6/12/2014 0 Comments Meet and GreetToday we came fact to face with Colonial history! Williamsburg can be an overwhelming experience with all there is to see and do and I think the students did an amazing job trying to see everything they could today. We started the day with a three hour guided tour of key locations and sites. Most groups began at the Capitol where the Virginia House of Burgesses met. Members of the House that made an impact on our history include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and George Washington. Then groups went off in a variety of locations. Some of the places they visited include the public gaol (public jail), print shop, wigmaker, silversmith, book bindery, Courthhouse, ammunition magazine, Governor's Palace, Bruton Church and cemetery, stockades, Peyton Randolph House, and lots of other trade shops. At noon we all came back together, redivided into smaller groups, ate lunch and explored sites in the little groups. Students got the chance to see specific sites that interested them, met historic figures and colonial reenactors. We met British and American soldiers, slaves, and member of the different trade jobs. We learned that a wigmaker could create a cheap and simple wig in just 2 days, but a more complicated or expensive wig could be created in 2 weeks. When we asked if we could place an order he said he would be happy to we just needed to shave our heads and get a cap from the millinery for him to use to create the base to the wig! Most students say the highlight of the day though was meeting the colonial people. The students asked great questions and we so impressed that many of the reenactors would stay in "their" time period when they answered the questions. They met a reporter and a plantation owner that they all came back to us sharing stories and details of their lives in colonial America that they had learned! We had a great Italian meal at Sal's and are now currently on the road headed to DC! We had a great time today despite the rainy weather. It was hot and humid today and several times we had pretty large downpours. Those umbrellas and ponchos students packed are definitely getting used. Tomorrow's weather forecast is pretty similar, so guess we'll be seeing some monuments in the rain. We have a busy day tomorrow - Korea/Vietnam/Lincoln Memorials, the Newseum, Ford's Theater, lunch in Chinatown, US Capitol tour, time at the Air and Space and American History museums, dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and then visits to the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial and Iwo Jima!
Step Count update - 13,367 steps = 5.93 miles
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6/11/2014 0 Comments Colonial Immersion!Colonial America began to feel real to us today! We started our day at Historic Jamestowne, the original site of the first permanent English settlement in North America. There are many active archeological digs currently going on at Jamestowne, and the students were excited to see artifacts as they were digging them out of the ground. We saw recovered pieces of pottery, animal bones, and other artifacts. The students asked great questions at Jamestowne. They told me it was a great place to visit and that they learned a lot. We received so many compliments from other groups, tourists, tour guides, and park employees about how well behaved and dressed our students were, and what good questions they were asking. This was a great way to start our day. We then visited the glassblowing exhibit and saw them making flycatchers. All of the students were overwhelmed by the heat from the furnace used to heat the glass and how quickly they had to mold the piece as the glass cooled. Then it was off to lunch at the College of William and Mary. This was the second college founded in the United States and the students got to experience what a student union dining hall is all about! After lunch we visited the Yorktown Victory Center. This is a newer facility with some hands on and reenactment displays from the final battle of the American Revolution. It is humbling to see the artifacts they have displayed from the battle that won America our independence from the British! Two of our students were put on the gun crew to fire a cannon, and then the reenactors actually fired a blank shot from the cannon. They all jumped at the loud blast from the cannon as it went off! Talk about history coming to life! One of the girls on the trip said she couldn't believe that they actually shot the cannon off. She didn't expect it. We wrapped up our evening with dinner at Christiana Campbell's Tavern, one of the colonial taverns in historic Williamsburg. We had a wonderful meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, steamed vegetables, homemade vanilla ice cream, and their signature sweet potato muffins! We were entertained by a fiddler who played colonial tunes and then headed out for the ghost tour. This was a rain-shortened version tonight, but many of the groups said that they heard some fun ghostly stories. Mainly though they got a chance to walk through the main street of historic Williamsburg tonight and figure out what locations they want to see tomorrow when we spend the day exploring there. We have the entire day at Williamsburg tomorrow. We start with a guided tour in the morning to orient everyone to the key sites, and then we will break into our groups and spend the afternoon exploring locations each group wants to see. We will all meet up twice in the afternoon for special events, a reading of the Declaration of Independence and a military unit led by Benedict Arnold entering the Revolutionary City. We will have an Italian meal and then drive to DC! With the rain shortened ghost tour students had some downtime tonight at the hotel to relax and then get a full night's sleep tonight. It was a hot day on short sleep from last night - we finally got to the hotel at about 1:30 a.m., so we are very happy to have a short night and we are looking forward to a good night's sleep. Despite the short night last night and the heat today, the students did a great job and we all hope that they learned a lot today. We stopped several times to take large group photos and we have started the process of getting close up pictures of students at sites as well. I will try to get a couple of photos posted each night at least, but will continue adding photos to the page even after the trip is over, so share any photos you have even after we get back! One of our young ladies was absolutely thrilled today when the archeologists allowed her to step into their work site to get a picture with the Pocahontas statue! Looking forward to more great experiences and discoveries tomorrow!
