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)