Long, exhausting, and exciting

As you might have read in yesterday's blog, my day started out at 5:15 in the morning today and it lasted until about 11:50pm. It was a great day, and I have lots to talk about, but I'm sorry to say that I'm going to have to upload the pictures tomorrow when I have more time. The Conference keeps me pretty busy in the morning and leaves us all free to explore the city in the afternoon. Here's a quick summary of what I did:

This morning, at the University of Maryland Field House, we heard a great and inspiring speech about leadership by General Colin Powell. When he finished, we were all shuttled back to our hotels and we broke out into groups to view two out of three seminars that we had chosen earlier this week. I was fortunate enough to hear prominant figures of the press from Washington express their thoughts and ideas, and to hear the humorous political insights of James Carville (a die hard Democrat) and his wife Mary Matalin (a conservative Republican). We were then free to explore the city after lunch. I, and a couple of friends, were able to make it to the Opening Inaugural Ceremonies at the Lincoln Memorial, where we heard and saw (on jumbo-trons) U2 perform, and we briefly heard a speech made by upcoming President Barack Obama. There are absolutely no words that can capture the feeling that I had at that moment, and throughout the day. When the ceremony ended, we headed over to the Capital to familiarize ourselves with the Inauguration location, and we stopped by the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History before we headed back to the hotel. I then took a guided tour with a large group of attendees to visit the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial site, the Korean War Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial.

Like I mentioned before, I'll post the pictures tomorrow because it'll take a while to load them up, and I need to get to bed for another early day tomorrow.

-Hugo