The Smithsonian is a HUGE museum. I dont think I realized the extent of how vast it is. they have 13 buildings. Each huge in itself. We had the chance to go to the Air and Space Museum today and in the past couple days we have gone to the American History and Natural History Museums. The Air and Space was Huge haveing tons of Airplanes hanging from the ceilings as well as Spaceships and the luner lander. The American History museum had a big section on lincoln and the American Wars which had allot of awesome stuff in it as well. My favorite however, was the Natural History Museum. It had the Dinosour bones, Mamal and Ocean sections and a sick 3D movie of underwater life that basically had me looking like a fool while others watched me try to touch the jellyfish. These museums have contributed a great deal to my DC experiance.

We had the opportunity to attend the Inaugural Concert. This was pretty much a big party to bring in the New presidency. Usually its a smaller with a couple big names showing up. This time was Epic. There were tons of bands and big named speakers such as Martin Luther King III, Densel Washington, George Lopez, U2, Garth Brooks, Beyonce and more. U2 was by far the best act as well as Garth Brooks. People were even climbing up trees to get a better view. Biden spoke some few words but the real excitement came when obama spoke. It was a very good speech and moved allot of people. As soon as it finished we made a mad dash for the exit because there was almost 1 million people there. Relaxed the rest of the day in the hotel.

Today we began with the Newseum. This is a museum completely dedicated to the history and techniques of the media. It had alot of exhibits, each dedicated t a different part of news or a major point in our histroy that was affected by the media. One section was completely dedicated to September 11th. They even had the giant TV tower on display that was on top of the south tower and later recovered from the wreckage.

During this visit, some anti-Bush drug adicts, i mean protesters, decided it was a good idea to display a giant banner reading “arrest Bush andn Cheney for War Crimes” and walking around the entire area handing out some reading material that is filled with liberal extremist babble. Some guys were even running around with video cameras tapeing all of this while they yelled at people in the museum to “wake up.” This poor decision to protest in the museum just displayes what kind of people these guys really are. After moving to the outside they eventally left, but i only hope that soon i get a chance to “wake up” one of these protesters who approach me again who completely disregard the wishes of others.

We started off the day with the usual Auditorium session. We then headed for the Smithsonian for the American History Museum. It was pretty cool and had helicopters, lincoln’s belongings and peices of the world trade centers.  After that we moved over to the Natural History Museum. This was my favortite. There were so many different exhibits. We even saw a 3D film that pretty much blew my mind. Afterword we hung around a couple more of the exhibits, then cought dinner at a Mexican resturant nearby that I now think is was not the best choice.

Later on, Kara, Sarah and Jenn’s Toilet exploded. The explosion exiled the girls to room 10 where they now reside with a bigger, Nicer TV. Im guessing this is the hotels way of saying sorry, which i think is not enough. Interesting day.

I SAW JOHN MCCAIN AND DICK CHENEY! Oh yea and I also saw John Kerry, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid. I thought I would start this with some pizaz. We originally had another session in the auditorium planned but things changed.  Kara had obtained some tickets to sit in on a session of senate bt some kid she met somewhere at some point in time. She was so kind as to give me one of these tickets, as to why I am eternally greatfull and in her dept. We witnessed Hillary’s and Biden’s senate fairwell speech. I wish i was allowed to take photos cause at one point everyone was talking at once. Afterwards we sat in on the house of representatives and then had a short tour of the capital building.  It was a “McAwesome” dat indeed.

We started out the day by having the usual auditorium session with special guest Ted Koppel. It was great to hear him speak, but he was not the most exciting speaker we have had. He left alot of time open for questions and with each question he draged on going into depth into each topic. Did not exactly have me on the edge of my seat, but it was cool to see him. Later in the day, we traveled to the Algerian Embassy. Here, we had a meeting with the Algerian ambassador. He was a very nice man who seemed like he cared a great deal for his country. Even though I asked him some hard questions such as “how does youre nation aid the US in combating terrorism,” he answered each question very well and adressed us as though he was in a very important meeting. Unlike some of the other speakers, he told us when he had to leave, but did not seem like he was in a rush. I was able to get a picture with him which will be a cool keepsake.

Today we began in the Usual auditorium. C-SPAN began with a Live television recording for one of their shows and included the audience (us as students) to ask questions to guests on the show.Bret Baier was one of the guests and I was able to get a picture with him after the show.

After participating in another show, we grabbed lunch and headed to our next stop. We visited a Lobbyist group dedicated to developing a new democratic strategy. The guy seemed like we were just an inconvenience and continued to look at his watch during the entire meeting.

Then we had dinner at the chamber of comerce. It was fun and Bob Scheiffer came and spoke to the group which was very interesting. After that we called it a day.

On Monday we started with speakers and presentations till about two. Some were interesting..like the special agent with the secret service. Others however, could have been more interesting. The speaker from the smithsonian gave a very long presentation on Paintings of presidents.

Afterwords, we had a bus tour all around DC which was amazing. Me and matt had done it the previouse day but my camera had run out of batteries. This time I had my camera and got some really good shots. Marine one and motorcades were common throughout the day.

         I began my trip to Washington with a long bus ride from Olean NY, to Washington DC. I arrived early on Saturday morning when I met up with Matt and headed into Downtown DC. After visiting most of the usual monuments, we found a group of Palestinians marching towards the White House. When we got to the White house we found that the protesters were just meeting up with a much larger group. Their signs and chants protested the escalating war in the Gaza strip and anti Israeli sentiment was everywhere. “Save Save Palestine” and “Allah Akbar” were repeated and chanted more times than i can remember. I was able to get a lot of good photos and videos.

Our second day was spent in the auditorium followed by another tour of DC. I was able to get a lot better pictures of the monuments which will be on the site soon.