Tuesday, January 20th

WHAT A DAY!!! This is defnitely a day I won't soon forget, and I think the 2 million other people that were there in the city with me would agree. I had to wake up at 4AM this morning and our bus was finally on its way by 5:30 (was supposed to be 5, but some students on other buses "slept in"). A trip that normally would have taken us half an hour, it took us 2 hours to get into D.C. I have never seen so much traffic in my life at that hour of the morning! By 7:30, we had found a place to stand on the mall with our 48 students. The view at 7:30 was absolutely beautiful!! We were not too far away, but luckily we were close enough to a screen where we could see everything. At the beginning, it wasn't too cold, but even with three pairs of sox and a pair of Uggs.. my feet were still pretty cold. At first, it was easy to get to the port-a-botties, or as my friend Rachel from Idaho calls them, honeybuckets. We took a few kids to use them right away, but a short time after we took them, you could not even move to get to them and be able to find your way back. Students got pretty cold, but thank goodness for hand warmers! After about an hour of standing there we realized that our DM, Jo Ann had lost us. It was easy to do with the amount of people that rapidly showed up after 8AM. The experience of being there is nothing I can explain. The cheers from the crowds were contagious, and even if you weren't an Obama supporter at some point, it was hard not to get lost in the enthusiastic moment. It was an extrememly exciting time and I felt like there was such pride in the country. Below are some videos of a few small samples of what we saw and heard.

Once everything was over, in an effort to keep all of us together and safe, we waited for the crowd to disperse a bit. Since we had lost our DM and she was not able to get cell service that day, I had to lead our group back to the bus.... somehow with 2 million people dispersed everywhere throughout the city, we were able to keep everyone together and get back to the bus safe and sound.

By this point, it was time to head back to the hotel and get ready for our own little inaugural ball in the hotel. The students were able to have a sit down dinner and dance to the music of a live band. The hotel also provided a cardboard cutout of President Obama, so students (and the adults) took lot of pictures with the new President. Overall... A WONDERFULLY EXHAUSTING DAY!!!