Step Count = Tuesday 5, 961 steps = 2.65 miles walked Wednesday 16, 315 steps = 7.27 miles walked 6/10/2014 3 Comments tires and tired studentsWe are on the road. It has been a long day of traveling so far. We left Rensselaer about 7 a.m and switched drivers in Chillicothe,OH. Our drivers are Bob and Deb, who were our drivers last year as well, and we are very happy that are with us again this year. We ate lunch in Chillicothe at the Golden Corral when we switched drivers, and came out to find a tire on the girls' bus was off the rim. A tire repair truck was there to fix it, but it took longer than we thought. We had hoped the seal had just broke, but it ended up being a hole that needed to be plugged. After a delay we finally got back on the road. We are nearing Lexington, VA, and should get to Williamsburg about 1 a.m. The hotel knows about our delay and will be ready for us when we get there. It will be a short night since we have breakfast at 7:30 tomorrow morning. We are looking forward to the first tour day of the trip. We will be visiting Historic Jamestowne where the first permanent English settlement was and where Pocahontas lived. Then we will be off to the Yorktown Battlefield to see where the American Revolution ended and we won our independence! We will be having lunch on the campus of the College of William and Mary and dinner at Christiana Campbell's, a colonial tavern in historic downtown Williamsburg. We will wrap up tomorrow with a ghost tour in Williamsburg. It will be an early night tomorrow, which we will all appreciate after today's long travel day!
6/7/2014 0 Comments Our trip is almost here!After a very busy school year, full of club meetings, fundraising, and keeping grades up in all 8th grade classes, it is almost time for us to head to Washington DC for the 2014 trip. We have added some new sites to this year's trip that we are really looking forward to! Our first stop will be Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg. We will be spending two days there before we head to Washington DC. We will spend three full days in DC and one day in Baltimore. This is the 200th anniversary of the Star-Spangled Banner this August, so we will be visiting Ft. McHenry to commemorate this important event in American history. We leave on Tuesday morning at 6:00 a.m! Good luck packing this weekend and we'll see everyone bright and early on Tuesday!
6/16/2013 2 Comments A Seriously Intense DayIt is always a bittersweet day at the end. We have had such a long and busy week, and many of us are missing home and ready to come home. We also know that there is so much more to see and do and we don't want to miss out on anything. This has been a much more relaxing day as well. We started the day at the National Law Enforcement Memorial. We added this to our schedule a couple of years ago because of a personal connection to the memorial for one of our staff members. We also have one student whose parent is in law enforcement and it seems appropriate for us to visit there. We laid some red carnations at the memorial this year, which we have not done before. From there we went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. While this is a place that is always interesting, it is a very tough place to visit emotionally. As one student told me after the visit, "it is a sad place, but somewhere we had to come." Students are currently scattered between three museum locations - the US Botanic Gardens, the Air and Space Museum, and the Hirshorn Museum. Some highlights I hope the students find at the Air and Space Museum are the Wright Flyer, the Apollo and Mercury capsules, the lunar module, an aerogel sample, and I hope they touch the moon before they leave. At the Hirshorn Museum I will be interested to see what they find. Mrs. Spurgeon is guiding the tour through the modern art and is most likely having a blast over there! The Rainforest and tropical area at the US Botanic Gardens is always a highlight, as well as their orchids and the cacti. Groups have two hours in the museums this afternoon to see as much as possible, which is a definite challenge at the Air and Space Museum. One final stop and then it is back to the hotel to pack for the trip home tomorrow. We have breakfast at 6:30 am and will be on the road by 7 am local time. That is one hour earlier, so the hope is that we can be home a little early.
