Space Camp Day 1- Meeting an Astronaut!

When we last left off, we were headed to bed. Have you seen that Disney commercial? The one where the kid says he is too excited to sleep. Yeah, that was us. We didn't sleep much because WE WERE AT SPACE CAMP! Eventually we did sleep and we did get up in time to make the bus. Here is what happened the first part of our day. 

Space Camp SWAG

We loaded up our brand new Space Camp backpacks and put on our class of 2013 Space Camp t-shirts to start off the day. I really love the water bottle (it is hot here in Alabama!) and the clip board that stores our important Space Camp notes. 

Can you guess which room belongs to which camper?

The set up in Charger Village is nice. It is dorm and we have our own room. We share a bathroom only with each other! We have a couple of suite mates too. The dorms aren't far from camp. Only a 5 minute bus ride. I kind of felt like we were in the military when we got here because our sheets were all folded up and stacked in a pile with out standard issued towels too!

After we were dressed, we headed outside to wait for the bus. This is what happened:

We finally made it!!! Welcome to SPACE CAMP!

We ate breakfast and chatted to some fellow campers. There were some introductions and we were soon put in our teams. We were both on team Zarya. It is the name of a part of the International Space Station. It means sunrise in Russian. Anyway, we had 16 fellow teachers on our team. We represented 5 different countries: Australia, China, Turkey, Mexico and the USA. 

The highlight of the morning was getting to listen to Dr. Dan Thomas, a former shuttle astronaut, speak to our group. He talked about fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. His message spoke about perseverance. It took him many years and 4 times of applying to make his dream a reality. Instead of giving up after being rejected, he went back and  tried to add more experience and education to his resume to make him a stronger candidate. I liked his message about your dreams not always being easy, but to stick with it if you really want it. 

After our awesome speaker, we took a tour of U.S. Rocket and Space Center. We didn't get to go too in depth, but here are some quick shots from the morning.

Astronaut walk of fame!

Saturn V Rocket

We have so much more to share!!! So...

To be continued...

Until then...
Blog readers, this is Kelly & Tackett.
Over and out.