star spangled

Let me sum things up-

Pennsylvania: Rocky stairs, Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, pictures with Porsches (so fun! who knew I liked cars?), H&M (again), Amish country, philly cheesesteaks (apparently not my thing), and Gettysburg.

DC: monuments, Barack Obama in his limo (we really saw him pull up to the White House...so so so cool), capitol building, John Kerry in the senate gallery (yay for me and Zach for pulling that one off, we watched him debate about whether to give aid to failing foreign economies...again, so so so cool...and I do not even like him), Holocaust Museum, National Archives, Arlington, and adventures on the subway.

While on this trip I decided I sort of have a weird fondness for cemeteries. I think they're beautiful and eerily peaceful if that makes any sense. We had a chance to see a lot of them the past month.

So on Memorial Day today, I've got Gettysburg and Arlington on my mind. I'm sitting on a rock on Little Round Top, surveying the landscape below, picturing what happened there, the sacrifices that were made to preserve this country; I'm watching the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier, touched by how the meticulousness and intricacy of that process respects and honors those whose names we don't even know who gave their lives that we can be free; I'm taken back by the sheer number of white tombstones on the lawns of Arlington, so many who died...

I'll go home tonight and eat my hamburger and Sister Wilkes' funeral potatoes and someone else's jello salad, and I'll forget all of this.
But for now,
thanks.