School trips fall into a few categories.  There are the boring trips, the ones in modern art museums where you travel in large groups and listen to how an artist embodies his life’s work into a completely blank canvas.  There are the crazy ones where students in hotels stay up until the early hours of the morning.  There are the fun ones where everything is amusing in retrospect.  My school went to Washington and it was rarely boring, occasionally crazy, and completely amusing.

Most students want to sit in the back of the bus.  The teachers all sit up front and the minor crimes of students go unnoticed.  I decided to sit right up front.  I’ve found that the back of the bus is crazy and the front is amusing.  About an hour into the trip, the teachers start talking.  Most of it is hilarious because it’s like talking to another student.  It’s much more fun than eating enormous amounts of sugar in the back of the bus.

The trip itself was amazing.  The hotel was decent, the guide was excellent, but it’s only once in a while that there is a convergence of events that creates a great moment.  Teachers talking on a bus is pretty funny.  People in a hotel room is good too.  Monuments are impressive, but I enjoy just walking around.

Washington is an amazing city.  The power and history of the city and the monuments and the museum are just stunning.  So just walking around is enough.  This school trip was short and it’s not as though I haven’t been to Washington many times before, but I still had fun.  Awesome is a word I rarely use, but in this case, it’s apt.