Essay 5

Visiting D.C.

Our Class trip to D.C.

By: Cole Blake

11/28/11

The 8th grade, at Pine Point School school traveled to Washington D.C. from November 8th to the 11th for a class trip. We visited several historical sites like The Holocaust Museum and Mt. Vernon, the home of George Washington. I loved visiting memorials in Washington D.C. and want to go back again next year.

 
Mt. Vernon was an incredible place to visit while I was in D.C. I learned a great deal about George Washington. He was the first president of the United States and he gave up power at the end of his term which made him such a great man. He easily could have stayed president even longer. Surprisingly, he owned over 300 slaves at his estate. Near the end of his life, he decided to set them all free. He realised that they were people too and should not be treated poorly. George Washington was born in 1732 and lived until 1799. Sadly he died without any one expecting it. His wife started sleeping in separate rooms when he died because she was so sad. While in Mt. Vernon I also learned a lot about houses in the 1700s. For one, Basements were a lot smaller then they are now. Secondly everyone had slaves to do the work around the house for them. finally. Cooking food took a lot lot longer then it does today. People would have to wait hours for something to finish because it was hard to preheat things. If I were ever in the area again I would definitely visit Mt. Vernon.

Visiting The Holocaust Museum was the saddest thing we did in DC. The first morbid thing was hearing about a Holocaust survivor's stories. The first story she told was about how she never said goodbye to her mother because she left her during a fight.The second story was about when she first had numbers put on her wrist, and she did not know what they were for. While at The Holocaust Museum I learned about how Jews were treated the worst out of all the races that Hitler wanted to to perish.  I am very glad I went to The Holocaust Museum and learned about all of this.

   I am so thankful that i could visit D.C. with my friends and see all these great places. Mt. Vernon was very interesting because we could see things that George Washington touched. The Holocaust Museum was very sad, it made me think a lot how Hitler treated the Jews and how bad it was. I am so glad I was able to visit D.C.