March For Life : Travel Blog #26

Updates:

It's funny how few opportunities there are to write travel blogs when you stop living on the road! I supposed I "travel" to class everyday. On Sundays I even make the long voyage across campus to church. Despite the perpetually unfulfilled wanderlust in my soul, I have been enjoying college immensely! Yet I think I will always jump at the chance to go and do exciting new things in exciting new places. I suppose that's just one of the symptoms of spending high school in a new place every single week.

As it's been a minute since I've updated you, allow me to answer the big questions.

Where am I?

I am currently attending Hillsdale College in Michigan.

Is my family still traveling?

Yes. As I write this, they are out exploring Greece. Their updates on the family group chat have been quite entertaining as they walk around where Paul, Aristotle, and Plato all walked.

Am I still writing?

Yes. I have avidly been writing for the Hillsdale Collegian Newpaper. (As well as class papers of course!) I'll link one of my articles below!

https://hillsdalecollegian.com/2024/11/4b-sex-strike-or-sign-of-hope/

I cannot deny that it's been very strange being stationary. Especially since my family is still traveling. Some mornings I wake up confused as to why I'm still here after all these months and full of longing to go join my family on their adventures. Most days though, I wake up thrilled to be in such an incredible place. This is my adventure right now!

March For Life

On the weekend of January 25th, the fernweh in my heart was temporarily abated as I traveled to Washington D.C. to march for unborn babies with my college friends!

me and Lucy

The March for Life has been a long-standing item on my extraordinarily lengthy bucket list. Getting to visit it with my friends was the experience of a lifetime! My only regret was that my best friend (and sister) couldn't come with me this time. This means that even though I've been, the March will remain on my bucket list until we can check it off together!

Overnight bus ride!

Hillsdale College is extremely conservative and quite traditional. (They don't accept any government money and strive to hold to Constitutional values). As such, they have a very active pro-life club. Back over fall break, I canvassed in Milwaukee with some members of the pro-life club. This winter, we all took a bus to DC! After only being back from Christmas break for just over a week, we took an all-night bus ride to Washington. Leaving campus at 10 PM and arriving in DC at 9 AM set us up for a trip characterized by exhaustion! Thankfully, I was able to sleep on the bus for around 5 hours.

We arrived in DC on the morning of the March and immediately headed to the metro station to attend a rally at the national mall! Security was tight as we passed through TSA style checkpoints to enter the rally and watched the speakers who were safely behind bullet proof glass. There in the shade of the Washington monument, over 10,000 pro-lifers stood packed in around the stage where we listened to some incredible speakers. We heard Governor Ron DeSantis while he stood on stage with his whole family as well as Lila Rose, a very prominent pro-life advocate. My personal favorite speaker was Bethany Hamilton, author of Soul Surfer, a biography of her experience losing her arm in a shark attack. Finally, J.D. Vance made his first public appearance since the inauguration in a strong display of conservative support.

We munched on granola bars standing in that giant crowd while we listened and cheered and shivered in the cold for a little under two hours before it was finally time: we got to start marching to the capitol building! Everyone flooded back through the security check-points and took to the gated-off streets. It was pure chaos and impossible to stay together. Thankfully, we had traveled with our Hillsdale Dean of Men, Chief Rogers. Chief is famous for his cadence calls when walking or running. He led us in chants like "When I say pro, you say life!" so we were able to roughly follow him and highly entertain all those marching around us.

Marching for Life!

I had not realized this before, but the March is a popular event for many Christian and, more specifically, Catholic schools to take big trips to. A vast majority of marchers were high school or college students. With that, it felt like a giant reunion of friends and siblings. We marched with thousands of other like-minded young adults past stands selling MAGA hats and pro-life stickers. So often, tradtional conservatism seems like a minority. Especially in politics, we often feel dramatically underrepresented in our highly pro-choice culture. Marching in our nation's capitol with our pro-life representatives publicly sharing their support was a highly inspirational and encouraging experience.

the Marchers!

We marched for only a mile, but it took over two hours because of the insane congestion. We were sardined on those streets in the most fun possible type of chaos!

Stopped at Union Station on the way back to the hotel!

The Metro Team!

After we reached the end, it was time to explore DC! Maybe this sounds silly to those of you who have been adults for a while now, but having total freedom and autonomy to go anywhere and do anything with my friends was kind of crazy to consider! So what did we do with this newfound liberation? We got coffee and then high tailed it back to the hotel to take a nap! We were going on almost 2 full days without legitimate sleep and could barely see straight. It's a miracle that we made it through the metro system and back to the hotel.

The purpose of our March was obviously the highlight of the experience, but I cannot deny that my favorite memory I will take away was our girl's night! We crashed at the hotel and then worked up the energy to trek over to Chick-fil-a where I enjoyed what I will probably always remember as one of the best meals of my life after an exhausting and cold day out on the streets! Maybe it sounds silly that we had a girls night staying in a hotel together since we all live in dorms together, but it felt way different and quite luxurious. After burning popcorn and taking wonderful hot showers, we had such a nice evening!

The next day, we slept in before taking the subway to our national Basilica where we went to a beautiful mass in the crypt. A brief stop at a museum and back to Chick-fil-a and we headed to the bus for 10 hours back to Home Sweet Hillsdale!

Being pro-life is controversial in our current world. It's extremely isolating to be on this side of the debate as it is such a personal topic for so many. Men often feel as though they must be pro-choice or they are abandoning the women in their lives. Women feel as though pro-lifers are targeting them specifically and almost always respond emotionally. Having the opportunity to stand for what we believe in a crowd of like-minded supporters was truly a once in a lifetime experience for the pro-life party. Especially in a place like Washington DC with our political leaders on our side.