Day 2 in DC

Today we drank a lot of coffee, because today we needed to stay awake a lot in order to enjoy the last day!

We met our guide, Kara, who had a really good outfit.  She took us to the Capitol Building, which we thought was the White House!  In a lot of places in Washington D.C. the architecture is copied from buildings in Rome and Greece, like the Capitol for example. 

At the Library of Congress, there was a Gutenberg Bible which was really cool.  We saw books, books, books, books and books, and an exposition of nothing. 

Our next stop was the White House.  We had to look at it through bars from really far away.  The trees there are beautiful, because they’re starting to bloom.  We tried to look into all the windows to see Obama, but we couldn’t see him. 

The secret service was there, though!

Finally we went to the Washington Monument.  We tried to take pictures of the Obelisk, but it was so big we couldn’t even fit it in the frame!

Then we went to the National Mall – which isn’t a shopping mall, but a big garden.  We were all starving, so first we ate in the awesome café in the American Indian Museum, where you can find food from all different parts of the Americas.  There were a lot of different museums to visit, but we could also sit on the grass and chill out with a coffee.  We also went to the IMAX theater in the Air and Space Museum, where we watched a movie about the Universe with Leonardo Dicaprio’s voice.

Finally we finished our day in Georgetown.  It’s a beautiful neighborhood, where we got to go shopping.  We ate dinner there, which the food was good, but we weren’t super hungry because we ate a lot of snacks in the afternoon!!  It was Aitana’s birthday, so we celebrated by singing all together a song. 

On the way home, we had a party bus and we danced and sang and clapped the whole way home.

-Dorothy (Italy)

-Yuri (Brasil)

-Jose (Chile) 

Special message from the birthday girl: Today it was my birthday and I've only known everyone here from 5 days ago, but everyone was with me and giving me things and preparing things for me.  It was really cool that people I don't even know were doing all those things for me, and I don't want to leave. I had a really good and unique 16th birthday.  - Aitana (Spain)

Touring the Nation's Capital!

We started the morning by riding the bus from our hotel into D.C. On the bus ride we got our first glimpse of the Washington Monument!  We met our tour guide, Cathleen, and our first stop was the Korean War Memorial.  When you're there, it feels like a really powerful place.  The faces in the wall were so cool.  Then we went to the Vietnam War Memorial. We saw the soldiers, we learned some history, we took some pictures, and we saw the names of all the soldiers who died in the war.

Then we went to the famous Lincoln Memorial!  It's really big.  That must mean he was a good president.

It's also the place where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous " I Have a Dream" speech, and we could stand on the same spot where he spoke.

The next memorial was for Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President.  You can see the White House from there!  Then we went to the FDR Memorial, which was huge! We saw his wife, Eleanor, and his dog.  We took photos with the dog and with some of the statues.

The last monument we saw today was for Martin Luther King, Jr.  It was really big, and it's good to remember him because he did a lot for the U.S. and for African-Americans.

On our way to lunch, we passed the Pentagon, which is really big!  It's the headquarters of the American military.  For lunch, we stopped at a big mall, where we also got to go shopping for new clothes and for souvenirs for our host families and our natural families.

After lunch, we went to Mount Vernon, which was George Washington's house and estate.  We couldn't take pictures inside the mansion, but we could take pictures of a model house outside.  We watched a movie about his life.  It was a huge place!  You can also see his grave there.  We also ate dinner there.

                                         
Now we're back at the hotel and we have time to hang out with our friends.  We are trying to make the most of our time before we leave!  I'm so glad I got to travel with Belo and meet all these new people :o)

- Alejandra, Mexico

The City of Brotherly Love

In the morning, we said goodbye to the people who left.  It was kind of a sad morning, but we kept going and had a fun day anyway. 

When we arrived in Philadelphia, we went to Reading Terminal.  It’s like a huge market where everybody comes together to sell all different kinds of food – Indian, German, grilled cheese, lots of Amish stores, and of course, Philadelphia cheesesteak.  Right away the people we noticed were a little bit nicer than New York – they said excuse me and I’m sorry when they bump into you.  We found a German store and we were like “ Oh my gosh, this has everything you normally don’t see in the stores here!”  There were a lot of fun things to  see, like a used bookstore with lots of old books about Buddhism.  There was also a tarot card store, an herb store, and lots of unique food from all over the world, plus chocolate covered waffle cones with ice cream!

