Yesterday I had to do some yard work and then ran the Bix course, so I was whipped by the time I got home. Anyway, here is a summary of the History day part of the trip! I'll tell more about Lancaster, PA and Broadkill Beach, DE later. Actually, after a little typing, I've realized that this is going to be a lot of writing if I tell you everything about the History Day trip all in one blog, so I'll only do the first two days of it today.
Ohh, and also, Mrs. Laber, my mom and I saw you out jogging this morning on my way to weightlifting! My mom didn't recognize you at first and said, "Wow, look at this woman. She must weightlifting".
Friday, June 8, 2012
My parents drove out ahead of me to Lancaster, Pennsylvania where my sister lives, so I was left with one of her friends. Her friend had another elderly friend over for lunch, and they told me all of these stories about my older siblings that I had never heard. I also got some more of my history day thank you packets done, including one to Erkki Tuomioja, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs.
At 5:30 we all got on the bus and got settled in for the overnight ride. It was a fun time with all of my history day friends crammed into the far back of the bus. We stopped for dinner at the same place we always do in Indiana Amish country, up by the Great Lakes. At midnight all of us in the back finally decided to go to bed, but then this really weird looking bug crawled across the covers and everyone freaked out. We were just hoping that there weren't more bugs hiding in the bus.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
At around one, we stopped to refuel in Ohio and we all had to get off the bus. We all had finally gotten comfortable at around three, when the bus stopped three times in about a half an hour and woke us all up. Then we started talking and laughing and it was really hard to go to bed. At 4:30, I woke up again to because someone was moving around, so I decided to watch the sun rise over the Pennsylvania mountains while listening to the Band Perry. It was a good time. After a few more hours of on and off sleep, we arrived at a truck stop in Pennsylvania and we all wandered out to try to clean up the best we could. It wasn't a very pleasant morning. The only water at the truck stop was boiling hot and the bathrooms smelled awful, so every time I tried rinsing toothpaste out of my mouth I gagged and then I finally gave up and swallowed a mouthful of toothpaste. Needless to say, it was gross and made me almost sick.
A few more hours later, we finally got to Gettysburg, which I found out is pronounced "Gettisburg" by locals. Driving through the town, I felt like the tourists outnumbered the local residents. We went to the museum and watched a VERY cool "cyclorama" presentation on the battle of Gettysburg. The cyclorama was a very large and old painting that spanned the entire way around the circular room and depicted the Battle of Gettysburg over its three day course, with a full narration and lighting and sound effects. Since my parents weren't along for the trip, Ansel and I hung out with Matt Griebe and his mom at we wandered around the battlefields and ate a mediocre $15 lunch. Afterwards, we drove up to "Little Round Top" where part of the battle occurred. Little Round Top is the most fun part of the experience because of all of the Huge rocks that dot the big hill, sometimes forming caves and making for a good rock climbing experience.
Later in the afternoon, we checked in at the University of Maryland and got to our dorm rooms, which are air conditioned this year, luckily. The dorms are really grim looking, like a Soviet style apartment building. The only thing that they contain are a lobby desk, some offices to the right, and a lounge area to the left, and then eight identical floors of dorms, each with its own lounge room. When Ansel and I got to our room, we started rearranging the furniture and were horrified to find moths flying out of every piece that we moved. The dorms were already gross enough without the bugs. The picture below was our room.
That night Ansel and I went with the Griebes to Applebees for dinner and had a really fun time and then got some ice cream from Cold Stone. After a while of walking in the dark to get back to the dorms, we went to the Iowa lounge on the eighth floor where we found four seventh graders form Decorah working on their door design, so Ansel, Matt and I decided to hang out with them. Immediately, the three girls from the group gave each other "looks" that signified we were NOT welcome and wouldn't hardly say a word when we tried talking to them. The one boy of the group sort of talked to us, but it got really boring and was NOTHING like out awesome times with the Akron-Westfield kids last year. At close to 11, the Allie and Ali group finally arrived back at the dorms after a nightmare trip home from Applebees, in which they made the mistake of hailing a cab driver who spoke broken English and had no clue where the dorm was. After some more talking, we decided that the Decorah kids were boring and lifeless so we moved on to bed.
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