Well, we are rapidly wrapping up our time here in DC and I have to tell you about what we did on Monday. My parents drove down from Baltimore to spend the day. We met up with the senior missionary couple that I've grown close to and the five of us set off for Chase's office to get a tour of the Capital. It was so much fun. We rode the subway from the Senate buildings over to the Capital which is always fun to me for some reason. It's like you're important and you have some place to be.
Anyway, we started off in the Burmidi hallway which is this richly colored hallway with paintings all over the ceiling and the walls. Chase was totally in tour guide mode and we loved every minute of it. I know that I may be biased because I am his wife, but he does give the most interesting and fun tours. He adds in all these little facts as well as rumors like how in one painting the rotunda, it looks like one man is stepping on another's toe.
As some of you may know, Congress is in recess right now which means that we got to do two things. First of all, we got to see the Old Senate Chamber which is only open to public when the Senate is in recess for one week or more. The vice president's desk is original and it's a beautiful room. Plus it has that really famous painting of George Washington looking off to the side. Actually, it's one of four famous paintings of Washington looking off to the side since the artist did four slightly different portraits of him. So that was really cool to see.
The next thing we got to do happened while we were in Statuary Hall. Statuary Hall houses statues of people from all over the United States. Each state gets to be represented by two statues of people from their state and most of the states are in this half-moon room. Statuary Hall used to be where the House of Representatives met. In fact, there are brass squares on the floor that tell you the approximate location of former President's desk. The acoustics in this hall are not very good and it just so happens that if you stand by the brass square for John Adams, you can actually hear the people talking on the other side of the room. So the five of us crowded around this square while Chase went to the other side of the room and said something. We could actually hear him! Sometimes it's hard to get it to work with so many people.
Now here is the history making part. This guy came over and asked Chase if he wanted to take his group to sit on the House floor. Apparently, a group of Republican representatives stayed behind to protest the fact that Congress recessed without ever voting on a solution to the energy crisis. So we got escorted to the House side and it wasn't to the gallery. They escorted us through the Speaker's Lobby (where the Speaker of House goes and the public is never allowed) and straight onto the floor. We sat in the chairs that the Representatives sat in. It was so cool and we actually saw history in the making because no kind of the protest has ever happened before. That right there made our tour doubly exciting. So our bums sat where Congress' bums sit.
After the tour, we went out for lunch and then parted ways. My parents and I went to the Botanical Gardens which were so pretty. It's really a nice place to go. In terms of other cool things we did this week, last night we went up the Washington Monument after sunset. It was gorgeous from up there. We could see the lights of the whole city below us and it just seemed like a perfect ending for our summer.
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