Friday Night Walk

So it's friday night and Claire and I decided to walk down to The Giant to rent a Harry Potter movie as it is his birthday today. We got there to find out that it was closed so we kept on walking and talking about life and after an extended period of time we came to find ourselves at a sign saying "Welcome to Maryland." Yes, we accidently walked all the way to Maryland. I can officially say that one time I accidently walked out of a state because I was too busy have a good conversation. From there, Claire and I got a little lost and at that point it was midnight so we strolled around Maryland for a bit and started looking for a metro stop. We ended up stopping at a quaint police station to ask for directions to a metro stop while hoping that we could just get a ride home in a police car to make the night more eventful. We weren't offered a ride, there was just a secretary and she pointed us in the direction we needed to go. We kept walking and we came across some pretty churches and it turned out that one of them was my church building so from there I knew where I was and we got to the Friendship Heights station. We eventually made our way home and I can say that it was a very fun time.

Gettysburg

Pennsylvania, here we come

Had to take the pic on top of the sign

Guns from the war

The battlefield

So pretty

We stopped by this little farmers market at a house in Maryland with a nice little family. These were some of their strawberries

Surprise!

Patiently waiting our turn.



Ladies and gentlemen... Mitt Romney has reached the building. So my boss threw a curveball at Morgan and I when we got to work by telling us that we could go to a press conference where Mitt Romney was going to be leading a discussion. Um, yes?

Memorial Day

On sunday there was a rally in Washington D.C. dedicated to soldiers, veterans and POW-MIA that involved thousands of bikers riding around the streets. It was called "Rolling Thunder" very fittingly.  We went to the holocaust museum that day and before we went in I stood on the corner for about 20 minutes and watched motorcycles keep coming with American flags waving behind them dedicated to the military. I don't know what it is about bike gangs and their patriotism, they just make me sooo happy!!! "I'm patriotic, what are you gonna to do about it? (fist meets palm of other hand)." 

So it's a good thing that I live with 3 totally rockin' roomies who are just as thrilled about spending all day in museums as I am. On that note, we also go to historic sites when we get a chance. For example, we are going to Gettysburg tomorrow as a day trip. Anyways, we were able to go to Arlington Cemetery on memorial day which was incredible. Hearing taps played while sitting in Arlington Cemetery where there are over 300,000 burials was very moving. 

This soldier was walking by this little girl forever and chatting it up with her

Notice he served in 3 wars

That person you see in the picture was a monk

There were also wives and children of soldiers buried here too. One headstone in particular that I saw but didn't get a picture of was of a woman who just died in 2008 but was an Army nurse during I believe it was WWII.

At the end of our trip there we made a last stop to section 60 where the Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers were buried. Some of the area was being prepared for more fallen soldiers. It was crowded around this area and there was a man playing the bagpipes. This was also very moving. 

Saturday May 23rd

Howdy do, here we are, another day and another adventure in D.C. My feet are killing me because we basically walked all over the whole entire city in a matter of 8 hours. It started with the holocaust museum which we have to go back to tomorrow and see because you need tickets to see the most important floors but we didn't get there in time. So we saw one floor and the one pic I took which I didn't know I wasn't supposed to take (as I was informed after) was this one. Adrianne and I kept on gawking at the various signs that showed how Nazi propaganda spread during the hard economic times of the great depression coupled with the promise of "change" and emotionally charged logos involving simple phrases. This part of the museum showed over again how the perfect combination of this campaign strategy and poor economic circumstances laid the foundation for something completely unimaginable. This was one of Hitler's ads, I thought this was interesting...

Ok back up, first Ado (Adrianne) and I started off before Morgan and Ashley because we wanted to go to the park and do some reading before hitting the museum. The metro here is amazing, so we decided to share some pics with everyone of course. When the announcements are being made over the big speakers, there is this girl our age whose recording sounds super friendly. Morgan and I want to find her and make her our friend.


When we got off the metro we just so happened to pull up right next to this place, which isn't terribly interesting




Ado and I read our American history in the park in front of the Washington memorial for a bit






Anyways, then we went to the National Archives because after memorial day it's just havoc trying to see anything since the tourists swarm in like the world is going to end tomorrow. We only had to wait for like and hour and a half but the line just grew and grew and we became more and more bored






We finally got in and this is some of what we saw. It was amazing!!!






































































Busy at work



Georgetown is a fantastic place. Tons of shopping and the location and setup is really cool



The Potamic river. It was really pretty! And just down the street from Georgetown University.






...and we ended up in northern Virginia!!!



Well there you have it, a full exhausting day. Now I'm off to bed, I have church in the morning and my feet are killin me. Hasta laters!!!