Time Machine

            History. Friends. Adventure. Those are the three words that come to mind when I think of my trip to the nation’s capital, Washington D.C.  I learned more history than I have in all my school history classes combined, made friends from around the world, and had the most exhilarating adventures in my lifetime.

            I explored Washington D.C with a prestigious tour group, People to People. You get invited and get to go visit the capital with people from all parts of the country and the world. To be invited you have to be considered a leader by your teachers, and have to have a good grade point average. Being a good student and leader really paid off to go on this trip.

            I enjoyed the time machine I was put through. From the revolutionary war to the civil war, to the World Wars, to the present. I got to see the memorials, and see how they represented the wars. Was put through an emotional time machine, seeing how much soldiers put up on the line, fighting for the country they love and cherish. I saw original constitution, seeing the paper our Founding Fathers made, and the amendments others added to it through the years.  During the process of learning and feeling our history, I made a lot of friends.

            During this trip I made friends from all over the country and world. I met a girl from Oklahoma, a boy from California, a girl from Texas, and a girl form New York. I also made some friends from around the world. I met a girl from Zimbabwe, Africa, and another girl from Berlin, Germany. I now keep close communication with all of them by either writing, or email. I made some everlasting friendships.

            Everywhere we went was an adventure. We took a stroll through Arlington Cemetery, and looked at all the headstones in perfect alignment, like a long line of soldiers. We also went to the Holocaust museum which made me feel so bad for all the people who suffered from the Holocaust. None of that pain they suffered will ever go away, and that really touched my heart. We took a look at all the memorials and the deeper meanings of their designs. For example, the Vietnam Memorial design shows how the war started out shallow and slow and they got deeper and deeper into it, and then it got shallower. We took strolls through all different museums and monuments, and they all were a great adventure.

            Some things didn’t work out so well on the trip. One of them was eating. We didn’t eat at very good places. They were mostly buffets, but they didn’t have anything I liked, and we even had to eat at a firehouse! Lets just say I wasn’t very fond of the food. Also, getting everyone up and ready to go in the morning wasn’t very efficient. Partly because we had so many people though. Those were the only things that really didn’t work very well.

            We were very efficient with everything else though. We had all buses on different schedules to be places at specific times and to leave, and that worked out well. Rooms were perfect too, same number of people in rooms and lights out at 10. So overall our timing, and following directions was good. Almost everything worked out well, with very few mishaps.

            My trip to Washington D.C is one I will never forget. It was a timeless adventure through a time machine.