Song: "Tonight" by FM Static

At two-thirty in the morning, I woke up to get ready to go to the school. A few minutes later, my mom woke up, grumpy. Naturally, things got sort of tense on and off, and I began to think, almost hope, that something would happen to me when I was gone, as a sort of revenge, so she would be like "The last thing we did together was fight " though we didn't really fight, I guess. I was a little upset, though.

When we got to the school, I went inside with the rest of my classmates and met up in the library. We had to get our bags checked. It was sort of weird; I was uncomfortable.

The bus ride was interesting. Kate and I chatted away most of the time. It was fun. I like hanging out with her most of the time because she laughs with me sometimes. She was my travel buddy through the trip. We only argued once, I think.

It was a long bus ride, though. It's sort of tiring to go through all the details, so I'm probably just going to list stuff soon.

We stopped at McDonald's for breakfast and a bathroom break. Nothing too special happened. We went to a Metro station, or something. That was interesting too. I thought I liked the Metro at first, but later that night it made me feel ill and stuff.

We went to Arlington Cemetery. I didn't really like it; it made me depressed, I guess. It was tiring, too. We went to museums later. That was kind of fun, because I was joking and people were laughing, even though I don't feel I was all that funny, but it made me feel good to hear them. I ended up buying this Rasta doll at the African Art Museum thing (whatever Smithsonian exhibit/museum that is) and it was fun stuff. He (that's what I believed it was anyway) acted as a sort of "conscience" sort of thing. He was bossy, too, and some people (or just one guy) got annoyed at him. The Rasta doll got threatened "a lot", too, so..yeah.

I had a headache through half of the first day. When nighttime came and thinks started getting colder, thinks steadily grew worse. On our Metro trip back to our school bus, things just became "terrible". I was nearly positive I was close to throwing up from the pain and nausea, but I held it together ok.

When we got to the hotel finally, I relaxed on the bed a bit in hopes that the headache would drift away steadily until we had to go back out to the bus to go to Don Pablo's for dinner. My headache stayed, though, and I was pretty miserable.

Outside of the hotel, I tried sitting on the ground and leaning on a trash can (because I felt I could barely stand by myself and that I would have really rather leaned on someone), but nothing helped my headache, and I didn't want to ask anyone if I could use their shoulder or arm as a forehead-rest.

When we started walking to the bus, though, I jokingly told or asked Tyler about giving me a piggy-back ride. To my surprise, though, he said "sure" or "ok", or maybe even both. I was surprised because he sometimes complains about back problems and such. So I'd said "Really?..." and he'd said something along the lines of "yeah" and stopped so I could attempt jumping on his back. I failed the first time, though, because he's a giant and I was still to shaky and stuff to jump very high, but he bent his knees a bit so the second time I successfully hopped onto his back.

I felt odd on his back, though. Every step he took sort of jolted me a bit, and I felt almost like a giant too, while I was up there. I was afraid I was going to tire him out quickly, too, or hurt him, so when we were a couple feet (or yards) from the bus I told him he could let me down if he wanted, so he did. Then I made sure to ask him if I had hurt him, because I'm pretty scared that I'd hurt someone if they gave me a piggy-back ride. But he said I didn't, so it was ok.

I still felt sick, even while at the restaurant. A couple people asked me if I was ok and stuff because I was sort of huddled behind my hands and such, trying to make my headache go away while concentrating on not getting sick. McKayla ended up saying she had to go to the bathroom and asked if I wanted to come with her, so I did. I didn't get sick when we were there, but I did lay on the floor because it was cool against my cheek and sort of helped.

I don't have too much I want to say about that restaurant, even though different stuff went on. I'll say, though, that even though I sat next to Kate and another girl, we were sort of "surrounded" by boys, and that meant I "had" to listen to everything they had to say, and since there was a pretty waitress serving us, it wasn't anything I wanted to listen to.

Not much really happened when we got back to the hotel either. I had gotten enough sugar, fluids, and food into my system that my headache disappeared, though. Kate and I were both going to have separate beds at first, but a little while before I had to change into my pajamas and go to bed, my other group-person, Teresa, decided the chair-couch-thing wasn't comfortable enough for her, and wanted to share a bed with one of us.

