Thursday Highlights

1. Starting by taking the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument, which is tends to be a part of the trip the kids enjoy.
2. Then headed over to the Holocaust Museum. Certainly not what I'd call super enjoyable for the kids, but that's the point, isn't it? At this age I think we're still mostly planting seeds; perhaps a few were able to absorb a decent amount of the horror, but most got just a taste of it and that's fine by me. They still have plenty of time to realize just how bad humans can be; and we were impressed and appreciative of how well behaved they were.
3. Just as we were leaving, the day took a turn into the surreal: One of our students had his wallet stolen by -- of all people -- an employee of the museum. It's a long story and in the end the details don't matter as the museum supervisors and security were terrifically helpful and apologetic and in the end were able get our young man his wallet back. But the bizarreness of the situation came through in a couple ways:
   

sorry, ran out of time (really, didn't intend to leave you hanging. if it weren't for all the kids on the trip, i'd have plenty of time to keep a splendid blog). i uploaded a bunch of pics from the washington monument here. To see the most recent pics, click on pages 4 and 5 down near the bottom of the page.