Today Jesse, Michael, and Ger took the class to the Air and Space Museum and the Newseum. We went to the Air and Space Museum today to learn more about America’s history on space and flight. It is important to learn about how airplanes fly or how gravity works for future careers. At the Air and Space museum we went the Imax film Fighter Pilot: Red Flag. It was on life like situations to prepare fighter pilots for the real deal. We also did the flight simulators that took us upside down and all around. When you get inside the ride you sit in either the pilot or the gunner’s seat. The gunner shoots the planes and the pilot controls where you are going. The object of the game is to shoot down all the planes you can. Michael and Simone decided to do it 4 times in a row without getting out of the small box. Eli and Wyatt shot down 10 enemy planes.

  After the Air and Space Museum we went to the National Art Museum for lunch. The cafeteria there has awesome food, but unfortunately it was sort of expensive. Ger ate tons of food and almost exploded.

 The Newseum was so cool! It had many exhibits that were unbelievable. When you first get to the museum you go into a 4-D movie. It had Nelly Blye who was the first woman investigative journalist. After that we went through all the amazing exhibits. Some of the exhibits contained news articles from all over the world, starting from when the first newspaper was published. We also did our own news cast videos. They also had a 9-11 memorial film on everything that happened at the time. They had amazing footage in the movie. The newseum is definitely a must see.

When we got back from our exciting day we begged Andy and Mr. T to take us to the ESPNzone for dinner. Downstairs in the restaurant was an awesome arcade zone that we spent most of our time while we waited for our dinner.  It also had great food.  What a great day.             

 Today Garrett, Simone, Wyatt, and Kalen planned our activities. First we went to The National Museum of Natural History. Kalen’s and Simone's favorite part of the museum was the butterfly pavilion. They enjoyed it when the butterflies landed on them. One landed on Kalen’s hat and wouldn’t come off for two minutes. Wyatt’s favorite part was the live insects. His favorite insect was a mix between a bee and a scorpion.

            After the museum we had lunch at the Old Post Office. There were many types of food including sushi!!! When we got there, there were lots of venders who tried to bribe and sell us stuff.  We also got to take pictures with Obama edited into them. 

            Then we went to the Holocaust Museum and it was very moving. The exhibit was hard to handle sometimes but it was very interesting. For Simone Daniel’s Story, which was about one kid’s experience in the Holocaust, helped explain everything to her.

            We ended the day with a fun game of football in the National Mall. It was clear Andy knew more about football than Mr. T.

Today we went to the zoo.  Keegan’s favorite part of the zoo was the reptile discovery building. Eli really enjoyed the Amazonian at the bottom of the zoo.  He even caught a really big fish! Will thought the otters were really cute and cool and sometimes they followed you around.

When we went in to the zoo, Eli thought that it was bad that humans took away the animals’ habitat, but then, after seeing a few exhibits, he realized humans had recreated a habitat for the animals, but not close to being as good as it once was. Will likes and dislikes zoos because he hates seeing big animals in small cages, but he thinks that they are good for educational purposes.

The spy museum was interesting hands on and fun. Kyra thought it might be fun to be a spy but doesn’t want to be caught. All the kids failed on the being silent in the air vents. Also, everyone had a different identity. Eli’s identity was Billy Henderson, 14 years old, and a student born in Spain. The highlight of Keegan’s day was seeing a remodel of a car they used in James Bond.  Eli loved the air vents but didn’t think they were practical. Kyra loved the cryptic messages that the Germans used during the war. It was really fun and amazing. 

The 9/11 memorial was emotionally amazing. Seeing the benches all lined up in those symmetrical rows facing foreword if they were girls and backwards if they were boys made it look beautiful. All the names were on a bronze gold plaque.  We were guessing most were from the plane and only a few were actually from the Pentagon. Keegan was shocked because there were more people than he expected. We loved this day in D.C.