Third day in D.C. makes cherished memories

My alarm clock abruptly shook me from a sort of hibernation at the sobering hour of 5 a.m. Despite the short, restless sleep I had experienced that night, I was happy to get up. I had a small window of opportunity to see my favorite person in the entire world, and I was not going to give up on that chance. My uncle, Greg Knadle, is the vice-president of government affairs at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. I know, right? He’s pretty important. From trips to Hawaii for business meetings to work trips to Tasmania to relocate black rhinos, my uncle has nearly no time for anything else. Because of this, my family only has one sure chance to see Greg every year, and that’s Christmas. So when I got the text from him saying he had just flown in from Spokane, WA and could meet me for breakfast at the hotel, I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and headed downstairs to see him.  

It was awesome being able to talk and catch up with him. Greg is always so full of historical knowledge and fun facts about D.C., and because he worked for the House of Appropriations for so many years, he can even tell you the museums and projects he voted on. After about an hour of talking to him, it was sadly time for us to begin the long day of touring and for Greg to return home. My uncle and I said goodbye and then the rest of us headed towards the metro.

We took the metro to Capitol Hill and met with Cathy to begin our walk to all of the monuments. We first visited the Jefferson memorial where we took turns taking photos of people jumping on the steps. The Rock n’ Roll marathon was that morning, so we cheered on the runners as they passed us around the Tidal Basin. We walked around to the end point of the FDR memorial and walked in from the back which was interesting because the exhibit is set up in chronological order. The cherry blossoms had bloomed the week before when D.C. experienced a short period of warm weather, so even though we were now bearing the below freezing wind, the memorials were beautifully traced with light pink flowers. We then ended our trek by heading up to the MLK memorial. It’s strangely intimidating to stand at the base of the sculpture and stare up at King’s stern, determined eyes gazing across the basin towards Jefferson. Cathy explained to us that he is technically called a sculpture, not a statue because his legs faded down into the rock. King’s monument represents that the civil rights movement is unfinished–that there is still much work to be done to ensure equality. Admittedly, I became a little teary eyed just thinking about this prospect. After we had a chance to walk around a bit and read the quotes lining the outer wall of the memorial, we walked a few blocks to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, or the NMAAHC.

The line to enter the museum stretched along the entire building twice. Thankfully, we had already purchased our tickets, but even still we spent about half an hour standing outside the museum in line. After finally getting through security, we stepped into the vast foyer and decided that because of the limited amount of time we had, it would work best if we split into groups so everyone could venture off on their own and see what they wanted. Overall, the museum has five levels, four floors and the basement. There was a line for the basement that stretched across the entire floor, and Cathy told us it would take us about 45 minutes to even get in, so my group decided to start on the fourth floor, the arts and culture level. The fourth floor began with a large circular room with screens stretching around the entire ceiling with photographs and videos of famous African Americans who made history for things like music, sports, activism and other profound achievements. Then there were four corridors around the room you could enter: music, dance/movies, sports and art. I immediately entered the dance section where I found photographs, videos, and costumes from the dance theater of Harlem. We then wandered over to the sports section where the museum displayed a wall lined with African American Olympians. Each Olympian was complemented by something on the display, like an article of his clothing or some of his sports equipment. Following this, Callie Boren and I took a short walk through the art section before we moved on to the second floor, which featured interactive dance simulations, tap lessons and technology games. A few of us participated in the dance simulation and learned a modern dance routine. Our group then proceeded back down to the main floor and bought items at the gift shop. We met back up with our entire group and headed down the street to the Holocaust museum.

After going through another round of security which included having to take a sip of your water in front of a security guard, we split into another set of small groups and started the tour. We all received an identification card that contained information on a real person from the holocaust whose life you followed and read about throughout each level. My person was a young woman named Ella Fitzgerald. Her information told me along each level about how she lived a quiet life as a Jehovah’s witness with her husband and young daughter until she was separated from her family and placed in a camp. The museum was packed completely full of people, but it was alarmingly quiet. I could feel the uncomfortable sense everyone had as I walked through, read about and saw the horrible brutality of the Holocaust. A heavy knot formed at the base of my throat as we walked through a box car from a train used to carry Jews to camps. The smell of musk and stale air made me feel sick to my stomach. We continued the tour and by the third floor I could no longer control my tears.

