I'm proud to be an American

What a week it has been to be an American. The 4th of July in the Capital of the nation and the weekend at Valley Forge and Philadelphia, quite amazing.
The Fourth of July began with a reading of the declaration of independence on the steps of the national archives complete with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Then we went down constitution ave a little ways to stake out a place under a tree for the Parade. The parade was a good time, lots of bands from all over the country, they had some trouble with balloons though.

In case you don't know what that is it is an octabike (one that 8 people ride)

This was the Hari Khrishna float,
which we don't really know why it was the
 final float of the independence day parade,
but whatever floats your float I guess.

The day rounded off with some all american food at Johnny Rockets and watching the fire works from the edge of the Potomac river at the Jefferson Memorial. We watched them burst over the water with the Lincoln on our left and the Washington on the right. Quite the experience.

On Friday Morning we left for Valley Forge. When we crossed over from Delaware into PA I could actually see Chester and some the streets I walked and houses I knocked on as a missionary. We stayed at the campus of the freedom foundation at valley forge so we went there first and unloaded our stuff and had lunch. In the afternoon we toured the camp via our bus with our tour guide Rob, who came with complete colonial attire.

The place where we stayed, the freedom foundation, has more monuments on its property than I have ever seen, they are everywhere. I'm not quite sure why but they are pretty cool. Here's a couple I saw in the afternoon during some open time.

An acorn

Colorado's medal of honor monument in the medal of honor grove.

 After dinner we had a visit from Ned Hector (reenactor) who was a free black revolutionary war soldier. It was one of the best parts of the trip, he told us of his experience at the battle of the brandywine, taught us how to fire a cannon, and explained to us the untold history of blacks in the revolutionary army where they made up about 10% of the soldiers and had the most integration there would be until the Korean war.

The next day in the morning I took a walk and looked at some of more of the monuments.

Then we had breakfast and it was off to Philly! I was so excited. I got to do a lot of things in Philly that I hadn't seen as a missionary. We went to the Constitution center for two presentations, toured independence hall, and saw the Liberty Bell. I also saw the location of Benjamin Franklins house and grave and a model of his printing press, and ate a real philly cheesesteak at the Reading Market. I was sad to have to leave the city of Brotherly love when the day was over.

Outside Independence Hall (the old state house)

Signing the Constitution

Me and my old pal Ben

The original pay phone used by the founding fathers

Me in the old court room

The place it all went down in 76 and 87

The Liberty bell

Ben's printing press

Well it was a great week, and I am proud to be an American.

Checking off the list

This is very well could have been my last weekend in DC because of various travel plans throughout July, therefore there were a few things from the tourist list that I needed to accomplish this weekend, a series of fortunate events put me in a position to do most of them.
On Friday we were able to go on a capital tour finally. After class we went to the capital and Joe from our ward who interns with Senator Hatch and is from the U (hence he has to work Fridays) took us on the tour. It was very cool to see the inside of the capital, and Joe knew a lot of interesting facts.
Friday night there was a giant thunderstorm that we latter learned knocked out most of the power in VA.

Saturday most people were gone, little did they know most of their plans would fall through because of power outages, but I went to the natural history museum, which was pretty much the last major museum I needed to see. It was really good, my favorite exhibit was the national gemstone collection.

The Titanaboa exhibit

Another one of the more interesting things in the Natural Museum

After that I briefly stopped in away the Hishhorn Museum of modern art, I think this place was made more for people on drugs, but now I can say I've seen it.

With my Chinese Zodiak

Saturday night several of us went on a monument walking tour where we saw the Einstein, the Vietnam, the Korea, the Lincoln, the WWII, and the Washington memorials and learned a lot more about each of them. It was a lot of fun.

Me with Dr. Einstein, pay no attention to that lady

View off the back of the Lincoln

Washington Monument at Night

Well that's pretty much what happened this week.