Overall, this has been an amazing trip. The students have received so many compliments on their behavior and dress that we are all very proud of them this week. Our nighttime chaperone has been so impressed with our students getting quiet and their behavior in the hotel each night. This has been a wonderful group of students to travel with and we have all had a great time showing them our nation's capital! It has been a great pleasure this year to be their guides. Before we head to dinner at Carmine's for spaghetti and salads, we want to send a shout out to 6/15/2013 0 Comments History and ArtifactsWe started the day with a new activity - we had breakfast at the Hard Rock Cafe. They opened just for us this morning. From there we went to the Smithsonians. The students picked which museums on the north side of the mall they wanted to visit. Their choices were the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the National Gallery of Art. They had about 1 1/2 hours to visit the museum, and all of them had great stories about the items they found and saw. We ate lunch at Ming's in Chinatown. It was family style serving - they brought 6 platters of food out and most of them said they found a dish they enjoyed. We went back to the museums for another hour. Many of them went back to the same museum, but some of them changed to see a new museum. We walked up to Ford's Theater, where we toured the museum before our ranger talk. In the museum the derringer gun that Booth used is there, as well as the pillow that President Lincoln's head was on when he died, the inside door to the presidential box, and the clothes that President Lincoln wore to Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865. After the ranger talk we ate dinner at Sizzling Express near the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Our last major activity of the evening was watching "Shear Madness" at the Kennedy Center. This is always a highlight of the trip! We came back to the hotel after the play so that students had some time to unwind and relax. Many of them got a chance to swim in the pool. They have had a couple of late nights so an early night back at the hotel was really needed. One of our student's had a birthday today and Hard Rock Cafe brought her an ice cream sundae at breakfast and we all sang her Happy Birthday. The ranger at Ford's Theater also said Happy Birthday to her at the start of his talk. We can't believe that tomorrow is the last day here.
6/14/2013 1 Comment George, Graves, and GhostsWow..... What a day! We started at Mount Vernon, George Washington's home. We toured the buildings on the ground, including touring his mansion, and then a quick visit through the museum. Some of us were able to find his dentures! We took the boat back to Washington DC. Despite the winds and being blown around on the upper deck, they really enjoyed taking the cruise back. Due to our dinner reservation we had a record trip through Arlington Cemetery. We made it up to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and saw the Changing of the Guard. After that there was a wreath laying by International Officers. There were military officers from Brazil, South Korea, Japan, India, Indonesia, and several other countries that laid the wreath, and that was very impressive to see. On the way up to the Tomb we saw one of the funerals in the cemetery today, with a full honor guard and band. On the way back to the bus we stopped and paid our respects to President Kennedy and his brothers. From this impressive and somber experience we went to dinner in Alexandria. We ate at an Irish restaurant called O'Connell's. Most students and chaperones enjoyed their fish and chips. We had an hour and a half before we had to gather for our ghost tour, so we had the opportunity to explore the riverfront. We saw street performers who played water glasses, the blues, a colonial piper, and drums. Several students had their portraits done by an artist. Then it was time for the ghost tour. The owner of the company is related to one of the teachers at RCMS and RCHS and he always takes one of our groups on the tour. We had four different groups and they all heard different ghost stories and saw new areas of the town. As a final surprise for the students Mrs. Berenda and Mrs. Kurdelak trekked all of the way to Georgetown after dinner to bring back Georgetown Cupcakes, from the TLC show DC Cupcakes. This was a huge hit!!!
6/13/2013 2 Comments Miles done and miles to go.....This has been a day of contrasts and changes. We knew that there were storms predicted for this morning and we wanted to make sure that we timed our tour on the National Mall correctly so that we were near a place to take shelter in case of strong storms. We started at the Korean War Memorial after waiting out the first couple of waves of rain. Then the rain left and despite a few drops here or there, the rest of the morning was dry. Students had a great morning visiting the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We laid red carnations at the Vietnam Wall in memory of Mrs. Zacher's uncle who died in Vietnam and the 4 men from Rensselaer who died in Vietnam. We also saw the Vietnam Women's Memorial which commemorates the nurse in Vietnam. We finished the morning at the World War II Memorial. For lunch we had Domino's Pizza deliver 20 pizzas to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. They were delivered on a scooter and it was quite a site! We sat along the Tidal Basin to refuel and rest before our final walk around the Tidal Basin. The 8th graders then visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, which is the newest one in town, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the George Mason Memorial for the Founding Father who helped write the Bill of Rights, and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. We have walked around 10,000 steps so far today!