Finally, we walked through one room at the end of the third level where the entire floor was completely covered in shoes. There had to have been over a thousand shoes scattered everywhere. On the wall above there was a quote that read, “We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses. We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers from Prague, Paris and Amsterdam, and because we are only made of fabric and leather and not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hell-fire.” I think the museum effected everyone a little differently, but the shoes are what made an impact on me. Looking at a pair roughly the size of my palm, I tried to imagine the child that once wore them. I felt so selfish thinking about the horror that child went through compared to the simplicity of my early life and I couldn’t help but wonder how much of a life the child even had. It destroyed me to think that this human who had never lived long enough to graduate from kindergarten was forced to endure such tragedy and heartache, and all that he or she had left to leave her mark on the world was a pair of worn leather shoes.

Once we finished at the museum, we rushed to the metro to visit the Ronald Reagan building where we ate lunch. When we were finished with our meals, we wandered over to one of the tourist shops and several of us bought Washington D.C. hats to keep our heads warm. Following this, we once again found ourselves racing over to the mall for the Museum of American History and the Natural History Museum. We chose which museum we wanted to attend and then we split up and had about an hour to tour our chosen site of history. I went to the Natural History Museum for one reason alone: the bugs. I knew prior to attending this museum that this building contained a live insect zoo, and I have always had a passion for all living things, specifically the “creepy crawlies.”

Originally we were going to split our group up so we could different sections of the museums, but when Mrs. Prather asked what everyone wanted to see, I was the only one that wanted to see the insects, so she very graciously decided that we would all stick together as a group and visit to each exhibit we were interested in so that I could see my bugs. I patiently waited through the ocean, mammals and the dreaded Hope Diamond. In my opinion, that is one of the most overrated aspects of Washington D.C. I walked into this small room with a large glass case sitting in the middle, and waited for ages behind dozens of other people swarming around the glass like fruit flies. Then when I finally got toward the front and looked inside the case, I saw a shiny necklace with a grayish blue rock in the middle of it. The piece of jewelry was pretty, sure, but it didn’t seem worthy of a 10 minute long wait in exchange for the 10 second long look. After we were done there, we headed towards the live insect zoo. The zoo begins with the butterfly pavilion, but we couldn’t get tickets because they were sold out. However, just past the pavilion we found a glass case full of butterfly cocoons. There were dozens of them, with different species displaying an array of different colors and sizes. One of the butterflies had just broken out of its cocoon and was flapping its wings up and down to dry them off. After marveling at the butterflies, we walked past several cases of beetles. The patterns on each of their backs were distinct and unique. There were also several enclosures holding spiders, tarantulas and scorpions.

I could have spent hours in that room just observing each creature, but we were running out of time. Our plan was to spend the last 20 minutes we had walking through the museum’s two gift shops, but as we were walking downstairs I caught a glimpse of one of the photographs hanging at the entrance of National Geographic’s art gallery. We made the executive decision that the gallery was simply too beautiful to skip. We practically ran through the art exhibit, only having a chance to look at each photo for a couple of seconds before moving on to the next. Even still, the detour was worth it. The intensity and sharpness of each photo was breathtaking. There was a large range of animals displayed, from tiny green geckos to a group of polar bears, and even landscapes of mountains and waterfalls. Content with our decision to diverge from the plan, we took a quick sweep through the gift shops as the museum workers urged us to exit the building for closing and then met up with Cathy and the other groups in front of the museum. Our last stop for the night was dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.

After some light shopping, we headed into the restaurant and took our seats. In the cafe, the music was particularly louder than most places and no matter where you are seated at the table a screen is in view playing music videos of assorted artists. We had a blast sitting and singing along to all of our favorite songs and spending our last dinner all together. From hits like Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” to Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” our group was so into singing that the rest of the people upstairs in the restaurant were watching us. Even after we finished eating and were walking back to the hotel, we were still so hyper from the meal that we all sang a bad rendition of “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus down the streets of D.C.  Another factor that probably contributed to our loud outburst was the realization that our trip was quickly coming to a close. Although the days felt neverending while they were happening, the weekend then felt suddenly short, and we had created an incredibly close bond with one another. Being a range of 8th graders through seniors, we never had the chance before to know some of the people we had the opportunity to spend time with during the past three days. We got back to the hotel and packed our bags in near silence. We were all exhausted, and we knew we would have a cold and early morning in Arlington the next day. When Ms. Prather came by our hotel room to round us up for curfew and make sure we were packed, our room had already turned out the lights and called it a night.