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| on the mall |
Another D.C. story, what a surprise. The picture was from the first day of the trip. The night before we flew out, I went to a Khalid concert with my friends, so I was out until 1 am. By the time I got back to my house and showered and got into bed, it was already 2 am! I went to bed right away, because I needed to leave my house at 5:30 am the next morning to be ready for our flight to D.C. After a night of a solid 3 hours of rest, I dragged myself out of bed, took a quick shower to wake me up, put on my travel outfit that the whole grade needed to wear, got my bags and loaded them and myself into the car. I knew that I should feel exhausted, but it was impossible to be tired when I was filled with this much excitement. I arrived at the airport 15 minutes early and stood with my friends in the security line. When we loaded the plane, we all sat in the back, and it was the most fun flight of my life. We were respectful of the other passengers, but it was hard to be completely silent when we were on our way to D.C.!
When we arrived, it was bright, sunny, hot and most of all, humid. When we all loaded into our buses, we drove an hour to our hotel and unloaded our bags in our rooms. The rooms were disgusting, and the hotel smelled distinctly like fish. After we all settled in, we met in the conference room to say announcements about what we were going to do for the rest of the day. We listened closely as the teachers told us our instructions for the afternoon. We were going to walk to the National Mall (not the shopping kind, the grass kind in the middle of major D.C. monuments.) We grabbed water bottles and left on our walk. It was nice that it was sunny, however with the humidity and the heat, it did not mix well with the hair of many of my friends with long, curly hair.
After walking to the Mall, the whole class rushed to the drink stands and we all bought lemonades and ice cream and sat in the shade of large trees on the edge of the large, grassy space. It was perfect because we could all relax and cool down after our walk in the blazing hot sun. My friend, Sara, and I decided to whip out our clout goggles because they would make all of our friends laugh. I also got my camera so we would never forget this perfect afternoon. We took the picture of us shown above laying down under the large trees surrounded by our best friends.
After everyone had cooled down, we walked around the city to different monuments such as the Washington Monument. When we arrived there, it was beautiful because the sun was setting and, luckily enough, we were the only people there. However, this did not last for long. As we walked towards the monument to take pictures, we started to feel droplets of rain on our heads. There was not a lot of rain, so we figured it was nothing major and we could stay for a few more minutes. We were wrong. Within 2 minutes, the raindrops felt like they were as big as water balloons, and it was coming down as if we were in a shower. For many of us, this was terrible because we did not know it was going to rain, so we were in our sneakers. We ran and ran back to our hotel to try and escape the storm, but the rain was too much.
When we finally entered the lobby of Hotel Harrington, all of us were completely soaked head to toe! Our hair looked like we had just taken a shower and our clothes looked like we had just jumped in the pool. Not to mention the uncomfortable sloshing sound our sneakers that was noticeable every time we took a step. Furthermore, it was nearly impossible for our shoes to dry because it was so humid in D.C. However terrible this rain storm was, we still had the pictures of the amazing day to remember it for the incredible memory it was.
