As mentioned on the previous entry, it turned out that the Red Roof Inn in Charlottesville didn’t offer continental breakfast. So, I had to wake up and figure out how I was going to feed 15 people. I thought about the White Spot, but I doubted they’d be able to get their act together for breakfast that quickly. They’re really efficient between the hours of midnight and 4:00 AM. I have doubts about breakfast. So, I went to Little John’s and got a menu. I took it back to the kids and parents to get orders. I went down to LJ’s and got a giant order of breakfast and brought it back. Everybody seemed content.

It was clear that since the will in parents to go do anything had died, we would not make it to Monticello. That wasn’t going to stop me, though. Everybody got their stuff packed up and Brianna and I took the kids to Professor Lynn Sanders’s Racial Politics class. The topic was majority black congressional districts. The plan was to have them meet their congressman, who represents a majority black congressional district one day, and then take them to a class about it. Unfortunately the lecture was pretty text heavy, and some of my kids squirmed in the desks for the lecture, but a few of my kids really got into it. At the end they met Professor Sanders and asked her questions about her lecture. One boy asked, "What is gerrymandering?" Another asked, "Who is was the Frymer guy you kept talking about?" I was so proud of them.

We walked back to the hotel to find the parents. Before going to lunch Brianna and I took all of the suitcases down to the train station because the parents didn’t want to deal with their cases. Now that was a fun cab ride: me, Brianna, and 25+ suitcases.

When Brianna and I got back, we took a walk down to UVA with everybody. I showed everybody the Lawn and they were really impressed with the beauty of the place. The parents thought it was nice, but were more interested in finding a place to sit. So, I dropped them off at the Main Lounge in Newcomb Hall (the room with the piano, for all the Wahoos out there). So, we left the parents, save one, and went around for a few hours.

We walked by Brown College first, so I was happy to point to where I spent two of my years in college and say, "I lived there!" Luckily, none of the Brown weirdos came out. We then walked through the engineering school and I explained all the different branches of engineering, hoping to plant seeds in the brains of the math and science oriented students. We then came to the football field, which they all of course liked.

Many of them said they had to go to the bathroom, so we stopped at the Aquatic and Fitness Center. Once they were done with the bathroom, we had an impromptu learning experience. We passed the pools and they all wanted to go see them, so we did. I’m not sure what fascinated them so much with the pools, but they watched the swimmers practicing for a good 20 minutes.

We made our way back to Central Grounds, where we passed the Environmental Science building. I explained that JFK’s brothers went to law school in that building. We passed the amphitheater and they didn’t understand why there weren’t more shows besides Tom DeLuca’s hypnosis show. I had no good answer for them, because I don’t know why there aren’t more.

We finally came back to the Lawn where the kids just played for a while. It was interesting to watch the different kids in their different stages of development. The lesser-developed boys dug rocks up while the more-developed boys talked with the girls. The girls all have hormones going at that age, so there weren’t any doing anything else.

We then went back to pick up the parents and caught the trolley to the Downtown Mall. We all got pizza and I chilled with Ian for a few minutes. From here, we went to the train station, got on and headed home. Except for getting stuck ten miles outside of Atlanta for two hours, everything went off without a hitch and I was finally home twenty four hours later. I had two days of my spring break left. Everybody else came back well rested and I was beat.

And so ends this six part series on our trip to DC. Despite the fact that I'm neither teaching nor in Mississippi, Delta to DC will go on. My friends Sanja and Jeanette are taking the project over this year. Best of luck to them and their students on their trip.