Monday, January 16, 2012

Mount Vernon, Game Night, and MLK Day

      Prepare yourselves for a long one folks.  I have so much to tell you about.
      First and for most, Mount Vernon was amazing! It was my favorite thing I have seen so far.  I LOVED it!!  We were there from 10:00 in the morning to closing at 4:30 and I still felt like I didn't get enough.  The grounds are amazing!  I always thought that I wanted to live in big ol' house like Mr. Darcy lives in, but I was wrong. Dead wrong.  I want to live on a plantation like Mount Vernon!  The house was exquisite with the best view no matter what direction you were looking in.  My favorite had to be the back porch.  It had a row of green chairs like they have at Cracker Barrel that you could sit in and look out over the hill that the mansion sits on all the way down the river.  You can also see across the river.  Everywhere you look is just trees and plants and flowers and just perfect.  It's amazing that a place that close to the bustling city of Washington, DC can feel so remote and separated from the world.  No wonder George Washington loved it so much!  The only downer of the trip was that our director kept us outside in the freezing wind for a long time and I think I made myself vulnerable to a cold.  Don't worry nothing has settled in completely, so I might be able to avoid it.
       Sunday we had church at the crack of dawn again.  I was so tired from our adventure to Mount Vernon that I slept through my alarm and woke up 40 minutes before we had to leave.  Whoops! A nice kid from our ward saw us walking and gave us a ride the rest of the way.  Bless his heart!  We had a munch 'n mingle after our meetings.  Egg rolls are a surprisingly delicious breakfast at 11:00 am.  We went home and I tried to take a nap.  I maybe slept for 30 minutes.  It wasn't very long at all.  A few members of the Relief Society came over and I felt like I made my first friends.  One girl even gave me a hug.  I didn't realize how much a I needed  one of those until she gave me one.  It was just what I needed to feel like I was starting to belong.  Later that night, my roommates and I got invited to a game night.  Holy fun!  We met like twenty people from the ward and had the best time.  A group of about ten of us played "Signs" in the basement.  I've never had so much fun playing that game.  I laughed most of the time.  The only times I wasn't laughing were when I was under pressure of not getting caught with the sign.  I'm really starting to feel like I'm starting to fir in around here.
      Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!  I started out my celebration of the day by sleeping in.  I didn't set my alarm and just let myself sleep until I was ready to get up.  A little before 10 am I got out of bed.  I got ready for the day and had a wonderful morning.  When we all were ready, we went to see the wonderful sites around DC that are related to MLK.  Our first stop was the Museum of American History.  They had a man there that half gave a summary of Martin Luther King's life and half acted like Martin Luther King.  We started the program with Martin Luther King's favorite hymn, which no one knew, and ended it with another hymn that it seemed like everyone knew but me.  Don't worry I was able to pull it off.  Like most songs, it was fairly predictable melodically and lyrically.  At the museum they had boards where people could post sticky notes with their own dreams written on them.  They had one board full of sticky notes of things that people believed were worth standing up for and in a little kids handwriting was written "No Spanking!"  Hahaha It was my favorite for obvious comical reasons.  From the museum, we hiked to the Abraham Lincoln Monument were MLK gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, braving the wind once again.  I was more excited about Abraham Lincoln at that point than I was about Martin Luther King.  My two favorite presidents in one weekend!  What fun!  Before heading home we stopped by the Martin Luther King Monument.  It's kind of like a one man Mt. Rushmore, except he's not in an actual mountain, just a giant piece of rock that they moved there.  It's a pretty cool monument.  By this time my feet were practically numb so we grabbed some lunch at Potbelly's (YUM! I"m getting hooked) and headed home.
      I did have to go back out once more to go to the grocery store.  I miss my car so badly when I have to go to the store.  Carrying all those groceries in my backpack and in my arms is a pain, literally and figuratively.  I have a feeling those new friends are going to come in handy ;)  Tomorrow it all starts up again.  I have a whole chapter's worth of lessons to write this week and Institute and lots of other things to do for school, but I have a feeling it's going to be a good week.

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