The Cherry Blossom Festival is here,
in full force with all the thousands of visitors filling the mall and
surrounding area, and making it quite challenging to get around. There are
people everywhere! I would guess that there were more than 200,000 people in
the park today alone. The crowd never stopped the entire day. I spent a good
portion of it attempting to educate visitors about why they needed to not climb
in trees and pick cherry blossoms, pulling people out of trees, and
confiscating blossoms again and again. Very tiring! It was a longggg day! And
it is going to pale in comparison to what will be coming tomorrow! This has
already been a long week for me, as I worked 11 official extra hours of
overtime and spent more of my own time remaining on the mall.
It began a week ago when I spent the
day as Paddles the beaver, posing for pictures and receiving hugs all day
long! I was the recipient of more hugs from cute girls that one day than in the
rest of my life combined. Too bad none of them knew it was me in the beaver
suit!
When I worked overtime on Tuesday it
was actually fairly quiet so I was able to walk along the tidal basin, talking
to visitors and taking some pictures of the blossoms myself.
On my one day off I joined friends
in traversing the Maryland side of Great Falls on the Billy Goat Trail,
enjoying the beauty of the raging Potomac River and surrounding woods. On
Thursday I worked at the Jefferson Memorial and saw more visitors in that
single day than every other time I have worked there added together. These
visitors included a supreme court justice, which was somewhat exciting,
though I only saw her from a distance. I gave four official talks that
day, each 30-40 minutes long, to groups of 25-30 every time, which is highly
unusual for that location!
I received numerous compliments
after these talks, which always feels validating and makes me want to
do the best I can to represent these sites to the visitors. One
comment in particular made my day. An Australian family stuck with me for
the entire 35 minute talk, thanked me, and walked out of the chamber. I
remained, speaking to other visitors, and about five minutes later the father
came back in and asked me if I had written that talk myself, or if it
was something that I had only given. When I told him that I had,
in fact, come up with the talk on my own, he preceded to tell me that it was
the best talk/presentation that he had ever heard. Now that's a good way to
keep me motivated!
Now I enter into Easter weekend. I
will be working eleven hours each of the next four days including Easter
Sunday. Even so I plan to attend a sunrise service at the Lincoln Memorial in
celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Hopefully I will survive the rest of
the festival and make it to next Saturday (April 10) when I will, once again,
portray Paddles, this time in the Cherry Blossom Parade!
HAPPY EASTER!
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