American History 101: M&K Day 3

On Friday we woke up early to get to the Capitol tour I had scheduled awhile ago. We finally found our way to a North Carolina senator's office to meet an intern who gave us about a 45 minute tour.
Us waiting in the office:


Keegan standing by the senators' subway system that literally takes you on a 12 second ride from the Senate buildings to the capitol. I really wanted to see Hillary on it. But that did not happen.


Our tour guide said she LOVED working on the hill and that I should consider it. Perhaps I will. She walked us through several rooms of the Capitol and explained the history of the architecture and artwork.
Each section of the wall and ceiling is hand painted and none are exactly alike:

There was one room where all of the senators used to have their desks. They all worked out of the same room. From John Adams' desk, you could hear people whispering on the other side of the room very clearly. There's a myth that John Adams would pretend to sleep while listening to conversations on the other side of the room. Nearly every intern who came through the hall repeated the story as fact.

We also walked to look at the Old Supreme Court -it's so little!


Here's the inside of the dome:


We walked through a few rooms and then went back to the office. Our intern gave us passes to the Senate Gallery for that afternoon and we left.

We got on the hop-on hop-off bus at Union Station and took it to the National Museum of Natural History (say that 5 times fast). We didn't stay long in the museum (I had already been there and we were hungry) but we saw the dinosaurs and the "hope diamond."
The biggest dinosaur in the place:


The Hope Diamond - famous for its rare color and flawlessness.


We then went back to my place to rest for a bit until it was time to leave for the Senate Gallery.
Getting into the gallery was a very long process. We probably went through four security checkpoints. We had to get rid of all of our water and food, have our bags searched twice, go through medal detectors three times, and hand over all of our electronics. When we walked into the gallery, which sits above the Senate floor, it was it was verrryyy cool. It's the room you see on CSPAN constantly. We could see the seats for all the senators, including McCain, Clinton, and Obama. Of course, none of them were there. Because it was a Friday, it was optional for the senators to be there, and only two of them were. They were the two that had co-sponsored the bills they were discussing. As we sat there I heard them start to talk about the AIDS bill (PEPFAR) that I rallied for a couple of weeks ago.



I got really excited! It was such a coincidence that the one bill I had been closely following, and actually lobbied for, was being discussed on the Senate floor before me. One democrat and one republican made a presentation on the bill, and it got kind of intense. One urged that it should have been passed a long time ago. And it should have. Luckily, just yesterday the bill was passed, making it the most ambitious global health bill America has ever had. It will save thousands of lives - very impressive and exciting!

After the Senate gallery we went to the Library of Congress and saw the exhibit called "Creating America." This room held the rough draft of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence. It was pretty amazing to see those documents marked up like a rough draft of a school paper. It just seems like those documents always existed, or that someone just magically had them done. I never thought about the process of writing those words that made America. They rewrote, crossed out, added, and rewrote again. The words of those documents are genius, so I guess it makes sense they were worked on so much. The room also had the manuscript of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have A Dream" Speech.

We then went to Jessi's apartment to let Keegan go swimming. It was funny for Jessi and Molly to see each other because Molly used to babysit her when she was 8. They hadn't seen each other for a decade! After swimming we went back to the apartment to go to bed. But not for long AGAIN.