Waking up today I had no problem dealing with the time difference. It's much harder to stand this heat and dampness. I'm totally dehydrating. CVS is a useful place to catch a bottle of water. My favourite so far is their lemonade- it has this sour lemon taste, delicious.
Meagan, Monika, Hannah, Carolyn
About the program: after eating our waffles with blueberries for breakfast, we met at the Logan room with the participants, Monika, Meagan (another nice young lady from AED), Hannah and Carolyn, both from the Department of State. We introduced ourselves, Monika talked about the program and Carolyn about our position and the purpose of the program. As the lunch accidentally wasn't organised at the hotel, Meagan ordered pizza. The slices were triple size and had triple fat, but it was good, all American. During the time we waited for the pizza, we started bonding with each other. Talked about our countries and habits, showed Estonian money etc.
The limousine bus picked us up at the hotel and a state officer was our guide for the next couple of hours. Our first stop was the White House. Very small, not that impressive. There were some people protesting against nuclear weapons just outside of the gates.
Second place: the Capitol. Much nicer, bigger, whiter and more interesting. On our way there Ken (our guide) talked a lot about the history of the USA and its politics. After that we drove through the Chinatown: it's practically dieing out.
Third place: Jefferson Memorial: a lot bigger than I thought it would be, genius quotations on the walls. We learned about all the memorials at school, but I had forgotten most of it. Seeing all these places, I realized, that you cannot experience or know a place just by books and texts, but you really have to see it with your own eyes. Only now I'll remember what did Jefferson stand for and when was Roosevelt the president etc.
Fourth stop: Roosevelt Memorial: my favourite. As Roosevelt is the only president, that served more than two terms (four), the memorial was quite different. It was divided into four parts according to the terms: Great Depression, II World War, peacetime and his death. Everything was depicted through metal and stone figures and fountains. There were a bunch of sentences said by F.D. Roosevelt himself, all very genius. It was not only the biggest memorial I've seen in my life, but it was clearly my favorite, with all the symbols and quotes, just genius.
Last sight: Lincoln Memorial: again BIG. We also saw the Reflecting Pool next to it.
After the tour we headed to Nando's Peri Peri to have our dinner and meet the rest of the Latvians. The portions here are really huge, but the bottomless soft drink was smart. Latvians are the only ones, that have more than one boy, they have two! We walked back to the hotel, after loading my pictures to the computer we headed out to show the city to the Latvians, who unfortunately missed the tour. Me, Eva and Ruuben were to tired to walk to the Capitol and we took the metro to go back to the hotel. The metro is, again, big, fast, not crowded. The escalators are half a mile long, crazy. We decided to go to the gym in the morning with Ruuben, so I have to get some sleep now.
I decided to take pictures of as much car plaques with different state names as possible.
