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Monday, March 28, 2016

Cherry blossoms!


Hello all! It's Kendra and I'm back with another blog post! This journey was tons of fun. It was super nice out, so many beautiful cherry blossoms, and really good food!


The journey started off at the Smithsonian metro station. We waited for a few of our classmates and then we were on our way. 
The first place we went to was the Tidal Basin. We went here to see the Japanese Cherry Blossom trees. Originating from Japan, the Tokyo mayor gifted them to America. He gifted them because of the growing friendship between Japan and the US that he wanted to strengthen...

Things definitely changed after that, but now we have festivals (the National Cherry Blossom FestivalThe National Kite Festival) and parades celebrating the blooming of the trees. 






The blossoms were so beautiful and I got so many awesome pictures (like the one above)!
Next up was a trip to Adams Morgan, a culturally diverse neighborhood in DC with lots of restaurants, clubs and bars, making it a great nightlife spot. The name Adams Morgan comes from the names of two once segregated schools, the all-black Thomas P. Morgan Elementary School and the all-white John Quincy Adams Elementary School. The schools both desegregated in 1955 due to Bolling v. Sharpe Supreme Court ruling in 1954. John Quincy Adams Elementary is still functioning, while the older thomas P. Morgan Elementary isn't anymore. 


John Quincy Adams Elementary^. 

Next was Jumbo Slice Pizza! I loooved the pizza there! It was really good and a very good price for such a big slice of pizza.

Jumbo Slice Pizza - Washington, DC, United States

Lastly, we attempted to interview different countries. Sadly, none of them seemed very interested and were busy at the time. 

In all, it was an awesome journey! I hope you come back to read again!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Acts of kindness in DC!

Hello everyone! Kendra here with another blog post! So this week required a lot of planning and a lot of improvising as well. It required helping people, talking to people, and a lot of discussing the next move. 

So the goal was for everyone to prepare 3 lunches to give out to people who needed them. We ended up all bringing different components to the lunches and then putting them together. Someone even asked for a lunch while we were making them! This took a while, but it worked out. I didn't expect to give out as many as we did. In the end, all of them were gone! I was so surprised that so many people needed lunches. It's pretty sad. 

Homelessness is a huge problem in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. in general. In 2013, there were roughly 528,424 homeless people in the U.S. overall. That's a big number. That means that the population of homeless people in America is probably very close to the population of Wyoming now. That's an entire state. That's really sad. 

We started off at Eastern Market. Only a few people went in for the interviews. Some stayed out to give out lunches. Easter market was built by a German man named Adolf Cluss. He designed other things too. Like the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building. In the early 20th century, Capitol Hill's population grew. This caused for new additions to be made to Eastern Market. It became the first unofficial town center. In 2007 the market was damaged horribly by a fire. To this day, they still don't know the cause of the fire. Easter Market is a historic building in DC and it's the only one whose purpose has stayed the same. It's been operating since 1873.

















If you want fresh farm food, events, arts and crafts, etc., then you might want to check this place out.

Next up was the U.S. Postal Museum. Me and the one other girl in class, Sil, didn't go into this place. Somehow the lunches got squished and all the bags were ripped. We spent the entire time of the boys being in the museum re-organizing the lunches. We also came across a rude guy. He was completely ungrateful and didn't even thank us for the lunch. I'm not even sure if he really needed one.


Next up was Capitol Hill Bookstore. This isn't like any bookstore. This is used book bookstore. There are first edition books and rare books too. If you're claustrophobic, this probably really isn't the place for you. But there were a lot of cool books.

Lastly we had a performance. We probably could've planned this out better, considering we got no money. Sil brought her poi with her, and she was good, but no one was really around at that time of day, we had no speaker for music, and it wasn't very obvious that it was a performance.

In the end, we got rid of all of the lunches and it felt great! It felt amazing to help so many people that needed it.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

MJ #8

Hello, everyone and welcome back to Kendra's Great DC Adventures! This week was week I'll be telling about our trip to Chinatown in D.C.! First I'll tell a little bit about Chinatown! Now this is journey #8 but this is my 7th journey.

Chinatown is a small neighborhood in Washington, DC. It has many Chinese businesses and restaurants as well as other Asian businesses as well. It's historic and is known for the Chinese New Year festival and parade that happens every year.


It's also known for the Friendship Arch, a traditional Chinese gate built by a local artifact (Alfred H. Lui). It’s worth 1 million dollars. The arch includes 272 painted dragons, 7000 tiles and 7, 60 foot high roofs.

The first place we went to on this journey was the National Building Museum. We went to one of the only not crowded exhibits, PLAY WORK BUILD
This exhibit was fun, but I'm not great at this engineering thing. It was cool, though. We stayed here for a while and built things, then had to go to our next stop, 

IT'SUGAR!



This place had so much awesome candy! I don't like a lot of different candies, but I love chocolate and they had A LOT of it. I bought some fin sized Reese's cups. 
It was kind of expensive for the small amount of candy I bought, almost 4 dollars, but it was worth it.

Next up was lunch! I started off excited for lunch, but got disappointed once we went to McDonald's. I got over it, though. After I finished some nuggets, and everyone else finished too, we headed to Ford Theater. We bought tickets and saw a few exhibits. It was cool.



" On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln visited Ford’s for his twelfth time for a performance of Our American Cousin. At this performance, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth; he died the next morning in the Petersen House, a boarding house located across the street. Ford’s Theatre remained closed for more than 100 years." - click here.

Yes, this is in fact the actual theater that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in, that opened back up in 1968. Also, that place in the quote, the Peterson House, yeah we went there too! It was small and kind of sad to see the bedroom where he died. 

Lastly was  this small Chinese trading company. It had plenty of cool things to buy. I thought it was nice. 

Now I know this was pretty short, but that's all that happened! It was still really fun. Thanks for reading! :D