Today was the day we decided to be brave and ride the Metro into town. Brave to ride the metro in yes, but even braver to drive into the scary part of town and leave our car there for the entire day! Now, in Utah there are no metros, so we were staring at the ticket buying machine for awhile looking entirely lost. Luckily, the nice metro worker could tell we were obviously not from around the area, and he helped us.
When we got off at our first stop, it was right at George Washington University, so we got a nice tour of the campus as we were walking to the National Mall. Dave also found a geocache in a newspaper stand right outside the metro stop, which he was very happy about. We went to the Vietnam wall, which is one of the neatest memorials, I think, and I don't really even know that much about the Vietnam war. I do know a little bit about the symbolism behind the memorial, which is maybe why I like it so much. When it was first built, a lot of people didn't like it because it is black stone, and it's very big, so everyone thought it was just a big black reminder of all the death in Vietnam. However, the designer chose this particular stone because it reflects images. She wanted you to be able to look at the wall and see yourself in it - to see you standing there because of the sacrifice of all the names on the wall.
Also, there are thousands of names carved into the stone, because the designer wanted people to be able to touch the names, and feel the personal-ness of each name. It really was cool to be able to touch the names - it was very humbling. Lastly, the wall starts out small (like the beginning of the conflict), and then grows bigger and bigger until the you literally have to tilt your neck all the way up to see the top of the wall (symbolizing the high point of the war). When you walk out the other end, your head slowly starts to come above ground again, as you feel the war coming to an end. It was crazy to look at this giant wall, and think about all the soldiers who sacrificed their lives to end the conflict. I was filled with an enormous amount of gratitude just looking at the wall. It was a really cool experience to be there.
The wall starts small at the far end, and slowly gets bigger until it climaxes in the middle.
Then it slowly gets smaller and smaller until you are fully above ground again.
There was a virtual geocache at the Vietnam Wall. It involved finding someone's name on the wall, and Dave was very proud that he found it!
After looking at the wall, we started walking down to the Holocaust Museum. It was about this time that RaNae needed a diet coke, and was excited to see a place where she could get one!
Look at her face! Have you ever seen a happier woman!?
Stopping for a minute to feed the ducks
Only to find out we weren't supposed to feed the ducks!
We also stopped at the WWII memorial because Dave wanted to see it during the day. This was actually a geocache that he found. It's a little cartoon that says Kilroy Was Here. I guess it was a popular cartoon during the WWII era, and so some soldiers would paint it on captured enemy cities, getting the point across that Americans were here and were victorious. It is carved into a little part of the WWII Memorial, and is, in fact, a virtual geocache.
Right after we took this picture, there were some darling little Chinese girls who came to ask us, in very broken English, if we could be in a picture with them. They needed us to pretend like they were very famous people who we were ecstatic to be meeting. They thought we were the nicest people ever for being in the picture with them. I only wish I had a copy of the picture because they were so cute!
There is also a registry at the WWII memorial where you can look up anyone who served in WWII. I found my Grandpa! Look at how handsome he is!
Before we went into the Holocaust Museum exhibit, we were SO lucky to be able to hear from a Holocaust survivor. Her name was Manya, and she was there to tell us her story about surviving in various concentration camps. The entire time she was talking, I just couldn't get over how I was hearing in first person an account of someone who was involved in the Holocaust. I've read tons of books about people like her, but they never seemed quite real to me. Manya was definitely real and was right in front of me, telling her first person survival account. It was amazing, and I don't think there was a dry eye in the audience. Her story was unbelievable. We ended up buying her book because we were so fascinated by her. I loved what she kept saying over and over throughout her story - Take lessons from the past to prevent another Holocaust. She said repeatedly that she doesn't tell people her story for her, but that she does it to educate us so that we can stop another Holocaust from happening. She said that the Holocaust was a warning for us, and that is absolutely what it is.
We got to talk with her afterwards and thank her for her bravery and courage.
I wouldn't say that going through the Holocaust Museum exhibit was fun, but it was definitely worth seeing. It is hard to take it all in, because there is so much sadness and unbelievable cruelty evidenced all throughout the exhibit. But it is so education, and so worthwhile to see. We were at the museum for four and a half hours and still didn't have time to see everything. The museum was closing before we were even finished with the 2nd floor (of only 3). So, we had to really rush through the last floor, but were still able to see a lot of it. I think the craziest thing about the Holocaust was that it didn't happen that long ago! There are still people alive today who lived during that time. It is hard to think that those horrible, unspeakable acts could be committed less than 100 years ago. That is not a lot of time. I was very grateful to have heard Manya speak before we went into the museum, because she reminded me why we need to learn about these things. I am going to do everything I can to stay educated and to learn lessons from the past to do what little I can to prevent things like the Holocaust from ever happening again.
Before we headed back to our hotel for the day, we took the metro to the Pentagon Memorial. When I first saw the memorial, I thought it looked really strange, but after I learned a little about it, it took on a whole new meaning.
Each one of these markers is a bench, with the name of someone who was killed at the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. They also have water flowing continually underneath each one of the benches, as a living reminder of those who were killed.
If the memorials are facing away from the Pentagon, that means it is a memorial for someone who was in the Pentagon when the plane crashed. If the memorials are facing towards the Pentagon, that means it is a memorial for those who were in the plane that crash landed.
The memorials are also organized by year of birth, so all the markers in the same row mean that those people were all born the same year. RaNae found someone born the same year as her whose name was also RaNae.
September 11th and the following wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are especially emotional for me because I remember them - they are my wars in my era. It was hard for me to look at these memorials and not get completely overwhelmed. I am so grateful to live in America and am SO grateful for those soldiers who are out there today, protecting my country and fighting for the freedoms I have to live my life the way I want to with my husband and our families. I feel so blessed.
After the Pentagon Memorial and the Holocaust Museum we were about emotion-ed about for the day, and decided it was time to go home. While we were waiting for the metro, Brittany and I saw a pretty gangster-looking guy with a tear tattooed onto his face. We were talking about how that guy must want everyone to know that he is perma-sad. After we got into the metro and I told Dave about it, he said, "You know what that means, don't you? That means he either killed someone in a gang fight, or he lost a good friend in a gang fight." Me, being the sheltered naive girl that I am, I had no idea! I'm just glad he didn't hear me telling Brittany that he was perma-sad!
When we got back to the metro stop, we somehow exited the metro on the opposite side of the freeway from where our car was, in the scariest part of the scariest part of town. We had to walk on this little bridge across the freeway, all 7 of us, looking like we are for SURE not from around here, with tons of gangster-looking people just staring at us. It was pretty freaky. We were all relieved when we made it across the freeway and to our car. That wasn't quite the end though. Once we got to our car, our gps for some reason decided not to work and we could NOT figure out how to get out of there! We were driving down all sorts of alley ways and I'm pretty sure we were in the heart of the projects! At one point, our gps told us to turn onto the road that was packed with police security officers, which made us feel kind of safe, except for the fact that they were staring us down and holding GIGANTIC guns. Here is where the quote of the day came in. Dave was driving, and those police men did NOT want us coming into the street we were going down - we could tell by the way they were staring us down. That's when Dave said, "Well folks, I don't think we're in Utah anymore." I think if we weren't all so freaked out we probably would have laughed a bit more. We rolled down the window and told them we were lost and just needed to find the freeway. They skeptically looked at us, and after a few moments finally gave us directions. We got out of there as quick as we could! We went back to our hotel, picked up Scott, and had a nice dinner at Chili's. After a long, emotional-filled day it was nice to have some good food and just to relax a bit with our family.
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