Here’s a little recount from BU for Barack’s trip to Washington, D.C. to see the inauguration last week – via Alexis because Steph and I are studying abroad (or inbroad in Steph’s case):
As a number of you have asked about what my epic inauguration trip was
like, I have decided to try to put it all down in email.
The odyssey began at 6am Monday morning. While it was still dark, me
and the other 40 people piled onto the bus. And then we were on our way!
We arrived at Greenbelt Park in Maryland at 5pm. From there we walked 2
miles to the nearest metro stop. Although the small city of Greenbelt
appeared deserted, we quickly realized that was because everyone who
lives there was online for the Metro. It took us about 30 minutes to
get through the line (which in retrospect, was a very short amount of
time).
Because many of the metro stations were closed, we got off at
Chinatown. The streets were jammed with people and most of the
restaurants were overflowing. However, I’m going to give a little
shout-out to Chipotle, where we eventually stopped. Despite the massive
amounts of people, they got us through the line in a matter of minutes.
If only BU had the same kind of efficiency as the minimum wage-paid
workers at Chipotle…
We started to make our way down towards the mall. A few streets before
we reached Pennsylvania Ave, we encountered a set of gates to keep cars
out and let pedestrians pass. It was at that moment, walking through
those gates, that it finally hit me: where we were, what was going to
happen in a few hours, and that we were going to witness it all.
From about 7pm until 2am, my group and I went monument hopping. Along
the way we stopped at the taping of the Rachel Maddow show, where we
saw Rachel and some people in our group got to shake her hand (not me,
unfortunately). We then saw Anderson Cooper doing interviews for his
show. Apparently he works in jeans and sneakers. We tried to find Fox,
just to boo them, but they were nowhere to be found. We went to many
different memorials and monuments: the Washington, the Lincoln, the
Vietnam, the World War II, and I feel like I’m leaving some out.
At 2am, everyone started to get cranky so we met up with Steph at a
Starbucks. Getting there was difficult because the police had started
to set up barricades that in essence turned DC into a labyrinth.
Eventually, though, we made it and recuperated in Starbucks for a few
hours.
Around 4:30am, we started to make our way back towards the mall. The
previously deserted streets were starting to fill with groups of
people. My group and I edged our way into the crowd. It was amazing to
be so closely packed into the same length of lawn that had been almost
empty before. We quickly realized that although we were as close as
were going to get to the capitol that day, we really couldn’t see
anything or a even a Jumbo-tron. We managed to make our way back out of
the crowd and found a spot on the edge where we could see and not be
trampled.
The sun started to come up, but the temperature started to drop, plus
we were no longer moving around. Everyone started to become horribly
cold. The Smithsonian museums were not open, as they had said they
would be, and the “heating stations” were very poorly run. For a while,
everyone was having a miserable time.
Then, at 10:30, the musical intro started to play and we could tell it
was all going to happen soon. We watched as the cabinet members, the
Congress, and the aids all filed onto the stage. Then all of the
incoming and outgoing first and VP families started to come in. Seeing
Barack Obama walk towards the entrance of the stage was one of the most
incredible moments of the day. I realized that the Bush reign was
finally over and, yes, I started to tear up.
We watched with amazement as first Biden took the oath of office, and
then Barack (as I’m sure you know, the oath-blunder was Roberts’
fault). Then Barack’s speech. It took a while for his speech to thaw through my frozen skull but I’ve since become very impressed with it. Straight afterwards we headed towards the metro, swimmming in the most insane crowds I have ever witnessed.
All in all, we made it through. I temporarily lost my mind at the end when we were trying to get everyone together for the bus back.
