This daily journal report is coming to you
live from our nation’s capitol – aka Washington D.C.
Try not to laugh, but my first thought when
we arrived here was that the President won’t the most powerful person in the
city for the next five days give or take a handful of hours. Then again, the President isn’t actually in
Washington right now anyway – he’s playing in Asia right now and won’t be back
until mid-week sometime.
We’ll try not to mess up his home while he’s
away! ;^)
Before I get to that part of the report,
let’s back up and cover the news from the start of my day back at home in Witch
Falls. I was up early; grabbed a shower;
got appropriately for a travel day; and put the last few things I still needed
to take along with me into my bags before carrying them downstairs. I was first to the kitchen, so I put a pot of
coffee on for Mom and Dad, and then I went outside to catch a bit of fresh air
and early-morning sunshine. We didn’t
have time for Tai Chi today, but Dad made sure that I had a good breakfast
before heading out on the drive to the airport.
We needed to be at the school for seven o’clock; and Dad made sure that
we were there a few minutes early.
The rest of my classmates didn’t have
everyone in their families come to see them off, but I also wasn’t the only one
who did – though I was the only teen with aunts, uncles, and cousins there too. Aunt Deborah and Leah were there to see Uncle
Nick off, and Uncle Adam, Aunt Leanne, and Zack came to see me – though they
didn’t make it to the school until about five minutes before we left. While I was one of the first teens there,
Lisa and Gretchen both beat me to the school because their mothers are the two
non-Magi chaperones and drivers; so they had a slightly earlier start
time. Tim’s mother was there early too,
but he’d been too slow getting ready; so Tracey had left without him and let
him walk over.
Michael, Tim, Rowen, and I were with Tracey
in her SUV for the long run to the airport, so I loaded my bags while waiting
for everyone else to arrive. Pastor John
stopped in at the school and shared a prayer with us shortly before we needed
to load up and hit the road, and while his thoughtfulness earned some teen eye
rolls; I thought that it was very special to have a Pastor who always thinks
about those little details while caring for his congregation. I was definitely one of the last to take my
seat by the time I’d finished with all of the goodbye hugs and kisses; so I
didn’t have long to wait before we were on our way out of town by seven-thirty;
and starting on our big adventure.
I haven’t really done all that much flying,
but I have been on more flights than most of my friends and classmates; so the
air time wasn’t as much of an adventure for me as it was for everyone
else. The drive to the airport was
entertaining from the start when Michael and I got to sit together while Tracey
had Rowen and Tim split up – with Tim riding shotgun in the front seat with
her. We couldn’t exactly talk about our
trip for the entire two and a half hours, but we still managed to find enough
to talk about and do to fill up those two and a half hours. Getting from the parking garage to our gate
wasn’t much fun at all, but our chaperones seemed happy to get all of us
through that without major problems or losing any teens along the way.
Tracey and the other drivers had rain to
deal with on the way to the airport, and that also caused some slight delays
for take-off too; so we had a bit of a wait before boarding, and another one
while in line for take-off. We had one
stop on the way to Washington, but also had a long-enough wait that our delay
didn’t cause a problem. Layovers do make
for a long day of mostly sitting around, though, and we were all very happy to
be nearly finished our travel for the day by the time we touched down at the
airport in Washington. Getting our
luggage took a while, but Uncle Nick had our hotel shuttle taken care of by the
time we finished waiting around for our bags; so we then had a fairly quick
trip to our hotel.
Check-in didn’t take long either, because
everything was already set up for our little group; so it was basically just a
matter of distributing keycards and taking our bags up to our rooms. Rowen and I were in a room with Sally and
Gretchen – one of the three ‘girls’ rooms.
There were three girls’ rooms with one group of three; and three boys’
groups. It would have been nice if
Michael and Tim had gotten the room with just two guys, but they didn’t get
that lucky; and are sharing their room with Marc Johnson and Joshua
Parker. That works out okay for Sally,
Rowen, and me; but Gretchen is happily single while Marc is dating Lily. Since Gretchen’s mother is one of our
chaperones, she told us that she’ll be on her best behavior anyway; though that
doesn’t mean that Sally, Rowen, and I won’t still try to help her out with
having fun – or checking out potential boys of interest for her too.
We only have one single in a room for our
group, and though I hear there was some joking about having Uncle Nick share a
room with two of the other chaperones; Aunt Deborah vetoed that suggestion so
he’s on his own for the week. Tracey and
Principal Jacobs are sharing the room next to ours; Uncle Nick is across the
hallway from us; while Gretchen’s mother, Jocelyn, and Lisa’s Mom, Audrey, are
at the other end of our little block of rooms.
I wasn’t surprised about having my Magi protectors close to my room; but
we did get teased a bit by our friends about why our group needed to be closest
to our teacher and principal. We just
played along with that and had fun – and having fun is exactly what we expect
to be doing all week.
Uncle Nick – Mr. Ayres – gave us a half
hour to freshen up and then it was time to go out for dinner. Since our travel times could have been
delayed a lot, we didn’t have reservations anywhere tonight; and that meant
going for fast food instead of trying out any of the more famous
restaurants. Pizza worked for us,
though; and there’s a good chance that Michael and I could be the only teens
who will appreciate the better dinner options we’ll have over the next few nights. Even a fast food dinner for twenty-six takes
a while, so it was heading toward nine o’clock by the time we got back to the
hotel again. We had some free time then
to go exploring; though one of us had private instructions to stay close to the
hotel – or be with one or more of my ‘special’ chaperones. That wasn’t really an inconvenience for me
because everyone stayed close to the hotel anyway instead of venturing out into
the city streets.
An eleven o’clock room check probably
sounds early to some of you reading this in the future, but the time was set
more because we’ll be starting early each morning – and it’s not as if any of
us were sleeping by then anyway. Let’s
start with covering the obvious – four girls and one bath when we all wanted to
have a shower or soak after a long day stuck in cars and planes. That’s a big reason for why it’s after one o’clock
as I’m writing this – I needed to wait for two of my roommates to get to sleep
first; after we’d all taken turns getting cleaned up and ready for bed.
The girl chat time was fun, and though
Michael and I didn’t get to share anything hotter than a goodnight kiss outside
of my room tonight; the rest of our day together was pretty good. Tomorrow is going to be even better, so I
should wrap this up now; Rowen and I both need to put our computers away; and
we need to get some sleep too.
Rowen just reminded me that we’ll be four
girls sharing a bathroom in the morning too.
I should’ve booked my Tai Chi with Michael even earlier! Oh well – we’ll work it out. That is going to be all I have for tonight,
though; so, until next time…
…Live long and prosper, fellow Magi of the
Light!
