House. |
The history of the property is fascinating! It was one of the lessons leading up to the trip. The property was originally in George Washington's family. After, it was owned by Robert E Lee, who left to fight in the Civil War. While he was gone, Union soldiers took over. They freed the enslaved people and made a little village to teach them trades so the enslaved people could find work. Military burials started happening, and because the nearby national cemeteries ran out of space, Arlington became a national cemetery.
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| Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American on the Supreme Court. |
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| RBG's grave! They had so many people I've heard of buried here. |
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| This is the Tomb of the Forgotten Soldier. It is for all of the people who died in war and we don't know their names. |
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| This view is so amazing! I love the Washington Monument in the background. |
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| This picture is super blurry, which is to bad. It is the fountain in the African-American history museum. |
After Arlington, we went to the African American history museum. It was so cool! We started at the bottom level and moved up through history. It was so fascinating to learn more about the Underground Railroad and resistance.  |
This was the 9/11 Pentagon memorial. It was so beautiful at night! It was cool to walk through and see all the people's names. |
The next morning, we started off with John Curtis's office and toured the Capitol Building. John Curtis is one of Utah's 4 representatives. It was so cool! It was funny, because the area where the Representatives work is kind of plain, modern and boring. But the area where the Senate works is really ornate and historic feeling. |
| This is the Supreme Court room! The guide told us that they got to pick their own chairs, and I was really excited about it, picturing an array from a big red armchair to a stool. It was kind of disappointing to learn that he just meant a selection of black office chairs. :) |
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| The statue of Brigham Young is shoved in a corner, but it was still cool! Every state got to donate two statues to the capitol building. Utah donated Brigham Young and Philo T Farnsworth. |
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| All the architecture in DC is so fancy! |
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| The WW1 Memorial was cool! We were kind of disrespectful, though. It was fun to jump in the 2" of water in the rain. The teachers let us do it, though, and my shoes were all wet for the rest of the day. |
After the Capitol building, we went to the White House visitor center. It was raining, so we were happy to be inside. It was fun to look around, until a little kid pulled the fire alarm. We all had to evacuate outside to the rain. This was so funny because it shares a building with the Department of Commerce. When we went outside, there was all these grumpy people in suits. After we evacuated, we went to the WW1 memorial, which was across the street.
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| The wall on the Korean Veterans Memorial was so cool! |
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| This was so cool! It reminded me of dot art in that it was hard to see unless you focused on it right. |
This was one of my favorite things! We went to the National Botanical Gardens in the afternoon, and they were so pretty! We walked around outside for a few minutes, then went inside to the greenhouses. They were so beautiful!!!
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| I love the moss on the path with the roses!! |
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| Cana Lily! |
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| This was one of the first rooms inside. There were a bunch of rooms, with a variety of tropical plants. There were all these bridges and water features, and my phone camera just doesn't do it justice. |
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| It was so tropical!!!! |
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| I love this wall with all the plants! |
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| I think this is the room that was devoted to orchids. The majority of the plants were vines, and it was so gorgeous! |
The garden has about 65000 plants, but only 30%-50% are on display at any given time.
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| This Bird of Paradise is so big! |
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| That's a ceiling fan, not a statue, which is what I thought at first looking at it. |
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| Strangler figs are my favorite. Why are all the parasite plants so pretty and fun? |
Mommy commented to me later that I didn't do very many Marco Polos, and then I came here and sent like eight. I took 62 pictures of the botanical gardens!
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| We went back to the Washington Monument, because is there every too many pictures of it? |
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| Seriously, so pretty!! |
Last day! We got all of 25 minutes at the National Zoo, but I did get to see the giant pandas!
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| This one looks sort of dead, but I don't think it is. |
Ford's Theater was so cool! They keep it decorated like it was when Lincoln was assassinated, although it is a working theater. When he was assassinated on April 15, 1865, there were over 1000 people, even though the theater only seats 650.
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| It was really cool to see how fancy it was. We sat in the theater seats and listened to a cool presentation. |
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| I was always so confused at how someone could jump from the balcony to the stage, but it makes sense. |
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| In the visitor's center, there was a really cool spiral staircase with fake metal copies of real books about Lincoln's assassination in the middle. |
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| Coming home! |
This trip was so amazing. I loved every minute of spending time with my friends and seeing all the cool historical things. We had so much fun learning about everything, and I would love to come back sometime. I would want to revisit the Natural History Museum, the Botanical Gardens, the National Zoo, and the Air and Space Museum the most.
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