Day Three: Yup, DC Does Have Crime (but not where you'd expect it)

July 3 started off well with the always-fun visit to the top of the Washington Monument, followed by the considerably less-fun visit to the Holocaust Museum. Visiting the HM is one of those must-do activities, but we all know it's not a light and frothy DC stop. Given the range of maturities and interests, some kids are able to sink themselves into the experience for a while; others struggle to appreciate the significance of what they're seeing. I think this year's kids did just about as well as they can at their age -- hopefully they'll go back again after more life experience when they'll be able to build on this visit.

Our schedule ended up dashed to pieces by the only criminal activity we experienced in DC: Matt had dropped his wallet. Autumn and couple cohorts had found it, but not knowing whose it was, turned it in to a museum employee. Soon after the girls talked to Matt and realized they'd turned in his wallet. But when the group of them went back to retrieve it, the employee adamantly claimed never to have had the wallet. This all happened just after Ms. Meagher and I had taken about 45 of the kids out, whilst Mrs. Weatherholt and Mrs. Jones were finishing up a video blog inside. So we were waiting outside for what we thought would be a few minutes... which turned into 30 minutes, then an hour. I'd left my cell on the bus because I didn't think I'd need it in the museum. So we didn't know what was happening, just that something was holding the others up. Our group was getting hot and antsy and hungry. Eventually we got word that the folks inside were muddling through the fiasco by talking to museum managers and reviewing security tape. We couldn't really leave for lunch, though, because it wasn't within walking distance and thus we all needed to leave together on the bus. As the heat-fatigue and hunger grew, the number of kids asking me when we would leave and when would we eat turned me into a sort of glassy-eyed record player: I kept saying that we were fasting in solidarity with Matt in his plight and that surely if Gandhi-ji could fast for weeks, we could handle an hour or two. The kids didn't find my comments convincing, but eventually they stopped asking. (-:

It was actually almost 3PM before we were able to leave and head to the Old Post Office for lunch. The security tape proved the employee's dishonesty, and Matt's wallet was soon delivered to us with the deepest apologies from the museum.

Here's a photo of a few of us trying to stay cool in the shade outside the museum while we waited.