After lunch, we went to the Constitution Center. The presentation at the beginning was really cool – we were all sitting in a circle around the center of the room, instead of just in front of a stage listening to a person talk.  The woman did a great job memorizing all the things that she had to say, and it was presented in a really interesting way.  We would have liked to learn a little bit more about how other countries influenced the making of the U.S. government, but we learned a lot of other things.  The rest of the center had a lot of information, but it wasn’t so big of a place that we got bored.  It was just the most important things about the most important periods and events.  We thought the timing was great – not too short and not too long.  Plus we had time to go to the souvenir shop!  We also really liked that they had all the different flags from every state.  It was really a learning by doing kind of place – very interactive, we got to be involved.

Then we met our tour guide, Jen, who was really cool.  She could be really loud!  We moved pretty quickly because we had a lot to see! We saw the first post office, Benjamin Franklin’s house and where he is buried, City Hall, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Elfreth Alley, which looked kind of like Amsterdam with the really narrow houses. We got to go inside of Christ Church, where the guide inside really told us information that was meant personally for us as international students.

We also made a stop at the Philadelphia Art Museum, where we got to run up the famous stairs that Rocky trains on in the movies.  One Brazilian guy carried a girl all the way up the stairs! 

After our tour, we went to dinner at a restaurant called Bridget Foy’s in a really cute part of town.  Dinner was really good, we had a lot of choices, but a lot of us got cheesesteak, since we are in Philadelphia!  The atmosphere there was really cool, too.

Finally, we had a bus ride from Philly to D.C. and arrived at our new hotel. We were really excited to choose our roommates for our new hotel in Washington D.C.  We feel like we have a lot of freedom on this trip, and we really enjoy it.  Freedom, like the Liberty Bell stands for!

Emilia - Germany
Anne - Germany
Midori - Japan
Jimin - South Korea

Busy Day In The City That Never Sleeps

Today was our last day in New York City, but we made sure to make it count!

We took a ferry to get to the Statue of Liberty.  We were lucky because our ferry was a good one and we got good spots to take pictures, but after that we saw that all the other ferries were really full.  At the Statue of Liberty, we took a group picture in our trip tshirts, and then we all took a looooooot of photos.  We went shopping at the souvenir shop, and we had a great view of the NY skyline from Liberty Island.

We had lunch in Times Square, and lots of time to go shopping. Many people went to Forever 21 or to the MnM shop.  We took pictures with Buzz Lightyear and the Blue M-n-M!  We even saw the famous Naked Cowboy! (but he’s not totally naked!). 

After that, we went to the 9/11 Memorial, which was really depressing.  Now there are just names on the memorial, but before, those names were real people.  We saw white roses on some of the names, which we learned means that today would have been their birthday.  We touched the Survivor Tree, which is a tree that survived all the chaos of 9/11 and is now growing again at the memorial, and now we are lucky for the whole next year.

Next we went to Sbarro to eat dinner.  We had New York pizza, which some of us think is better than Chicago pizza (but some people didn’t think so!) The cheesecake was really good, which is also a famous New York food.  We talked about funny questions about our home countries, for example, “ Do you have weekends?”  and “ Do you drink water in Germany?”

Finally, to end the night, we went to see the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, which was magnificent!  There are no words to describe it, because it was so cool.  We would have to sing it!  It was really magical.  My favorite part is when the Phantom takes her down to his lake for the first time, and then the end was really dramatic.

Now, the saddest part.  We have to leave tomorrow and say goodbye to everything.  But tonight on the bus on the way back to the hotel, we saw the beautiful lights of the skyline for the last time, and we got to say our goodbyes to NYC. 

For the people who leave tomorrow, we are taking the last pictures with everybody and exchanging Facebook names to stay in contact because of the friendships we’ve built over the last 3 days.  But for those who stay, they are looking forward to going to see Philadelphia tomorrow!

