Happy MLK Jr. Day!

We celebrated MLK Day by participating in a community service project with a few thousand of our closest friends at the RFK stadium. Our task was to bag care packages for service members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The project's goal was to bag 75,000 packages. Brian and I finished 25. They had a huge tent set up in the middle of the stadium and we moved through as a human assembly line. Lucky for us, the tent was heated!



Here are some of the students writing personal cards to servicemembers before our shift...


After our shift was up, Brian and I caught the Metro back to the Mall so that we could take a shuttle to the Anacostia Museum. The Anacostia Museum is a Smithsonian Museum, but it is located in southeast Washington. It is a museum of African American history. We also went across the street to visit this cool looking museum.


The excitement level here in DC is so high. There are people everywhere and vendors selling everything Obama-related you could ever imagine. T-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, gloves, mugs, clocks, posters, playing cards (with Bush and Cheney as the jokers), keychains, flags, bottled water, barackworst (we had hot dogs instead :) ), and so much more. Basically, if you can put Obama's face on it, someone will buy it. There are vendors on every street and people are grabbing it up...even the tacky, ugly stuff is selling. I wonder if it's anything like Christmas decorations and it will all go on sale on Wednesday.

Aside from the frivolity, there is also a great sense of history in the making. People recognize what a momentous occasion this is and they seem to feel honored just to be here to witness it. I definitely feel that way.

One other note to report here. We haven't said much about the group we're traveling with yet. They are an amazing class and I'm so thankful to have them traveling with us. They are great travelers, flexible, independent, responsible, and interested. They quickly learned to navigate the Metro and they've been exploring the city on their own during our free times. They've also been on time to everything we've asked them to be at, even when they have to get through the city on their own. They all seem to be getting along with each other and, as far as I can tell, they haven't developed any real cliques. Overall, I've been super impressed with them and grateful to have this group of students with us. They've definitely made the job of "supervising" them much easier than I anticipated.