Our own inaugural ball at "Camelot"

By Stephanie Lombardo
We went to an all Smithsonian Student Inauguration Ball on Tuesday, January 21, 2009, the night before the Inauguration. We were all really excited to meet more new people, so we arrived at the dance, all dressed up, and found seats at the round tables around the hall. The room was a big reception hall, decorated with red, white, and blue balloons. The group before us was leaving soon, so we ate dinner while they finished dancing. After dinner we met up with the Florida group we were with and hit the dance floor.

There were tons of people on the dance floor, so it was hard to move and it got really hot really fast. We danced with our Florida group friends, and other random people we had just met. It was really fun to dance with people your own age and not know a single thing about them but still have a good time with them. We met some people from California who were really nice, and one guy whom Jess and Jasmine, our friend from Florida, named ‘Flannel Gary.’ We stayed at the dance for about two hours and danced most of the time. When it started to get really hot, we would step out and get a soda or water, but then get right back on the dance floor.

As the intercom announced at 8:30 that our groups had to leave, we really didn’t want to. But as we got onto the school bus we sang songs most of the way home. That night we went to bed early since our wakeup call for the Inauguration was going to be at 3:15 a.m.!