Day 1
Ok. Even though it was 5:30am and we had already been up for an hour and a half we were full of energy heading to D.C. on our last field trip of middle school.
We stopped for lunch at a rest area around 11, only an hour out from D.C.!
No, I didn't just wear my dress for the heck of it... I won an essay contest about why I would be a good candidate for laying the wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This was a HUGE honor, but the shoes killed my feet!
Our first stop in D.C. was the Korean War Memorial. These memorials had so much thought put into them before hand, our tour guide, Bob, did an amazing job explaining all the symbolism in the memorials.
Here you see 19 soldiers marching up a hill towards an American flag. This represents the struggles they had and the patriotism to fight not only for South Korea but for America. Each soldier is 7'2" , wearing a poncho and carrying a huge radio. The poncho shows the wet conditions and the radios are the only things connecting the soldiers to the outside world. The soldiers are walking in thick grass and marble strips which represent the foreign rice patties. The marble reflected the sun, much like water did, and this plant was the closest we could get to the rice plants.
The quote below represents the American Spirit, our culture wants to help others because we value freedom and human rights.
This is one of the main elements of the Korean War memorial. In this wall you see etched faces of actual soldiers that fought, but you also see yourself because you are as much a part of the America as them. If you look at the wall from an angle you will see the reflection of the 19 soldiers. If you count the 19 soldiers and the 19 reflections you get 38 soldiers, representing the 38,000 casualties and the long, 38 months of war. Wow....so much symbolism and meaning. Engraved on the wall is the line, 'Freedom is not free.'
This is part of the Vietnam war memorial. The main idea of this statue is to show the different ethnicities fighting alongside each other in the war. Our nation was healing from the massive segregation of the 60's.
The second part of this memorial was the actual wall. The wall has every name of the fallen and missing on it and is rising out of a hill. The way the hill was cut open for this memorial shows the open wounds of the nation during this very controversial war, but the grass on top shows the nation is healing. The names are organized from first casualty to last starting in the middle and moving outwards.
If a soldier was missing they had a plus before their name. If they had died, they had a diamond beside their name. Look below at Bobby's symbol and you'll see he was originally missing but then found dead.
This was the last statue relating the the Vietnam war, it showed 3 women doing their jobs during the war. On the wall there are 8 women who died, this is only a fraction of those who served. This statue shows 1 woman looking at the sky, waiting for the med evac helicopter, another woman praying while holding a soldiers helmet and a third woman performing chest compressions on a wounded man.
From the Vietnam memorial we walked over to Lincoln's memorial. Here we saw Lincoln looking over the mall with one fist clenched and one resting. The clenched fist shows his determination to end the civil war, while the resting hand shows his compassion and warmth.
Looking out at the mall you see the Washington monument, the World War 2 memorial and Lincoln's memorial. This represents our nations first 3 centuries. Starting with the strong structure of the Washington monument representing our start of the nation and president Washington's strength. On the other end of the mall we have Lincoln's memorial representing the civil war and his work as a president. Sandwiched in between these we see the World War 2 memorial. I'll get to that later... We didn't visit it for another few hours.
We took tons of pictures with the Washington Monument and piled on the bus.
Our next stop was Arlington National Cemetery where we would tour and I would lay the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. What I didn't know is we would be walking another 2 hours around the cemetery before laying the wreath. Flats were not a good idea.
Our first section in Arlington was a building dedicated to service women. This was the Hall of Honor, holding tons of flags and medals.
Once we started walking around Arlington we learned about the history surrounding it.
The home on this property used to be Robert E. Lee's family household. Located on the highest hill, it looked over the memorial bridge on to Washington DC. This is significant because the symbol of the Union, and the symbol of the Confederacy were staring each other right in the face the whole civil war, the only thing separating them was the memorial bridge over the Potomac River.
The Union eventually took over this land and as a slap in the face to Lee, buried dead in his mother's rose garden. As time passed it became a huge honor to be buried here, there are now several requirements you must meet.
1. Die in combat or have earned high ranking medals while in combat
2. Be some sort of high ranking government officer (elected)
3. Be a dependent on either of the above.
When we looked at the gravestones we noticed different symbols on them, people buried here got to choose from 39 symbols. Originally the symbols had circles around them or a shape kinda like a family crest, but then they realized the expenses and just put the symbol by itself.
This stone dates back to the civil war, you can see the crest outline that is on the oldest stones in the cemetery.
This tombstone has no name, it just says daughter. This is because in the Catholic faith, stillborn children should still be buried, this is John F. Kennedy's daughter buried next to him.
Before the wreath laying ceremony, we went to a chamber below the building you see behind us. Here we were instructed on what we were supposed to do and introduced to the honor guard that would be our host. You can see him on my left. Savanna and I (front row) got to actually lay the wreath with another honor guard member. Easily the coolest experience of my life. We were all so honored to be there.
