One week!

Wednesday my fellow intern and I continued our project. It was supposed to take us at least a couple of days, but we were done by 2pm. Both of our supervisors were happily surprised. We were both assigned to do research on awards, but I had a meeting and the other intern had another project, so we're going to start that tomorrow. I had a meeting to learn about copyright. I'm going to be contacting companies to get their permission to use their images in an exhibit. It sounds like it will be a lot of administrative work. For lunch I went to a food truck. It was called DC Ballers. It was okay. I had a hummus sandwich and watermelon lemonade. I would recommend never having watermelon lemonade! It was bizarre! I had a hard time focusing in the afternoon because my family was arriving! I got to meet them at their hotel at 6pm! I was so happy to see them! We went out to have Mexican tapas. It was pretty good. The guacamole was amazing!

Thursday I had to get up really early! I got up at 6am because I had to be out of the house by 7:10am in order to meet my supervisor at the end of the orange line by 8am because we were going to the Udvar-Hazy Center. That's the other Air and Space Museum's facility. It is two or three air hangers put together to form a huge building. The building is one big open space with walkways on three levels in order to be at the same level as some of the planes higher up. After we got there and dropped our stuff off my supervisor took me to see Space Shuttle Discovery. When I saw it my breath was taken right from me. It was magnificent! The Shuttle was much bigger then what I had expected and how the Shuttle looked it general was amazing! After I saw the Shuttle we went and saw a plane called Solar Pulse that is a solar power plane flying across the US and it had stopped at the museum for the week. After seeing the Shuttle it wasn't so impressive. Don't get me wrong, the plane was cool, but the scale wasn't the same. Space travel really out weighs solar travel in my books. Mostly when the solar travel only goes 50 miles an hour maximum. At 10:30 Valerie gave a tour to a really of the Shuttle and the Space part of the Center to a really inspiring family. The father of this family used to work for NASA and has three patents concerning training devices for teaching astronauts to take off and land the Shuttle. He suffered a brain stem stroke and the doctors declared him a vegetable and told the family to pull the plug. They refused and five days later the family realized he was communicating to them through blinks. The doctor didn't believe them. He said if the father really was so smart before his stroke he should be able to blink out the answer to this math question. What is the square root of 25? The father blinked five times and the doctor said that that changed everything. I guess it's a slow recovery which is understandable, but the guy and his family were really inspiring. They are advocating for better disability help and if you want to can visit their website which is www.thesquarerootoftwentyfive.com. It's really inspirational and the guy is even writing a book about his experience. After that my supervisor gave another speech about Sally Ride. We then watched a documentary called "The Dream is Alive". Its about the Space Shuttles and recorded by astronauts. Then I was given the rest of the afternoon to explore! I pretty much ran around the hangers to take everything in since I only had an hour. Hopefully I get the chance to look at some of the stuff in more depth. I met my family after work and we went to this really good noodle place called Noodles on 11th. I highly recommend it! My boyfriend and my family went to the zoo and my boyfriend bought me three stuffed animals.

Trevor Junior

Lynn Junior

Tryn Hottie Ottie the Otter

Friday was just a normal day. In the afternoon the other interns and I went to see Hubble 3D. It was really cool! After work I went to jazz in the garden with my family, boyfriend and Canadian friend. I had sangria for the first time. It wasn't to bad, but it still made me grimace. My boyfriend, my friend and I went back to Agora for supper. We then went for cupcakes at Hello Cupcake. The icing was a little sweet.

Saturday I had a lazy day with my boyfriend before he left. He caught a cab at 4:45 and I went to hang out with my family. We went for Spanish tapas for supper at La Tasca. It was pretty yummy, but a little loud. I had to buy a new pair of shoes after supper because I was developing huge blisters. My brother and I then went to get cupcakes at the Red Velvet Cupcakery after I got shoes. I had a hazelnut cafe cupcake and it was delicious! Seriously!  I stayed with my family that night in order spend more time with them.

The next morning we went to Point Chaud Cafe and Crepes for breakfast. I'm going back because it was so tasty and satisfying. When we left the cafe it as pouring! We ran back to the hotel to get ponchos and umbrellas for everyone. Following that we headed to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I gave my family a brief tour of the places and objects I know. Some of the highlights were the space station, Hubble, shuttle tiles and Sally Ride's uniform. By 12:30 most of us were done so we headed to Merzi for lunch. It was no longer raining and sweltering hot outside! After lunch we hung out at the Spy Museum and then had supper at Chop't which had huge salads!  I left my family after this giving them all hugs before I left because they all headed home the next day.

Monday I was feeling lonely with everyone gone. Work seemed to go slowly. The Space History interns have decided that Mondays will be dress up Mondays, so I had to wear a dress which didn't make me feel any better. At lunch we went to the Brown Bag Lunch and watched some other interns present. Then the guy interns started to make paper airplanes and throw them at each other and became a hazard! After work I had to make the trek to Trader Joe's for groceries for the week. I really shouldn't go grocery shopping when I'm hungry because I end up buying extra food like granola bars and lemon turnovers. 

Today my supervisor was out. She had assigned me to do research, but I seem to be on a down hill trajectory when it comes to be lonely and missing my family. That means that I wasn't as productive as I could have been. Don't get me wrong! I still got work done, just not as much as I normally would have. I have been assigned to do research on Discovery's 39 missions. 5 were already researched and I got 5 more done today. Hopefully I'll get back on track tomorrow! After work I saw my friend and we almost finished the last floor of the American History building! We have two exhibits left! Our plan is to finish it tomorrow!! We then went out for burgers, fries and shakes at Shake Shack and it was pretty good. The fries were okay, but I had a strawberry shake and 'shroom burger and quite liked them.

That's all for now! Sorry it took so long to get out! With my family here and nothing to exciting happening I haven't felt motivated! However, I shall figure out a way to get back to my every two day schedule! Wish me luck!