My Middle School Life - The Trip Part 1

A couple days ago, Mr. Tonic took a group of ninety of us (not all honor roll kids) to Washington DC., with ten chaperones.  Even before it started I knew it was going to be interesting. We had to get to the school at 6 o'clock in the morning.  Unfortunately, since I had to go to the bathroom, I got the worst seat, all the way in the very back, right next to the bathroom.  

After a few hours of driving we stopped at a place to get breakfast.  I got a large chocolate milkshake from Carvel, drank it all in 5 minutes (would have been better but brain freezes slowed me down) and went back to the bus. On our way out, the bus clipped another bus as it was pulling out. We had to sit there for 15 minutes snapping pictures of the broken head light lying on the ground. It wasn't anything big, but it led to too many phone calls.

Arlington National Cemetery was one of our first stops.  Our tour guide knew everything; he was a walking Google search (in a good way).  There are twenty five funerals a day in Arlington and we heard the shots from a 21 gun salute.  The cemetery is constantly expanding, he said.  One of my classmates, not the brightest kid for sure, questioned why they use guns in the cemetery and someone could get killed.  He missed the point.  It was really, really hot and I was wearing a sweatshirt (my mom's idea).  We saw the changing of the guard at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  It was somber and perfect.

Then we went sailing around on the Potomac at night and there was a flashing light on a submarine in the distance.  It looked like Morse code.  Someone looked up Morse code on their phone and tried to communicate.  We eventually realized it was just a blinking light on an island, not a submarine.  On the boat there was a DJ and dancing.  Our group asked for the Harlem Shake and they played it.  Everyone went nuts and danced like crazy.  The food was terrible.  It was fried chicken, bad, macaroni and cheese.  And to cap it all off there was no dessert. 

We got back to the hotel at 11:00pm.  It was four kids in each room.  We all got our pajamas on.  We were wound up, but slowing down. We couldn't figure out how the TV worked.  We couldn't find the remote.  I was supposed to share a bed with Dan.  But he rolled around so much that I kept getting knocked off, finally I took a couple blankets and pillows and slept on the floor.  In the other bed, Mikey ended up moving to the floor too.  We ordered a wakeup call but since Mikey and Jiro set alarms on everyone's phones and iPods, we had to silence eight alarms.  Mr. Tonic knocked on our door to wake us up, too.  Despite all the noise, we still had to wake up Dan manually and it wasn't pretty.  He snarled and went back to sleep.  You don't really know someone until you go on a trip with them.  We finally convinced him to get up by talking about breakfast. 

After breakfast, we went to the Capitol and our tour guide gave us headsets.  The capitol is such a noisy place we wouldn't be able to hear out tour guide without them.  Everywhere we turned there were groups of kids on tour like us.  Apparently, one of the kids in our group saw a couple of senators walking by and thought one was the Speaker of the House.  It turns out he was home sick that day, anyway. 

We had lunch at the Ronald Reagan shopping mall, after going through security (so much security...) we got vouchers and we were told we had 30 minutes to get and eat lunch.  I wanted Flamers (hamburgers), but the line was so long I wouldn't make it. What do I do? David's Cookies for lunch! More on the trip next post!

Thanks for Reading! :)