Recently this year’s 8th grade took a trip to Washington DC. It was the fourth time 8th graders at St. Philip has taken the trip. I happened to be one of the 48 students to go on the DC trip. For a couple of years now, St. Philip has been going on this trip with a program called Close Up. This program makes it easier for schools to organize their trip. Some students thought that this trip was going to be a vacation. It was very fun but also required a lot of learning. Joe Krasnowski will be covering all the learning we did while in DC in a separate article so make sure to not miss it! The flight from LA to DC is 5 hours. It sounds like a long time but goes by pretty quickly. While in DC we went to multiple monuments and museums. It was very fun to learn. We also had groups called workshop groups. There were kids from the state of Texas, Minnesota, and Alaska. Our workshop groups were all mixed with about 15 students from all three states. DC was a great learning experience because I had never been on a trip without my parents. I had a very good time while in DC. I decided to interview two students who also went on the DC trip. I asked them “What were some things that you liked and disliked about DC?” Caroline Mitchell said,” she really liked to interact with people from all over the country and meeting all of these people in our nation’s capital was a great experience. I also really loved going to all of the different monuments and getting to know more about our country, especially things that I didn’t too much about. I did not like that we had to make up early which tended to be an issue almost every morning. Luckily we got used to the early wake-up calls. Other than that the trip was so much fun!” It seems like Caroline had a great time in DC. Henry Gunn said,” I didn’t really like all the walking but I really liked hanging out with people from different states and learning about the history behind DC.” Henry Gunn and Caroline Mitchell both said that DC is totally worth it. If you get a chance to go to DC, even without your school, I would 100% recommend you go!