The names Wozniak, Gary Wozniak

On Friday I went with Steven and Nate to the international spy museum. It was really interesting place where we learned all about the art of espionage throughout history. Although I really wonder how much is really told how much actually can be known about the history of spies, and at the end there was a thing saying the best spies and there missions are never known. That being said what we do know is extremely interesting. The earliest example of spying they gave was when the Israelites invaded canan and it of course continues to this day. At the beginning of the museum you are asked to assume a "cover" which you need to memorize and remember so that you can act your cover and not give yourself away. Here is a picture of my cover story: 

In the Museum we got to learn about a lot of different spies and skills spying requires, and my favorite part was seeing the gadgets that spies have used. There has been some really crazy stuff. I did remember my cover until the end of the museum and was able to pass the questioning. Here is a spy car and some get smart memorabilia for the twins:

Unrelated pictures:

The elevator doors at the national achieves 

One of my co-workers who left this week, Barry

I represent the people

Friday was an interesting day for class. We went to the national defense university to engage in a strategic diplomatic "game". Each of us took the role of a member of either the U. S. or Mexican government and we met in our own country groups and then in bilateral talks. I took on the role of a Mexican congress man and consequently my catch phrase became that I represent the people. It was very interesting exercise that took the majority of the day. We found out first hand that it is very hard to get compromise between sovereign nations. Anyway it was fun and instructive. There are no pictures unfortunately.
Saturday I had the sobering experience of visiting the Holocaust Museum. It is a very emotionally draining experience but very worth the visit. My favorite part was learning about the rescue efforts the pockets of Jewish resistance who did all they could to fight back. There are no pictures of this either.
Here's some random pictures that I haven't put up yet.

At the Capitol

The Meditation Maze

A Pay Phone

The Washington as viewed from the Jefferson

In which I accomplish two life goals with a single stroke

Friday was an interesting day, two things I've always want to do got done: Attending a political rally, and visiting the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Me and several of my friends attended the "Stand Up For Religious Freedom" rally in upper senate park around noon on Friday, there were many of these rally's happening simultaneously all over the country. The catalyst of course being the infringements Obama care makes on religious freedom. It was good experience to be a political rally for the first time and to feel the energy there of people united in a cause. After this event we went to the Supreme Court for our class briefing, which incidentally was where the rally was marching, but we left early to get there on time. We got to walk around the Supreme Court building and watch a film on the court, then we had a briefing with a BYU graduate who is clerking for Justice Kagen. That was really interesting and gave us kind of an inside view of the court.

The crag of old rag

Yesterday was a day for an adventure. Holly, who is a girl in the program but who lives in VA with her family, invited some of us to go with her and some people from her ward and hike old rag mountain in Shenandoah National Park. . Having been trapped inside the concrete jungle for more than a whole moon now several of us jumped at the chance to breathe the fresh "mountain" air and feel the excitement of adventure in our blood. 6 of us caught the metro up to the last stop on the orange line (I should say the last working stop since track work prevented us from going all the way to the end) and then Holly picked us in her SUV and we met up with Natalie's fellow intern Anne, who is from Germany.
We stopped for gas a food at a wonderful place called Sheetz which is HQ'd in Altoona PA and was the bread and butter of us missionaries in Pennsylvania, so that was a great nostalgic moment for me.
We then headed up into the hillish mountains of VA.
The hike up Old Rag Mountain was beautiful and a lot of fun. We could not have had a better day for it. We went the short way up to the summit which meant that about half way up the trail disappeared an we began doing what we called bouldering at BDSR but the locals refer to as "rock scrambling." This involves climbing over, under, around and sometimes through the crags of the huge boulders that make up the higher parts of the mountain while following little blue painted arrows to know you are actually going a way proven to get you to the top. This was a lot of fun, but also difficult at times especially where the rocks were slightly slipper from rain the night before. We reached the top and ate the food we had packed and enjoyed the spacious vistas of Virginia's forests. Then we came down the longer but much easier path to the bottom. All in all it was a ton of fun to be out in nature with good friends and fresh air.
Here a some pictures in no particular order: