New York Trip Part II: A Weekend at West Point

Here I am to write about my weekend at West Point with my parents, sister, and many other people to witness Matthew Hitzeroth's graduation.

So, to pick up where I left off, after Heather's and my day in NYC, we met our parents at the airport and my dad got a rental car that would take us to a town right outside West Point. I fell asleep during the car ride, which I think was about an hour and a half. When we got to our hotel I think it was about 10 or 11 pm, and I was pretty grumpy because I was really tired. All I wanted was a hot shower, which I got.

We had to wake up pretty early in the morning in order to grab a quick breakfast at the hotel and then make our way to West Point to watch Matt in a parade. Apparently, the whole week leading up to the graduation on Saturday was full with activities and events that the cadets had to participate in such as parades and drills and stuff. So my mom, dad, sister and I arrived at West Point Friday morning to watch Matt in his last West Point parade ever, and there we connected with Matt's parents and his younger sister, Gretchen. When the parade was done we all got to go find Matt and say hi, that was really exciting because I hadn't seen him since January and Heather hadn't seen him for like six weeks. They were soooooooooooooo happy to be together again. Here's some pictures of the 'parade' and of Matt in his uniform:


When we felt our greetings to each other had been sufficient, we decided to make our way to Matt's barrack. On the way we saw some statues of old army heros, so my dad got excited and posed in front of General Douglas MacArthur's, I believe. It was really funny and nice to watch my dad whenever he was in West Point, because you could tell he was REALLY excited to be there and thrilled that he was going to have a son who would have graduated from there! My dad doesn't show his excitement very often, so when he does, its a pleasure to watch.

The barracks were actually pretty nice...from the outside they kind of looked like medieval castles. Matt's room was pretty empty because he had been packing all week in anticipation of gettin' home and gettin' hitched one week later. Even his sheets were off of his bed, and we started telling him he still had one more night to sleep there, but he just told us that he had been sleeping without sheets the whole week! Silly Matt.

Both the families went out to lunch next, TGI Fridays. Very fun. Can't remember everything that was said and done there, but just know that hanging out with family one day before a West Point graduation, especially when its also one week before a wedding, is SO FUN. I do remember that our waiter spilled lemonade on Gretchen. I think he felt really bad. Haha. And a picture of the happy couple:


After lunch my family returned to our hotel room to prepare for a formal banquet and dance that evening. Matt only had enough tickets for his family and Heather to attend the banquet, but everyone got to go to the dance. It was my first officially formal event EVER, so it was really fun to actually get made up WITH Heather instead of just watching her get ready. We went back to West Point in time for Heather to walk into the banquet hall with Matt. In the meantime, my mom, dad and I walked to a Subway on campus. It was so funny to watch people's reactions as we walked into the Subway all dressed up. Here's a picture of my mom and I on our way to dinner:

When we finished our dinner at West Point my dad looked at his watch and saw that we still had like an hour and a half before the dance would start. I suggested that if we walked back REALLY SLOWLY, taking our meandering time to "stop and smell the roses," we might make it back to the site of the dance in time to not have to wait around. So we walked slower than a turtle. I spotted a cemetary on the way back, and thinking that there might be some cool old war heros buried there, suggested that we walk through it. We had so much fun doing this. So many of the grave markers were totally extravagent. I kept looking for names I would remember from history, but didn't find any. I mean, I did find a Joseph Hooker, and got excited that it might have been 'Fighting Joe Hooker' from the Civil War, but we looked at the years of his life and realised that it definitely was NOT him.

For all our slowness, we got back to the site of the dance with about 45 minutes to wait. Pretty boring. But, I did get to watch a helicopter land only about 100 meters away from me. I think it was the helicopter for the dignitary who spoke at the banquet.

Eventually all who had attended the banquet started pouring out of the banquet hall, and it was time for the dance to begin! The dance was held in this huge building with lots of different rooms, in each room a different type of music was being played. I think that in only one there was a DJ, all the rest had live bands. Before any of us went into the rooms to dance, something like five people in our party had to go off on different errands. So, not wanting to start dancing without everyone being present, those of us that didn't have any errands just sat and waited. Everyone took SUCH a long time getting back to us, so Heather and I got slightly bored, and Heather got a migraine because a girl walked by in a neon blue dress (Heather's migraines are initiated by the color neon blue). I thought that the migraine would put a huge damper on Heather's evening, but I think that she was just so happy to be with her husband-to-be that nothing would knock her off her care-free pedestal. Here's us being bored and waiting for everyone:


After a half hour, when hardly anyone had come back from their errands, Matt's dad suggested that Matt, Heather and I go enjoy ourselves in one of the dance rooms while he continued to wait for everyone. We agreed and made our way to what we thought was the jazz room and saved a few tables. We sat down, listened to the music, watched other dancers, and continued saving the tables as we waited for the rest of our party to arrive. After another half hour, when no one had shown up still, we decided to take turns dancing while one of us watched our tables. That was pretty fun. Finally, when we were thoroughly exasperated that none of our party had come to meet us, Spencer, Matt's brother found us and asked us what in the world we were doing in that dancing room! We said we were in there because it was the jazz room, of course, and we had all agreed to meet in the jazz room! He responded by saying that no, the jazz room was downstairs, and that's where everyone had been waiting for us for a long time! So, we all traveled downstairs to the real jazz room and had a great time. We left the party early, at about 11 o'clock, because it was going to be a really early morning the next day with having to arrive at West Point at 6 o'clock in order to clear security and such for the graduation. (Tons of security because Mr. George W. Bush was to be the commencment speaker!)

