i went to the district of columbia : day three

day three docket:

church

sack lunch in random park

holocaust memorial 

american history museum

natural history museum

smithsonian castle

air and space museum

white house

washington monument

WWII Meemorial

reflecting pool

vietnam war/korean war memorial

lincoln memorial 

einstein memorial

..so some of those things didn't happen because we might have been a little overzealous in our planning but a lot of it did happen and i felt good about it. 

it is probably for the best that you can't take pictures inside of the holocaust memorial museum because people like me would have been so obnoxious just trying to document the whole thing for myself. i still wish that i could have taken at least a couple to help me remember but it was touching enough that i think it will be hard to forget. i wish that we could have spent all day going through the museum because there was just so much to see and read and learn about. i was nervous i would feel bad about going to these type of things on a sunday (but decided it was okay because we weren't spending money..justification?) but i concluded that this was definitely a sabbath appropriate activity and i'm so glad we went. i'm so grateful that people took the time and money to help others, like myself, learn of these people and remember what happened to them. i love that poster, "think about what you saw". i definitely walked away from that museum sad but also with a resolve to treat others better and love others more. 

since most of the other museums were already closed our only other option was the national history museum. luckily it was open two hours longer than the others so we still got a big chunk of time to explore all the different parts. my favorite part was definitely this "nature's best" exhibit featuring wild life photography. each photo had a description of the set up each photographer used and the settings their camera were on when the shot was captured. i, being the nerdy photography lover i am, read through all of them.

some parts of the museum were just so out of control like the giant squid or the Neanderthal people who were "true to size". can you imagine that little lady/man next to me just running around? that would freak me out. 

the scientist in the picture donated his bones and his dogs bones (once they both died) to science. so cool and so creepy all at the same time.

the colors! 

boston kind of ruined this for me because bunker hill just looks like a smaller version of it so it didn't seem that awesome to me. maybe if they weren't doing construction and i could have gone to the top i would have felt otherwise. i still liked it though!

i wore way dumb shoes that started to hurt so instead of walking all the way to places i just took pictures from afar and called it good. a good example of this occurrence would be the picture above of the white house. and speaking of, have you seen this? political feelings aside, how can you not like obama after watching that?  

i did still want to go see einstein though so we took a very nice and comfortable photo on his lap. i tried to take one in between his legs like the lady before us did, but i just couldn't pull it off as well as she did.

we made it to the lincoln memorial at the perfect time of day, the sky was gorgeous and everything began to be illuminated 

and all my best school friends were there! seriously so many elementary/junior high kids must have had their spring break at this time because there were herds of them everywhere. 

we looked down at one point and saw a few mormon pass-a-long cards which at first made us happy but then made us sad because once we realized why they would be on the ground. 

i think this would be a good time to say just how much i thoroughly enjoy beth's company. because of our missions and living in different parts of the world/country the past four years i haven't been able to see much of her and i kind of forgot what a great time she is. her dry sense of humor gets me so good and i just end up laughing and laughing and never wanting our friendship time to end. 

for some reason pretending to be like every other tourist seemed so funny to us and we just giggled like fourteen year olds as all of this happened. and that picture of beth needs to be blown up and framed i think. 

as we made our way over to the WWII memorial (which was so pretty and nice) i turned on a scene from high school musical 2 and made her sing with me the whole way slash i just sang to her because she was a little embarrassed. the hsm 2 soundtrack was such a favorite in the yellow house! 

and i leave you with our last tourist photos of the night which make me just as happy as the ones above. i SO wish beth was really from guam but it almost makes it one hundred percent funnier that she isn't.