He was probably the most intimidating person I've ever met. You couldn't even see his eyes with his mirrored sunglasses. When they walked they almost glided... their heads never bobbed up and down like they should when they step.
There were 4 soldiers buried here originally, one from World War 1, one from World War 2, one from the Korean War and the last from the Vietnam War. Each soldier buried here was buried with the medal of honor and is honored constantly with the 21 gun salute. They don't actually constantly fire guns, here the honor guard marches 21 steps, pauses 21 seconds, and marches another 21 steps. They do this 24 hours a day every day of the year.
The Vietnam Soldier was identified in 1998 and after a lengthy government battle, returned home to be buried. However, his medal of honor still remains buried at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Because of our advanced DNA testing today, there will never be any more unknowns. We could identify a soldier from a broken hangnail. The honor guard will continue to honor the tomb of the unknowns until every single soldier is identified.
Once we got back on the buses I got changed into my regular clothes and we headed to supper at the union station food courts. It was super crowded but we had a great time seeing the other groups.
After an hour at the food court we visited the World War 2 memorial, there was so much symbolism there, I'm hoping I can remember it all!
Here you can see pillars representing each country, state or district we protected during WW2, each column has an oak wreath and a wheat wreath. The oak symbolizes our nations strength and the wheat symbolizes that we were the breadbasket of the war, sending supplies over to war torn Europe. You can also see a large rope tying each pillar to the next, this represented our military's unity that won us the war.
This is an enlarged version of the medal all soldiers received once the war was won. It shows a woman stepping on a soldier's helmet with a sword's hilt in one hand and the blade in the other. She is looking at the dawn of the new day with four American Freedom's inscribed on the back of the medal.
This is the field of stars, each star is about 3 inches wide and represents 100 men that died in the war. There are 4,000 stars on the wall representing the 400,000 deaths with the line, 'Here we mark the price of freedom' below to remind us not to take our rights for granted.
This huge fountain represents the oceans that protected our home front during the war, but slowed us when going to attack Japan and Germany.
Then we had to take some group pictures.... Cameron is on the far left, then me, Shannon and Elizabeth.
Posing with the tallest freestanding masonry structure topping it off at 555 feet 5 1/8 inches.
Day 2
On the bus this morning we got some seriously bad news... Bob sprained his ankle! Our new tour guide was Debra, but she didn't go into the symbolism as much as Bob did. :(
Our first stop was the MLK memorial, here you see the mountain of despair that Dr. King had touched on in a few of his speeches. In this walk way we had to get close together to move through it, this symbolized the unity necessary to get through the dark times.
Once we passed through the mountain of despair we saw this quote on the stone of the hope. The 'stone of hope' is literally cut out of the 'mountain of despair', just moved forward and left a few yards.
Once we passed through the mountain of despair we saw this quote on the stone of the hope. The 'stone of hope' is literally cut out of the 'mountain of despair', just moved forward and left a few yards.
Our next stop was the FDR memorial. This memorial was HUGE. With 4 sections it focused on each of Roosevelt's terms. The ironic thing is he didn't even want a memorial. He specifically said that if he had to have a memorial he wanted it no bigger than his desk.
This statue shows a man listening to his radio, because FDR was so famous for his 'fireside chats' where he would talk on the radio in a conversational kinda way.
This was one of the quotes he had in his 3rd term. We are the new generation, and apparently have a rendezvous with destiny coming up.
This is a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the first woman to ever have a place in a presidential memorial and was recognized for all the work she had put into helping this country alongside FDR.
This is Thomas Jefferson's memorial. It took several years to complete and was interrupted by World War 2. Because of the extreme rationing of metal it would not be finished until 1947. Thomas Jefferson served as the 1st Secretary of State, 2nd Vice President and 3rd President. That's pretty good if you ask me. Sculpted into the building there's a scene of Thomas Jefferson and other leaders drafting the first Declaration of Independence, another one of his many accomplishments. The statue of Jefferson has him addressing the continental congress with the Declaration of Independence in his left hand.
Our next stop was the newseum. No that wasn't a typo, it's called the newseum because it's dedicated to all the world news. It has papers, news broadcasts and magazines from all over the world on a wide range of topics.
This section was dedicated to the biggest news each year going from the 20s until 2014.
This section was completely dedicated to 9/11, it had the world's newspaper headlines on the attack and this piece of the antennae from one of the towers.
There was a cool section for youth to voice their opinion. There was this huge room that had a bunch of polls either online or using sticker boards.
'Should news organizations show citizens videos of confrontations with police?' An overwhelming amount of people agreed that they needed to share this information with the public.
Of course there was a section dedicated to the funnies.
When we went downstairs there was a really neat section displaying pieces of the Berlin Wall. On both sides there were stickers explaining the rights people had, this side had lots of rights where they could express themselves. On the other side the wall doesn't have any markings on it because the people's rights were nonexistent.