It was difficult to drag ourselves out of bed the next morning, especially for Heather and I because we hadn't had a decent night's sleep in about three days. But, with the anticipation of what was going to occur that day, it didn't take long for us to forget our exhaustion and be thrilled to be awake. However, anytime I got into the car for a drive, I always fell asleep.

We arrived at West Point on time, I think, about six o'clock, but still had to wait in a long line of cars for about 45 min in order to even get on the campus. Then we waited in a line outside of the football stadium where the graduation was to be held for another 45 min or something, waiting for the doors to be opened. It was a very cold morning, really misty, and I was wearing a sleeveless top and had forgotten to bring a sweater. Oh well, being in line and waiting was actually pretty much durable and even fun because for the first time that weekend we connected with Mr. Mark Economou, who is one of Matt's really good friends. I was really glad he was there because he is such a fun guy! He makes waiting around for something feel like you're actually at Disneyland or someplace fun like that. So even after the doors were opened and we were waiting for two and a half hours for the graduation to start, there never seemed to be a dull moment.

Finally, the graduation began and the cadets filed in, and the graduation speakers filed onto the stage also. Here are some pictures of the completed stadium. In the second picture, you can see George Bush standing up, in the blue tie. Pretty cool.



Ok, I had been to a college graduation before, and knew how completely boring they could be, but this one was almost without a dull moment. Even if I wasn't sitting with really funny people and people that I love (not that I don't love the funny people I was with...I think I was sitting with only funny people and I love all of them:), I don't think I would have been bored. George Bush's commencement address was totally great, here's a pic of him delivering it:

My only disappointment of the day: I missed the moments that Matt had his name called, he received his diploma, and he shook the President's hand. Kind of a funny story of how that happened, now that I think about it, but it actually brought me to tears and a huge hurty ball in my throat when I realised what I had missed. :( But here's the story. I think there were something like 900 cadets who were graduating that morning, and I sat through probably half of them with an ever-filling bladder. Finally, I turned around to my sister, asked her what she thought of my going to the restroom just then...do I have enough time before Matt's name came up? Yeah, she said, she thought so. So I made my way, almost as quickly as I could, knowing the whole time that Heather was probably going to have everybody pretend that I had missed Matt's name being called and his hand shake from the President. I came back to where my group was sitting with a smirk on my face because I just KNEW what they were going to try to do to me. My seat was the last on a row of about 12 people, and as I passed each one, almost everyone greeted me with a "You missed it!" and I answered back with "You can't fool me!" When I got to my seat, Heather and I went back and forth, she trying to persuade me that I had, in fact, missed Matt's name and me coming back with "I know you're joking!" Finally, when Heather wouldn't let up, my last comment to her was "Please tell me you're joking?" When she looked at me with a sad and sorrowful expression, I slowly sat down and didn't talk for almost the rest of the ceremony, because most of the time I knew that if I said one word I would start weeping. I don't THINK that I would have normally taken that so hard, but my sleep schedule had been so completely wacked up for the past three or fours days and every day had been chocked full of adventures, so I was TIRED. And I, when I am tired, get emotional. So there I sat with a hurty lump in my throat.

Here are some happy pictures of the graduated Matthew Hitzeroth!

After the graduation, we spent the afternoon at the home of a family that Matt had become very good friends with during his years at West Point. The husband was a professor at West Point, I believe, and during Matt's first year this family had been assigned to Matt as sort of a host family, I think. Something like that. But Matt had remained good friends with them through all of the four years, and so they hosted his graduation party/bar-pinning ceremony (bar-pinning ceremony: a ceremony where Matt made an oath to his duties to the country had his bars, the symbol of his status as a 2nd Lieutenant, pinned to his uniform). The family made SUCH awesome food for us, yummy hors d'oevers (no idea if that's spelled right) and Thai food. Thai food's great, by the way, definitely recommend. The bar-pinning ceremony was pretty cool to witness:


When the party was over, our trip was essentially done. Matt did say goodbye to West Point in a very unique way, and for the sake of a PG rating I'll leave it at that. Haha, it actually wasn't all that bad. But anyways, the next morning we left our hotel bright and early to catch our flight back to LA, and in the airport we got Dunkin Donuts for breakfast because we had seen pretty much NO OTHER donut place anywhere in New York other than Dunkin Donuts....it was EVERYWHERE. Deciding that Dunkin Donuts must be a New York thing, we realised we couldn't leave until we had tried it. And so we did. Nothing special, but to me, you can never say a donut is bad.

I slept almost the whole flight home.

A trip that was well worth it.

Happy graduation Matt, even though it was like three months ago! And sorry for missing your handshake with the President...I don't think I ever told you about that! :)