(ABC 6 News) – Even though we didn’t get see much here in the Med City Monday, it became a day of learning and coming together to witness such a rare and amazing event in our solar system. Despite clouds covering southern Minnesota, Monday was still a special day in the Med City.

“It is exciting, I think everyone feels the excitement all across the United States,” said Lorie Forstie with Quarry Hill Nature Center.

Quarry Hill Nature Center partnered with 125 Live for a viewing party and to teach those in attendance about the eclipse.

“It’s always our mission to open eyes and minds to natural science and discovery and what better way to do that than looking to the skies together,” said Forstie.

There wasn’t much to look at besides the gray skies, but at Riverside Elementary School, students were still excited to learn about the eclipse.

“The path of totality, like, changes from where it’s at, so like, the next time it will happen it will be, like, in a totally different place,” said fifth-grader Jrue Dillard.

“It doesn’t go for like a full eclipse for like people in different states and for us here in Minnesota it was only going have like that much,” said 5th grader Yari Martin.

In Ms. Dietrich’s class, students made observations before during and after the eclipse.

“For them it’s about learning about it, without knowing what they were learning about was a bit harder. So now that they’ve seen it, now they are really going understand it and start hear more science words out of them and a lot of excitement about it,” said Dietrich.

The students were amazed by images from NASA.

“I think it was kinda smart for them to send someone out on an aircraft to chase the shadows and stuff, so we could see what was really happening,” said Dillard.

“Whenever we were watching it from Mexico you could still see some of the flames from the sun or the one in New York it was blue, like a blue ring around it,” said Martin.

While they couldn’t see it in person, a lot of people here in the Med City seemed to make the best of it and there was still lots of enthusiasm about the event especially from those fifth-graders.