Joshua's last day in DC post

Our final day in Washington was, for a lot of us, somewhat dulled by the length of the trip and by the amount of walking we did each day. For me, it seemed some of the students, including myself, had been around each other for too long and we either didn’t know what to say or we had our issues and different arguments broke out between us.
My feelings of Washington D.C. as a city seemed to describe it as an intercultural metropolis that, maybe because of 9/11, has lost its soul. It now seems to be a gathering place for the business people of the nation, but none of them are aware of one another or add to the potential of a community. Many of the older styles of buildings have concrete columns instead of granite or marble so it is difficult to tell what is original and what has been altered to preserve tourism. I’m not saying that it is not a beautiful place, but simply a very confused one.
I have been on several trips with the school out of the country to Europe and Japan and I noticed how most of the cities were rooted in a culture that had existed for hundreds of years. The only cities I have seen in the U.S. with this similar culture are San Francisco and New Orleans.
According to Karen, our tour of the Capitol was very different and shorter than what she saw several years ago, but it was quite entertaining to see the root of where law is created from and has been for a couple hundred years.