After lunch the sun and humidity came out, and wow was it hot! It was a good thing that the majority of our walking was in the morning before lunch. We are currently sitting on the bus headed to Baltimore to see if we can get a baseball game in tonight! The clouds are starting to rebuild, but Mrs. Berenda says that the percent chance of rain for game time is actually low, so she said that will make her day! The game is at historic Camden Yard and the Baltimore Orioles are playing the Boston Red Sox tonight! The skies just opened up so the rain can pour down now. It's got three hours to clear out before first pitch! We have excited fans who want to see a game.... Say whatever thoughts you can send our way to clear these skies out for us!!! I'll try to up date tonight after we see the ball game ..... positive thought....positive thoughts! UPDATED! We stayed through the 11th inning last night - no rain and beautiful night at the ballpark. Camden Yard is a great place to see a game, but small for a major league park. One of our student's caught a ball last night! One of our student's also got an offer to trade his shirt with the Orioles center fielder, Adam Jones. It was just too late at the end of the 11th to stay any longer if we wanted to have students and chaperones who could get out of bed this morning. The Orioles won at the bottom of the 13th last night. 6/12/2013 2 Comments Pandas and PrintYesterday day was a whirlwind, and today was was humid and hot. The weather keeps changing by the hour, so we originally thought it was going to be in the low 80s and instead it was over 90 today. The day started with a tour of the National Zoo. The trip down the hill to visit the animals was great, until you had to make the trip back up the hill to get to the bus. We were there in the morning and the animals were more active. The orangutans were active on their O Line crossing the zoo which was fun to see, and of course the pandas were a highlight as always. Tian Tian was in the middle of breakfast when we showed up. From the zoo we headed to lunch at National Place. After fueling up, we hiked back up Capitol Hill to visit the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court buildings, which are across the street from the Capitol. There was a new exhibit at the Library of Congress about the Civil War, and in one of the display cases was the contents of President Lincoln's pockets the night that he was killed. There were glasses, a pocket knife, cards and several other items. We saw the Main Reading Room, which was used in the movie National Treasure. When we got in the Supreme Court we found out that a law clerk was retiring today and there was a special event, so we were unable to see the courtroom. We then visited the Newseum, which is a museum about journalism. There are multiple sections of the Berlin Wall and one of the guard towers from Checkpoint Charlie. There was a temporary exhibit on JFK and Jackie Kennedy which had rare photos and artifacts from his assassination and family candid moments. This was very interesting. We stopped by the White House to get some photos on the north side. After dinner we returned to the hotel for an earlier night since we have an early morning tomorrow. We know that there is a higher chance of rain and weather issues tomorrow, so we are working tonight on alternate plans just in case we need them.
6/11/2013 3 Comments Whirlwind First Day!What an amazing first day! This has been a very long day, but it was awesome! We started with breakfast at 8:00 at the hotel and then headed into the city. We walked up Capitol Hill and toured the US Capitol. We found out that starting next month scaffolding will be going up around the Capitol Dome because thousands of cracks have been found in the dome because of the earthquake two years ago. They are hoping that repairs will be done by the next presidential inauguration. Then we had a quick lunch at Union Station and it was on to the National Cathedral. The National Cathedral has many repairs going on as well from that earthquake. The small details and symbolism of items at the cathedral are always impressive. The fact that it is built out of Indiana limestone always amazes us!
We left North America for a visit to the Kenyan Embassy, so everyone can say we have visited Africa now. They ended up being very welcoming at the embassy. The students asked them great questions and learned a lot about Kenya. They took a group picture of us at the entrance that they are going to email to us, so we will post it when we receive it. Dinner was at a Tex-Mex restaurant called the Austin Grill. It was good food. Then we experienced something new that no one in the group had seen before. We had plans to go to the Iwo Jima Marine Corp Memorial and the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial tonight. We found out that on Tuesday nights in the summer the Marines have a parade at the memorial. The Commandant's Own Band, which plays for the President of the United States, performed several marching band pieces, and then the Marine Barracks Rifle Line performed their drills. At the end the President of the country of Palau laid a wreath at the memorial in honor of the Americans and people from Palau who gave their lives fighting to free Palau in World War II. On the way out of the event we met two Marines who talked to the students about their campaign medals and insignia and their 5 years of service to our country. A man came up in the rear of our group and starting asking who we were. It ended up being the father of one of the Marines who was talking to our group. He had never seen his son talk to a group of students like that and was very impressed with our students. The last stop tonight was at the 9/11 Pentagon memorial, which is always a moving experience. It was a much later night than planned, so tomorrow night will be an early night. Our USA Today reporter that we were going to meet with had to fly to Colorado for a story so we had to cancel that event. We will instead plan on a stop for photos at the White House and an early night back at the hotel. We have received numerous compliments throughout the day today from people we have interacted with and people we have just met walking around about our students' dress and their behavior today. One of our favorite quotes today is, "Will our phones be roaming while we are in Kenya." |