8 Hours Away From A Dream

Hello everyone! I’m so sorry I haven’t been posting any blogs recently, I’ve been very busy here at language camp and my first post about German is almost done. This is actually an older post, which I had tried to save and post in the airport on airport WiFi, but despite having checked to see if it was posted (and it was, it showed up as posted), it seems to have been lost for good. I tried to rewrite it here, although it’s hard to remember exactly what I was feeling as we left. Oh well, here it is and I hope you like it.

   I’m leaving for Germany in just a few minutes, so my journey is finally about to begin. I’m incredibly excited to begin this crazy adventure, but first I’ll share with you what has been happening the past few days. We resume on Wednesday, August 3; several hours after we finally arrived in DC, when we drove into the city to explore the Mall. We were visiting at night, because you can actually park at night, and because it’s much cooler. After parking as close as we could, our first stop was the Jefferson memorial. It was a short walk along a pond towards it, and you had a great view of the Washington Monument at the edge of the pond.

    

   We then continued to the Washington Monument, which was larger than anything I could have imagined from the textbooks. We around it and had lots of fun, before we moved on to the more somber and thoughtful monuments, the WWII Memorial.

   After this, we headed down the reflecting pool to what is arguably the most famous of the monuments, the Lincoln Memorial.

   We had spent almost 4 hours at the monuments now, so we decided it was time to be heading back. We got plenty of rest, because tomorrow was going to be a pretty crazy day. The next day we woke up, ate breakfast, and headed to the train station. Taking the metro into the city was a much easier choice during the busy, bustling daytime hours. We bought metrocards and took our train to Archives Station, which op course dropped us off near the National Archive (and incidentally near the Navy Memorial). From there we walked back to the Mall, but this time we were much closer to the Smithsonians. Our first stop was the Air & Space Museum, on the other side of the Mall. After entering (which became a hassle because my dad had brought a butter knife for the peanut butter, which security wasn’t happy about), we walked around the entire museum (although it was quite quick, especially with my younger siblings). The various relics of ages of exploration and war that filled the museum were extremely interesting, and it was fantastic to see all these pieces of history in the same place at the same time.

   After our visit, we got a quick snack from a street vendor, and stopped by the Smithsonian castle. Not to far from the castle was a carousel, which my siblings requested to ride as soon as they saw it, so we also stopped there.

    From there, we visited the Museum of American History, which was enormous. We only had the time to explore the lower area, but the museum had much, much more to offer. First we stopped at the creative areas so my younger siblings could run around a bit, and then we moved on to the Revolutionary War, WWI, WWII, Korean War, and Cold War exhibits. We also saw the kitchen of Julia Childs, and stopped at a few other exhibits. By this time it was already 5:00, so we headed outside for a break before we went back home. We got some ice cream and played around in the grass while our parents took a quick rest. By 5:45 we were headed to the metro, and we were on our way home.

   The next day (Friday, August 5) we hopped on the metro again to visit my dad’s friend from college. He worked at the Navy Yard in DC, so we took the metro to the Navy Yard station. We met up with my dad’s friend, and headed to a small park where we got some food from the food trucks. I got a steak taco, which is just as good as it sounds. We then went on base, and headed to the museum, passing their park full of enormous naval cannons, anchors, and submarine parts (sorry, no pictures of these, base rules). It covered American naval history up to the beginning of the Cold War. They had another museum which resumes at the end of WWII, but we spent so long in this museum we never visited it. This museum was especially fun, because all the exhibits were very interactive. There was a working periscope that let you look around from the roof, an anti-air turret that you could actually move around, and a mockup of the side of a Revolution-era ship. It was also stuffed full of models, real aircraft, a submarine, and information. It was really a great museum, but we had to leave when my dad’s friend left, as we weren’t allowed on base without an escort.

 

  

We took a train back to archives, and went into the Museum of Natural History, which was once again, absolutely massive. We were only able to explore three of the four floors, and we didn’t even see all the exhibits on those three floors. The first exhibit we visited was the ocean exhibit, which had a huge model of a whale and plenty of interesting models and information. After this exhibit we visited the prehistoric humans exhibit, and then the prehistoric animals exhibit.Then we went upstairs to see the butterfly and bug zoo, which unfortunately was closed, although we still walked around that area and looked at the nearby exhibit. After a while, we looked around the gift shop for some gifts, and left not too long after. Outside, we got ice cream again, at the request of Teddy. From there we walked back to the station and headed home. I had my last dinner with my family, and got a good night’s rest for tomorrow.

   The next morning we had doughnuts with a college friend of my Mom’s, which was a lot of fun. Then we visited the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (just call it the Basilica, nobody’s got time for that), which is the largest Catholic church in the US. We went to a weekday mass there, which was held in the beautiful, but much smaller chapel.

   Afterwards we headed up to the main building, an enormous, beautiful space. Everything was very ornate and so carefully and thoughtfully made, and the entire place was massive. It was definitely the most beautiful building I had ever seen, but I knew that living in Germany for a year would lead to many more impressive sights, so I have a feeling it’s reign might be short lived (just kidding, this place really was beautiful…).

    In front of the church we also took our last complete family photo (well, for a year).

   We left at around 1:30, so that I could go back and pack up one last time. I checked that I had everything, packed it all up, put my bags in the car, said goodbye to our airbnb house, and we drove to the National 4H Center where I would be having the DC orientation, until our flight on Monday. Throughout the whole day we had avoided really talking about goodbyes, but here we were, so close to my departure. We arrived, I unloaded my things, and we all walked to the door. We said goodbye (although Colette refused to say anything), with everyone managing to keep it together. Finally, because we couldn’t put it off any longer, we walked our seperate ways.

            

Fortunatley, we were quite busy the rest of the evening, playing games and introducing ourselves, so I didn’t have any time to fell sad. The first thing I did was check into my room, and then I went to have dinner. The first two other Bundies I met were Liz and Nathan, who I’m now really good friends with. I continued to meet more and more people throughout the evening, as there were 50 of us. By the end of the day, I had met almost everyone, and I went to bed. The next day was full of meetings, telling us what Germany would be like, what we would experience, and anything else. Two students from previous years attended, so we could ask them questions about anything. By the end of the day, we were all very tired, so we settled in for our last night in the US. We would leave the next morning, and we were all very, very excited.

   We woke up early Monday morning, ate breakfast, grabbed our bags, and headed to the airport. After checking in, getting our tickets, passing through security, and getting to our terminal, it was 2:00. Our flight left at 4:30, so we had plenty of time to get a late lunch. My friend Carlos and I found a cafe after wandering around the airport for a while, and I bought my last meal in the US, a mere muffin and a bagel. We walked back to the terminal, and spent the rest of the time talking about how crazy this opportunity was for us, while I attempted to post a blog similar to this one. We began boarding the flight, and I put my laptop away for the 8 hour trip towards a dream I have had for years.

                    

                

     Once again, I’m sorry for the super-late blog post, I had no idea it never was posted. If you want to see the next chapter in my journey, please see my next post, which should follow this one pretty closely. Thanks for reading, and sorry if it’s a bit long, I tried to pack a lot into just one post.