After this week I am also incredibly tired and have a long day of goodbyes and travel tomorrow.  I promise to fill in all of the blank spots in my blog when I get home and post more pictures.  See some of you tomorrow

My  friends, Abby, Sean, and I first went to the Air and Space museum to get lunch.  Big mistake!!! We all ordered these incredibly overpriced, tiny, truly disgusting pizzas, because we didn’t want McDonalds.  If only we had known that this food choice wold make s feel awful.  Sean finished his pizza before Abby or I and all of a sudden said, “I don’t feel so well.”  Pretty soon after that Abby and I both felt nausea coming on.  Fortunately, none of us ended up getting sick, but we all thought we were going to.

Because of time we were barely able to scratch the surface of what the National Mall has to offer but, we walked though the bottom level of the Air and Space Museum.  Then we walked down to the American History Museum, taking a quick detour to the fountain and modern art garden in front of the Museum that Houses the National Archives.  While we were in the American History Museum we saw the first American Flag.  The flag was huge and made me absolutely speechless.  We then went to see the First Ladies exhibit.  or more truthfully, Abby and I got excited about dresses and made Sean come with us.  All of the dresses and artifacts they have are beautiful and so unique.  However, my favorite was definitely Michelle Obama’s dress.  It was absolutely breathtaking.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see too much more of the American History Museum because we desperately wanted to have time to go to the Museum of Natural History.

We spend the most time in the Museum of Natural History.  We skimmed many of the large exhibits.  Including the dinosaur exhibit, the sea life exhibit, the mammals, and the exhibit on bones and skeletons.  We also saw the Hope Diamond (sooo cool!!!).  But then, things turned into a downpour, literally.  As we looked out one of the windows we noticed that it has started to pour outside.

Now, it rains in California.  But it doesn’t rain like this.  Huge, warm drops falling from the sky that puddle quickly and will drench you in seconds.  The three of us knew that we still had to get back to the Air and Space Museum so we didn’t miss our bus.  So, we bought five dollar umbrellas! :p   We should have packed our own… but definitely didn’t see the rain coming.  We made it onto our bus with plenty of time left, but needless to say… we were very. very. very. very wet.  Thankfully we had some time to clean up, change into dry clothes (they even let us wear jeans!!!!) and hang out before the evening speakers back on campus.

That’s all I have for you tonight… well, not really… there’s a lot more… but I need sleep.  Bad.  So here are a couple of pictures of me with some friends on Monday at the Newseum.  And no, the fact that we were all wearing blue was not intentional.  Enjoy your night!

Just having fun!!Our Original Group

Oh, and tomorrow morning I’m probably going to be on C-Span!! Much earlier than I would like, but still.  So I’m going to head off to bed now.  Goodnight!!

On a slightly different note, I will say that today was incredible.  It was long and tiring, but s lot of fun.  I have made even more friends (everyone is really nice) and now hang out with a small sub group of my “blue group.”  We went all throughout the Newseum together.  Which is probably my new favorite place.

There is so much more I want to write.  But it’s late here, and I have a big day tomorrow.  We are going to the National Press Club, listening to Chuck Todd speak, and meeting Hoda!!! So, goodnight everyone.

I know I promised pictures, so I’ll try to get them up tomorrow.  Bye!!

Getting out of the Dulles airport was no problem and I even met two other girls from CA.  We caught a bus with some of the other arrivals and headed off to George Mason.  I love all of the brick buildings.  It’s a really beautiful area over here.  Unlike some of the other places I have visited, I can actually picture myself here.  After arriving on campus we checked into our room and quickly changed into more suitable clothing because, we were one of the last groups to arrive and our small groups were already meeting.

The dorms are a lot nicer than I expected.  By a “random act” I ended up with my own room.  (I’ll try and post pictures tomorrow).  It’s small, but very clean and very new.  I didn’t get to meet my suit mates until tonight, but they are all very nice.  Our suit has two single rooms and one double room, a bathroom area with a mirror that will hopefully be big enough for all four of us to do our hair in the morning.

So far, all of the people have been really nice.  I have met people from all over the country and most importantly found out that people in Missouri eat squirrel (EEEEWWWWWWWWW).  I really wish I hadn’t found that out during dinner… but I did.  Speaking of dinner, the food was really good and my friend from Arkansas and I sat with a group of really nice people.

My small group is the blue group.  It’s made up of of 26 students from all over the country (21 of them are girls).  During our small group meetings we went over basics for the week etc. and debriefed on the speaker, a political journalist who writes a blog called “the fix.”  His speech was quite funny, although I felt like one of the only people who got his Las Vegas joke….

Tomorrow we head off to the Newseum, which should be really amazing and inspiring.  So yeah… hopefully this should suffice for my first blog post.  Like I said earlier, I will try to post pictures tomorrow.

On a final note-  I have to wake up at 3AM CA time tomorrow…. yay….. I better get used to this time change fast.

Have a goodnight!!