Teresa is nice and all, but she sort of bothers me sometimes. Actually, both of us really. I tried being nice and stuff the whole time I was with her, though, so I humored her and just let her have my bed as I went to sleep on the chair. It wasn't even that uncomfortable, but I had sort of wanted to sleep in the bed, but oh well.

In the morning I was kind of grumpy. Then we found out that our tour time for the White House was changed. So we had to rush to get there and half of us never had breakfast. I had some breakfast, though, so that was ok...Until we got to the Metro.

I was so nauseous, it wasn't funny. At first it was ok because it wasn't too crowded. I just stood there (most all the seats were taken by my classmates and other people) and pressed my head against the cold pole and tried to keep my stomach under control. When things started to get a bit more crowded, I didn't have the chance to do that.

It was that day, the second day, Wednesday, that things got odd with my classmates. The guys (and really everyone) were tired and almost rowdier. They even made "crude" sort of jokes and "flirted" more with people. The first odd experience I'd had with that sort of thing wasn't that bad; it was when I was clinging to the pole with my eyes shut that, when I opened them, a realized one of my classmates was staring at me while the other was talking. For some reason, I didn't even hear the kid until I asked him "What?"

Then he'd asked me things like if I was trying to "be the pole" and if I was "practicing" or something, and asked if I was a sort of "pole-dancer" as a sort of "after-school" or whatever job, so I'd laughed shortly and sarcastically said "Oh, yeah" because I knew he'd laugh and leave me alone afterward.

The White House was pretty, though I didn't learn too much. We also went to the Capital Building, which was interesting. It was tiring, though, too, and our tour guide bothered me. He was sort of enjoying that we didn't know the answers to his questions at first, and I wanted him to just educate us rather than make us feel inferior. So when our brilliant History Teacher started answering the questions (and getting them right), I was happy to see the smirk in the tour guide's eyes disappear and be replaced with a tinge of annoyance. That was plain great.

In the Library of Congress (possibly; I can't be sure I have the name right), we were able to relax a bit. I laughed a bit with some of my friends and stuff. I was even able to tolerate some of the inappropriate jokes Josh had said toward me when I went to stand near Kate who was sitting on a bench with him and Teresa.

Eventually, we made it back to the Metro and I got to stand again through the whole thing. It wasn't that bad that time and I got to talk with one of my chaperons and Kate. The other, and last, weird/odd moment I had to go through that involved a tired/"flirty"/joking guy/classmate, was when I was standing near the train doors and he was shifting around on the train so he was swinging slightly on the bar hooked to the ceiling of the train. On one swing, though, he could have probably head-bumped me if he stretched far enough, and he noticed me and made a kissing noise, and after I held out my hand in defense saying "Whoa there" he laughed and backed away.

From most of what I saw and stuff, though, I didn't get the worst of any of the crazy flirting going around, so it was bearable and such. I didn't even really get bothered by the other jokes Josh said, I guess, even though they weren't too funny. Like, as we were walking, he would randomly say "Hey, go play on the yellow lines" or make a pushing gesture at me and say "Next speed bump" and stuff.

He'd laugh, though, so I wouldn't take him seriously. When we were running to catch up with our one chaperon who was speed-walking, he said (before we started crossing the street) "Don't feel bad if I get hit by a car, because I'll just throw you out in front of it first." so I'd half-laughed and said "I don't think so" and started running past him, but then he grabbed my hood and I had to push myself harder to get away. I ended up getting away from him and was safe from his weird sense of humor, eventually.

Something amusing about the trip was that my class seemed to "break"/stop three to four escalators. We aren't really sure why. It just happened. Something annoying, though, was that some of the metal detectors in some of the buildings required me to keep taking off my belt, and I started to get angry by the third time. I was about ready to keep it off for the rest of the day, but since there were times I had to run and stuff, I needed it on so I didn't have to hold on to my pants as I ran. One time I had to do that, though, and it wasn't that great.

All in all, the trip was nice. I had fun at times, though there were boring parts. Another fun thing was when Tyler and I sang to songs on my MP3 player, and we even got some other people to sing along. It was great. I'm glad I get to do those things with my class, because they can be amusing. I don't usually have as much fun when I'm on trips with my family. It was a nice experience.