Hopkinton High School freshman Colin Wilkey, 15, (center) stands with friends including Max Lanocha (second from right) and Jeremiah Fortier (far right) at the Concord Trailways bus station waiting to board a bus for Washington, D.C., last weekend. They were among hundreds of local residents who traveled to the national peace march with New Hampshire Peace Action. Wilkey was 11 years old when the Iraq war started.

I've been waiting for this for a really long time, well, like 10 days. I was so excited just to get on the bus and get going. We left at 10 o'clock (at night) and got there at 7 in the morning. On the way down, I drifted in and out, but I was really excited. I couldn't really sleep. My friend Noah had Tylenol PM, so I took that and just conked out.

I got a lot of "Don't smoke pot in D.C."

Actually, not from my parents. My parents just said, "Don't get arrested." They wouldn't let me go at first. I kept asking and asking, and they were like, "No, no." Finally, they let me.

We were pumped. Just thinking about what it would be like to go and then actually experiencing it. I always envisioned it as like the Forrest Gump scene. All these people and the guy yelling in the microphone. People-wise, it was crazy - as far as the eye could see in both directions. We all had to hold on to each other when we were walking out of the mall area because it was so easy to get lost.

I think there was probably more than 100,000 (people) but definitely not a million. When we got to the rally, we made a meeting point and just went off and did our own thing. When we were all together and walking through the thousands of people, someone would yell, "New Hampshire," just to know where we are, make sure no one was missing.

One of the slogans was, "Make hip-hop, not war." So there'd be a lot of people busting rhymes. There'd be a lot of drummers rocking out. There was a group that said, "Arms are for hugging," and they had signs and they would run around and hug you. That was pretty cool. I think the craziest thing I saw was a SUV filled with cops with machine guns, just driving around. The security was really tight.

A lot of us went down Pennsylvania Avenue looking for the White House. But it was way too far down, so we didn't end up going to it.

I have two sisters and a brother. I'm the first one to have marched on D.C. They were pumped for me. They all called me the night before. My sister gave me a black-and-white roll of film and told me to take tons of pictures. They were giving me advice. Like, "This is such a good opportunity. Just take advantage of it. Meet lots of cool people."

When I was really little, I used to love the military, the action of it all. But now I feel like it's just this big corporation that tries to sucker you in with promises of benefits and false hopes. I used to have a bunch of toy guns and loved the Army, and the FBI, the CIA. And then, I kind of just grew out of it. My brother's really liberal and talked to me a lot about it. And then I watched Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. I don't take that as seriously as I used to 'cause that's an extremist view of one side, so I try to make a balance of it. We've had to write letters to (soldiers) in school, but I don't know any personally.

The president gets on my nerves. The war gets on my nerves. I don't think it's affected our lives that much, 'cause I'm too young to drive, I'm too young to vote. But killing and death in general, I don't know, it bothers me mentally.