The Pentagon

On Wednesday we went on a tour of the Pentagon for class and we were also able to talk with a woman who did WII 8 years ago and told us about her work in the Pentagon.
It was definitely cool to go in the Pentagon and see it but I felt like we barely got to see any of the building on the tour, we only really saw two wings which was a bummer.

But we learned some interesting things about the building: it is the largest low rise office building in the world, on our tour alone we walked 1.5 miles, and we barely saw any of it, so it's HUGE!
We also learned that each window is over $1000 because they have to be sound proof, wind proof, bullet proof, etc...and also they are tinted so that no spies can see into the Pentagon building and get classified information. Also it would be a pretty cool building to work in because they have everything inside it, it almost looks like a little airport. They have places to eat like panda express, wendy's, sbarro and other fast food places. They also have nail salons, doctors offices, dentist offices, places to buy suits and lots of other stores. If you worked there you could accomplish quite a bit on your lunch break! Also the Pentagon is a certified "green" building, as in environmentally friendly, who knew!

We also got to see the 9/11 memorial inside the building, and then we visited the 9/11 memorial outside the building after our tour as well. The one on the inside is really nice and it has the purple heart award for all the Pentagon employees and the defender of freedom award for all the non-military people that died, like the people on the plane. The defender of freedom award was made specifically after 9/11 for all the victims that were not a part of the military but lost their lives. They also had a book where the family members of the victims wrote bios for them and it was heartbreaking reading some of the bios and it definitely put faces to 9/11. We also met a woman at the memorial whose husband, who worked at the Pentagon, had died on 9/11, she explained to us the importance of the memorial to her, and it was so great, and we talked to her for about 20 minutes. That really hit me because I have never met someone who knew a person who had died.

So even though the tour wasn't that amazing the experience was pretty amazing, and I recommend that everyone coming to DC goes to see the Pentagon memorial, because it is quite amazing.