Snipers and snow

From Dylan Svihus, 17, Carmel High School:

January 19, 2009

We ate the same breakfast as yesterday. We got on our bus at seven thirty. Our agenda for the day: Whitehouse, War Memorials, and tickets. As we stepped off the bus, it began to snow, just like the balding weatherman had promised us last night. As we walked to the Whitehouse, the snowflakes slowly congregated on our shoulders like dandruff. We got as close to the Whitehouse as possible, all the while trying to ignore the infantile fun facts being forced upon us by our wonderful tour guide. The coolest thing about the Whitehouse was seeing the sniper at the top of the building watching our every move.

We got back on the coach, and headed towards the various memorials around the mall. Unfortunately, we could not go inside the Lincoln memorial, because the set from yesterday’s concert was being torn down. Next we went to the Vietnam War memorial. The memorial looked like a scar, a painful reminder of the mistake we made. It seemed inhuman to condense the lives of the thousands of people into an impersonal name. People walk by the names, but each one has a story. We continued to the Korean War memorial and the WWII memorial.

Two people from our group went to Sam Farr’s office to pick up the tickets to the inauguration. The rest of us went to Union Station to get lunch. Not surprisingly, Union Station was packed. We wandered through the congested food court for two hours, and after two hours of wandering all I had to show for it was a doughnut the size of my head. We met the Sam Farr contingency at the back of the capitol building. Thanks to Sam Farr, we got silver passes at the very end of the ticketed area.

When we got back to Gaithersburg there was about an inch of snow on the ground. We immediately bought some sleds at Target, and started to slide down the little hills. About a half an hour into our session, a Gaithersburg police officer told us that we had violated the Gaithersburg curfew laws. It was eight o’clock. Even in Carmel, where ice cream was only recently legalized, the curfew is ten o’clock.