D.C. Last Day

Well, I missed a couple of days of blogging about the trip because the computers in the business center were being used by people who were doing actual work or printing boarding passes or important things like that. Let's see, where did I leave off?



Seeing the White House was cool, but it would've been better if we'd actually been able to go inside the fence. We went to visit Bart Gordon and Lamar Alexander in their offices. When we left Senator Alexander's office, one of his interns took us on the tour of the Senate chambers. We took the underground tunnel from the Senate offices, which was really cool. While we were walking along in the tunnel, we passed none other than Senator McCain on his way back to his office. He was in a big hurry, walking quickly with an aid or assistant of some kind, but he smiled and said good morning after I stumbled through a greeting. In my head I said, "Good morning, Senator McCain," but it probably sounded like, "Umble frizzet, Somba Muffur," because I have such a way with words.

My brain is fried, so I can't remember everything else in the right order. We went to the Library of Congress for another class on primary sources. That building is so beautiful--just think of the movie National Treasure and you'll know what I'm talking about. I can't remember if I already mentioned this, but we also went to the National Gallery and the Portrait Gallery too. We also walked all through Chinatown, Gallery Place, Dupont Circle, and Union Station. We went to a little Irish pub called The Dubliner, where I had the best Monte Cristo (and, unfortunately the worst waitress) in history.

Yesterday we rode the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Tour, which was incredibly cool. I took a ton of pictures to show my class how people got upstream back in the day. This canal boat is original and the people who work on it are National Park rangers who dress in period costume. Everything is done the way it would've been done back then--the boat is pulled by mules or people and you have to go through the locks to get upstream. Originally there were something like 72 locks to go through to get up to an elevation that was 660 feet higher than where they started out.

Then Massa, McCartney, and I walked all over Georgetown (the town and the university campus). We had dinner sitting out on the patio in Washington Harbor, overlooking the Potomac. It was so much fun. Last night we wanted to find a karaoke bar, so we Goggled it and found one. While we were walking to the bar we stopped for frozen yogurt. We were chatting up the African Amercian girl who worked there and told her where we were heading. She laughed and said, "Oh, I've heard of that but I've never been there. My people go there." I figured out what she meant by "my people" when we arrived. We were the only white people in the place. We had so much fun watching everyone dance and sing. Every single person who sang could've been on the radio. I've never seen so much talent in one place. I was a little nervous when the D.J. called me up to sing, because everyone else was just so amazing. I told the crowd I was from Nashville so they'd have to indulge me for a few minutes. I sang Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and they loved it. Massa said the D.J. was saying, "Sing that song. Yeah! You sing that song, girl." I was going to sing Etta James' "At Last," but it was late and we were tired.

Today we're going to try to go to the Holocaust Museum before we leave, but we may not make it in time. Oh, Heather's in the lobby. Gotta go.