Washington DC

I had the opportunity to travel to Washington DC last weekend to attend the GK-12 conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation. GK-12 is a program that pairs graduate students in science fields with teachers in K-12 classrooms. The graduate students bring their research to students and the teachers benefit from having a person to help them teach, plan, and do whatever the teacher needs. I am a teacher who is sharing a graduate student from the University of Northern Colorado with 3 others at my middle school. We have some great things planned and the other benefit is that there is funding for equipment through this program. Considering my classroom budget is around 100$ per year this is an amazing opportunity!

I had been to DC once before in high school, but I don't think I appreciated the experience as much as I should have. This time I was rooming with a fellow teacher and friend in my school district and we both had the same goal to see as much of DC as was possible in the little time we had. When we weren't in sessions or presentations, we were exploring the capitol. And boy did we explore! Our hotel was in walking distance to the main monuments so we walked A LOT over three days.






If you don't know my political stance (where have you been for the last two years?), you do now . A friend got me a Bush Voodoo doll for Christmas so I made sure to place a curse as close to the residence as possible.

One opportunity we took advantage of was to see behind the scenes of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It was really neat to see how much effort goes into new exhibits. I was in heaven, especially since one of my favorite activities in Denver is to go to the museum.





Did you know that when you see a statue of a person on a horse that the way the horse is standing tells you if the person riding was injured or died in battle? Laura, the friend I explored DC with, said that if a person is on a horse that has both front legs down then the person did not die in battle. If one leg is up then the person was injured. If the horse is rearing, then the person died in battle. I had never hear that!






When it was time to go we were sad. We got to the airport and our flight had been delayed a little over an hour. We looked at each other and decided to head out on the Metro to see Arlington National Cemetery. We checked our luggage then hit the Metro. Others in our group thought we were crazy, but we had a blast and made our flight in plenty of time. I wish I had more pictures but by that time my camera battery had died. That was fitting because I didn't have any energy left to take more pictures anyway.

The energy in the capital was amazing with the upcoming elections. I'm looking forward to going back, minus the need of a Voodoo doll...