The last part of the newseum showed various quotes that related to reporting. This one says, "I always turn to the sports section first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page has nothing but a mans failures.
Our next stop was the air and space museum. I was just a little excited. I learned all about the communicating and navigating through the ages and saw how the planes evolved. It was so interesting seeing all the engines and how complex they were.
The other smithsonian museums were interesting but no where near the air and space mueseum.
We visited natural history:
And American history:
In the lobby, there was a gorgeous mural documenting all the accomplish of African Americans through the ages.
Our next stop was SUPPOSED to be the pentagon city mall for dinner and a solid 2 hours of shopping in the 5 story mall. The plan changed when our bus broke down so we ended up heading to a different food court that was in walking distance.
We ended up at Moes and had a nice supper in the quietest setting we had been in yet. About halfway through Mr. Holbrook (our director person) surprised us with metro tickets! It was a 'it stinks you missed the mall but here are some cool tickets no one else gets!' kinda deal. We were all so excited as he spent 15 minutes explaining how the metro worked, how to use our tickets, how to board and hop of the metro and to watch for pickpockets.
We had covered to do if you missed the metro and a bunch of other buddy rules. Apparently we got off too slow because Ms. Cochrane got stuck!
Once we all made it to the same place, we walked to the pentagon to see the 9/11 memorial.
You'll see rows of benches, these are organized by birth year. The bench closest was a 3 year old girl and the bench farthest away was a 71 year old man. The benches have a weird slope to them... Over the water they're 71 centimeters high, and they taper down to 3 centimeters. The next thing you'll see is the direction the bench is pointing. At the end of the bench above the water they've printed the names of each victim. If you can read the name, look up and see the pentagon you know they died in the pentagon. If you read the name and look up to see the hill the plane flew over, the person died on the plane.
Most of these benches are showing the people died in the pentagon which makes sense, because these were mostly 30-40 year olds.
You can see this person died in the pentagon because reading their name you look up to see the pentagon. The one to the left is facing the other direction so you know they died on the plane.
Once we left the pentagon we rode back to the hotel and packed our bags so they were ready the next morning.
Day 3
We started the morning with a visit to the White House starting on the north side.
As we walked to the south side, we were delayed because the president was landing in his chopper.
This was one of 3 helicopters.
About 20 minutes later a huge line of police cars and ambulances came out of the White House going towards the Capitol building so we were within a few hundred yards of the president!
We learned the White House was tangible evidence of the connection between citizens and the government. It give us a say in who lives in that house and we must make that decision as a whole.
Eventually we made our way to the south side of the White House taking pictures with the house but even more with the Washington monument.
Our next stop was lunch at the Air Force Memorial. The 3 stainless steel spires are intended to evoke feelings of flight and the Air Force spirit; very bold yet graceful. There are 3 spires to represent the Air Force's 3 core values; integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do.
You see four statues of airmen, 2 carrying flags, 2 holding guns. They all look equal when you look at them from the front but when you go around the back, the statue on the far left has her hair tied back in a bun. This is significant because it shows that women are just as powerful as men, even in this job setting.
The last element of this memorial was the mirrored wall behind the airmen. Here it lists the 3 core values with supporting quotes from key Air Force figures.
My favorite thing about this section is you see yourself reflected in these values, it makes you feel that these values apply to you too.
Our last stop of the trip was the holocaust memorial museum. When you walked in you picked a little booklet with a short biography of a person who lived during the holocaust.
They piled us all in an elevator similar to the rail cars Jews were forced into for hours. We hated it and we were only stuck for a minute. While the elevator was going to the fourth floor they played a video of an American responding to news about concentration camps. The last words he said were 'that could never happen. ' Finally the elevator doors opened to a pitch black wall with 'THE HOLOCAUST' written on the wall.
The fourth floor was focused on how the Nazis took control and how happy the German people were with Hitler and how willing they were to celebrate with him by burning books.
This was a whole room full of pictures of Jewish people before the holocaust began, doing normal things, having happy families and celebrating.
When you moved down to the third floor you saw concentration camps, death camps and brutal treatment to anyone who was not a perfect Aryan. This stained glass window was saved from the night of broken glass where synagogues were burned.
On the second floor you saw the after effects as Jews were liberated and the war coming to an end.
These flags represented all the countries that fought against Germany during the holocaust.
You ended on the first floor in the hall of remembrance where you could take a minute to reflect.
As we walked through the museum there was a similar theme of it being very dark, sad and kinda scary. We were there for 2 hours and the only time I heard anyone talk was in the lobby. The museum was put together very nicely and really reflected the strong emotions of everyone alive in this period.
We ended the tour around 3 and drove home finally arriving at the school around 11 pm. All in all it was an AMAZING trip.
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