Beatrice (Germany) and Zemfira (Russia)

Empire State of Mind!

Another exciting day in New York City!!

At the Empire State Building, it was really cool to see that something we see on tv all the time was really in front of our eyes!  From the top, we could see the whole city and it was really amazing.  From the 86th floor, we could see all the tall buildings, but we were above them all!  We were on the same level with the birds, and we didn't know they could fly that high!  How do they get up there? Do they take the elevator, too?

From there, we went to Grand Central.

That was so cool, because so many movies take place there, like Madagascar.  The ceiling was really amazing, it is decorated with constellations.  That was also where we had lunch.  I (Winnie) and my friends ate sushi, and I hadn't eaten sushi for a long time before that!  So I was really happy.  We thought about going to the Oyster Bar, but it was pretty expensive.  But we tried the Whispering Chamber in front of it, and talked to some random people on the other side of the room.  How cool!  Some of us ordered from the famous New York City restaurant Shake Shack, and it was so good.

After that, we met our guides and continued the City Tour that we started yesterday.

We saw the bull statue, Wall Street, the World Trade Center site, the New York Stock Exchange, the place where George Washington swore in as president, the beautiful Trinity Church, which is the richest church in the U.S., and even more tall buildings!

Then we walked across the famous Brooklyn Bridge.

It was a long walk, but really beautiful.

We saw a lot of locks all over the bridge.  We guess couples write their names on the locks and put it on the bridge like a promise of love.

Our next stop was shopping in Soho, but we were kinda tired from walking so we didn't buy too much.  We learned a lesson though while looking for the bathroom: life is hard and you have to find the right place.

Then, we went to Chinatown for dinner!  It was really nice to see some of our same culture and some of the same food.  We could talk in Chinese with the servers, and they said we are the sweetest group :o)  Those of us who use chopsticks in our home countries taught other people how to use chopsticks, and some of it was really funny!

We're looking forward to another full day in New York City tomorrow!

Winnie, Jeffrey, and Jennie from Taiwan

Day 1 in The Big Apple!

It was our first day in New York City!!!!  It was a full day with a lot of nice things.  At the end of the day, we couldn’t believe we had done all of those things in the same day!

When we arrived in Manhattan, the buildings were so tall and beautiful and amazing. We have never seen buildings like that in our lives.  We started with a city tour.  We met our cool guides who talked to us about the history of the city.  It was like history class, but way cooler because we were actually there!  The real things we were learning about were right in front of us!

We started our tour at the New York Public Library

and walked by Bryant Park and up to Rockefeller Center.  Then we went to Central Park. 

When we were inside the park, we couldn’t believe we were in the middle of the biggest city in America!  We saw the Imagine mosaic

and went to Bethesda Terrace. 

There were church singers there who sang really good all at the same time.  The winter has been so cold, there was some snow still on the ground and it was the first time some of us had seen snow in our lives!

From there we went to St. John’s Cathedral, and then took a walk to Columbia University.  It was huge, and some of us dreamed about going there someday.

We finished our tour by driving around Harlem.  Then we went to lunch in Greenwich Village, where some of us ate sushi, some burgers, and some of us went to a famous pizzeria where they filmed Spiderman!  It wasn’t expensive and there were a lot of people there.  It was a super famous place, but it seemed really normal.

After lunch, we went to the Metropolitan Museum. 

There were so many things there.  We couldn’t stop walking around the galleries to see all the variety of the museum!  They have very famous paintings that you can only see there. 

There was even an Egyptian temple inside.

The hip-hop class was next.   It was super fun, and some people’s favorite part of the day.  It was a very good academy with professional people, so you could feel like a New York artist there!

Finally we went to dinner at The Hard Rock Café.  The food was so yummy, and we could see real things that the Beatles wore and other rockstars owned.  One of the waiters danced for us.  In our countries, no waiters would dance for us. 

After we got some time to walk around Times Square at night.  Some of us didn’t have cash, and we told the street performers that, and they took pictures with us anyway.  They were so nice!  We even saw a horse in the middle of Times Square!  We think those unique and special things only happen in New York.

Aitana – Spain

Nia – Thailand

Polina - Russia