Have you ever wanted to see the president of the world’s maybe most important country? Today however we were unfortunately not able to see any member of the first family, we did get a chance to take a look at his home. But of course that is not all there is in the capitol.

We had to get out of bed early, but Tici’s familiar “wakey wakey” and the excitement to see the DC gave us enough energy for the day.

 After meeting with our tour guide, a woman, who would show us around in the city full of beautiful old, white buildings and endless green fields, we started the big walking tour through DC’s streets that would lead us to the world famous buildings that are essential for the government. We started off with the US Capitol and Supreme Court but soon moved on to the Library of Congress which we saw not long ago Nicholas Cage racing through looking for the next treasure not so long ago at one of our longer bus rides.

Here we are approaching the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

Of course most of our excitement was due to another building: the current home of Barack Obama. Though I am sure some people expected to see him, the missing snipers on the top of the White House made it clear that he probably is not home at the time. We are thinking though, that he did return later that day, as we saw to helicopters in the sky when visiting the Lincoln Memorial. This possibly was a dream come true for some people (for me it was at least) but it sure was on everyone’s bucket list which we can now cross off. The only thing that could have made this experience even more perfect was if the Washington Memorial was not under construction.

The Washington Monument was under construction.  But we're standing on the Lincoln Memorial!

 Apparently Jefferson was another beloved president, having built the beautiful round Jefferson Memorial for.

It would not be a day in Washington if we haven’t visited the Smithsonian. Due to its enormous size, though, there was no way we could even run through every exhibition, so we had to choose only one which we would be able to see only a part of.

What else would we do in Georgetown in our free time other than shopping? But after spending our parents’ money (thanks mom & dad!) we ate at a real ‘Murican restaurant “The Old Glory”, where even on the plates which real fatty American food was served on an American flag was printed.

The highlight of the day came later, though, when we were amazed by one of our fellow exchange students, Felix, who is not from Germany, but Sweden when he showed us his magical abilities. 

Felix from Sweden's awesome magic show!

We even got some time to go crazy at the pool. Hopefully we did not annoy the other residents of the hotel with our continuous shrieking, but I had the impression each and every one of us had the most amazing time, except for the people doing laundry. (Sorry, guys) 

Anna Orosz, Hungary

Sara Glanzmann, Switzerland