We drove the well-traveled Bridges van through the night on Sunday to arrive by early Monday morning at the FLOC Outdoors Center in West Virginia where we stayed in their lodge all week long. Monday, after some of us took a short nap, we headed over to Harper's Ferry, WV to hang out in the beautiful, historic, civil war town. Tuesday, we spent the day at FLOC where Todd led us in a variety of team building activities including the "A-Frame" and "Trust Fall". Then, in the afternoon, just in time for the wind and snow we ventured out to the high ropes course where the students had a chance to conquer fears and work in partners to complete the course 40' in the air! The best part was jumping off the platform and zipping down the zipline!
Wednesday our students had a chance to ride the Metro (train for you non-city people) :) into DC for the first time! We spent the first day in D.C. visiting the Supreme Court Building, US Capitol, Library of Congress, and all the monuments & memorials. Thursday we drove into the city, which ended up being more of a hassle than we realized...let's just say it is NOT easy to find parking downtown D.C! Fortunately we managed to find free parking and merrily went on our way!
We spent Thursday checking out Obama's house (a.k.a The White House), visiting the Holocaust Museum, & enjoying the beautiful view from the Jefferson Monument. In the afternoon we headed over to the National Zoo where we did not see any tigers, BUT saw some cool pandas, seals, sting rays, & monkeys. Whew-we were exhausted after two full days of walking around D.C.
Finally, on our last day Friday we had a chance to give back to FLOC through a service project. FLOC sits on many acres of woods with trails that have been built in. We had an opportunity to help maintain the trails by raking away the leaves, and shoveling/digging in to create level paths. The students all worked extremely hard and all their hard work allowed FLOC to open up the trail for visitors!
Overall we had a blast, took lots of pics, played lots of Dutch Blitz, ate lots of s'mores, respected Mr. Commissioner Sir, & listened to Arquan & Duakeen's amazing singing abilities (especially when it comes to Disney songs from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"). We took tons of pictures, but here are just a few to give you an idea of what our week was like!
