A New Chapter in American History

I spent this past weekend in my nation’s capitol, Washington, DC. This was my first trip to DC, and it was worth every lost hour of sleep, leg cramp and teeth chattering moment.

We arrived at my friends,’ Kristin and Terry, apartment in Arlington, VA early Sunday morning. We spent Sunday wandering around the mall and caught some of the “We are One” concert. This would be our first experience with monumental crowds-only a quarter of what we’d see on Tuesday!

On Monday, we were tourists. We walked all around the downtown area and visited the Museum of American History. Here are some of my favorite shots of Monday.

Tuesday morning, we woke up at 4:30 a.m.! I was so excited for the day that I only grumbled for a few minutes before unzipping myself from my sleeping bag and eagerly grabbing for the cup of coffee Terry was handing me (thank you!). We were up and out by 5 and hopped on the Metro to Arlington Cemetery. We walked over the Potomac, like so many Americans before us, and entered DC. We were greeted on the mall by “volunteers” who kept saying, “Good morning!” to everyone who walked by. We walked as far up to the capitol as we could. Confusion was everywhere. We finally settled on a spot by MSNBC, well, we finally realized that the path had been barricaded ahead of us, and we were stuck!

Everyone around us was in good spirits despite the close quarters. We made some friends with a couple ladies from Florida (Thank you for the life-saving granola bar if you’re reading this!). We stood there, freezing, anticipating, laughing and waiting for about four and a half hours before the “entertainment” arrived. Aretha was a little disappointing ,but we didn’t really care…we knew what was to come next!

After President Obama’s speech, we tried to head out of the crowds and back to Virginia. The crowd was so controlled that we were stuck in our “block” until security removed a giant fence and we were able to walk, in a round-about way, back the way we came.

Even now, the fact that Barack H. Obama is our president has not completely set in. I keep thinking back to his words on Tuesday and the promise for a new America.

Obama Biden 2008

Barack Obama has announced his running mate! Please take a moment to read about Biden and watch this video from Biden himself! VOTE FOR CHANGE!