Days Building up to Inauguration Day

In my time sense leaving New York and entering into Washington DC all the talk from the city and people with-in my class has been nothing but Inauguration Day. My class and I have prepared ourselves for this day or as much as we could but still I think it wasn’t enough. As the day drew nearer I thought to myself whether I would be able handle the day that newspapers said there would be over two million people to attend this event. I wanted to do it though because I wanted to be a part of history and have something to tell my children as they grew older.

The day before Inauguration Day some people and I from class headed over to the Capitol to prepare ourselves of our surroundings and where we might be standing. We hung around there talking with different people from all over the United States asking them why they were here and what they hoped to get from this experience. The sun started going down so we decided to head back towards the hostel to get some food because we were all starving. As the night came to a close we were all sitting in the main lobby talking and trying to decide what time we should get up in the morning and whether we were all sane for doing this. We first thought we should meet down stairs at 5:30am but after we talked with a police man that night we decided to meet at 4:30am so that we could be the large group of people that was going to attend this event. We all went to bed around midnight with the mindset that we could do this and we would just hangout around the hostel after Inauguration day.
I woke up and I was ready to get this day started with only 4 hours of sleep under my belt but there was nothing that was going to stop me. As I got down stairs with the rest of the group the girls were already down stairs waiting and they had called our professor to tell him we were leaving earlier than we had planned. Once the rest of the group was here we headed outside ready to face the cold weather that was upon us. We headed towards the Mall to get in line with the other people that wanted to see this momentous occasion. At first when we got downtown we saw many lines backed up forever but we didn’t know which line to get in. So we asked the cops but every cop had a different answer until we had two cops tell us that the line for no tickets started at 3rd ST so we headed in the direction. Once we got there half the group went and talked with other people from different states while the other half of the group waited in line. We got there around 4:30am and at about 6:30am after just standing around waiting to get in some of us wanted to head back to the hostel because we thought it wasn’t worth it. I was leaning both ways because I wanted to see Obama sworn into presidency but on the other hand I have bad knee problems and I couldn’t stand on my knee anymore. So two other people and I walked back while the other group stayed and watched.
After this day I feel that even though I wasn’t there I was still a part of history in the making and coming to D.C. has showed me so much. I still have so much more to see and witness and I hope that the rest of this trip is as good as the first half of the trip has been and I am thankful that I have been given this opportunity.

-Patrick Kenney