A Writer's Flame: Washington D.C.

I'm so happy to get the next two days up for y'all to see! So, one my fourth day on my D.C. trip, I was able to go into the actual city of Washington D.C.! It was amazing, especially because I rode on an underground Metro subway for the first time! These may seem small to everyone, but I was so excited to go on the Metro! I had heard of people riding on these, but never experienced it myself, and let me tell you, it was quite the experience! When I first boarded, it was early enough in the transfer for me to be able to sit in a seat. Unfortunately though, pretty much every time I sat on the Metro, it was next to a stranger. Now this isn't a bad thing, but the way people interact in a big city is WAY different from the small town I live in. Usually, what I am used to is saying hello to people walking on the streets or at least smiling in this direction. The people on the Subway hardly acknowledged each other, even the people they were sitting right next to! Most people were reading books, using their phones or listening to music, and on some rides, the car was nearly silent!

Now that I've ranted about that, let's get on to the more interesting stuff! So, on day four, I was able to see the outside of the Library of Congress, tour the Supreme Court building and the Capitol building! By a bout of bad luck, it just so happens that my camera died halfway through our walk through the Supreme Court building so I have no pictures to show y'all of the rotunda and stuff, but I HIGHLY recommend Google searching pictures of it. Anyways, on the fourth day we walked passed the Library of Congress but did not go in because not everyone that came to D.C. with me was above the approved age. (You have to be 16 or older to go into the Library of Congress.) After that, we were able to walk to the Supreme Court building - the third branch of our government. We didn't do too much here, but we walked through a hallway that had the history of the Supreme Court on it, saw the spiral staircase and were able to peek in at the actual court room. We mostly just stopped here to fill in time because we had to go over to the Capitol building.

Now, the visit to the Capitol building was very special because not only were we able to see the building and learn about the history of it, but we were able to actually personally meet a house representative from Michigan! We were able to go to his office and sit to talk with him for about five minutes! Despite what it sometimes appears, representatives are just normal people and can be very friendly. After talking to the representative, we got a personal tour from one of his interns of the place. We wore special pins to wear and were able to see different areas and skip past certain lines. There's so many parts of the Capitol building that I just loved! One thing that stood out to me was the number of statues of various people. Our tour guide said that each state was able to choose two people that they deem important from that state's history and send a statue to the Capitol. The statues are spread out throughout the building, but there is one room where a good number of statues reside. The room is technically called the "National Statuary Hall" but is often nicknamed "the whispering gallery". In this large room, there are certain places that you can stand where you can hear someone whisper from yards away - even in a noisy hall! Our tour guide demonstrated it to us, and it's crazy how clear the whisper was despite all the commotion in the hall! In this hall, there are also little marks were certain presidents had desks. Another favorite part of the Capitol was the rotunda, and I'm so disappointed that I couldn't get pictures! The painting on the walls and ceiling of this room is so intricate and just awe-inspiring. My final favorite part was being able to see the House of Representative chamber! The line to get into this room took HOURS to get through, and by the time we got to the chamber, the house was in recess. Still, it was amazing to see the room and sit in the balcony!

On the fifth day in D.C. I went to Fredicksburg, Virginia. In Fredricksburg, we went to the Lacey House which was a monumental part of the civil war. It used to be a family's home, but was taken over and converted into a hospital. We also were able to see a Union cemetery before finishing up the day with ice cream!

Day 4: