Hello former PRISM folks! I hope you’re all doing well!
I have been super busy trying to unpack boxes and get thing organized. It’s kind of like when someone goes off to college and they have to figure out ways to maximize space in their dorm room. Our house here is considerably larger than a dorm room but also considerably smaller than the home we lived in, in New Jersey.
Now that I have more of an idea of what we need, I’ve been trying to get out a couple times a week to run errands and pick up things. As you can imagine, since I have absolutely no clue where I’m going, this is pretty funny.
Last week, I found IKEA (in College Park, Maryland – not far from the university campus, where we hold National History Day). On the way there, I spotted a Costco on the DC-MD border, so I had to check that out. There’s even a Lowe’s in the same shopping center as Costco, so that’s convenient, although there’s a Home Depot right near us, too. And today I found the nicest TJ Maxx I’ve ever seen — a great place to find some patio chairs that I could fit into my car! We have balconies outside all the bedrooms in our new place (kind of like a cruise ship), so we can use the chairs out there if we decide not to put them on the roof deck. (I think we call these decisions First World Problems.)
I made friends with the woman in charge of the office of the church across the street from us — she was absolutely thrilled to get some of our games and things that my kids don’t want/need anymore, so that made me feel good to help them out. As I unpack boxes, I keep coming across things that I can’t figure out why we were saving them, much less why we moved them with us, and so I keep a “DONATE” box next to me when I unpack so I can put those things into the donation box immediately. It’s a really good feeling to be able to help others — if you get ambitious enough to clean your room, clean the garage, or clean out a closet, I bet you’ll find lots of stuff you don’t need anymore, and you can see what I mean. I actually feel LIGHTER having given things away.
But the biggest excitement, which you may have already seen or heard about, is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing, and they are celebrating big here! There’s a whole festival on the National Mall, with all sorts of STEM exhibits and tents from different companies (and NASA of course) involved with space travel. But for me, my favorite thing (so far) is the fact that the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum is projecting an image of the Saturn rocket that flew the Apollo astronauts into space onto the Washington Monument. You’ll have to google it to get some good photos — but here are my not-so-good ones.
The clock in the foreground is a replica of the Kennedy Center countdown — clock remember, the folks on the ground needed to keep track of how long the astronauts were in space, when they were supposed to take the first steps onto the moon, etc.
We don’t live very far from the National Mall, and so we are going to go back tonight to see what’s happening, and then tomorrow we’ll go there with my kids, to see the 17-minute movie they are screening outside all night long. If you can convince your parents to let you come down to DC for the weekend, the movie is showing Friday and Saturday at 9:30pm, 10:30pm, and 11:30pm. (Saturday is that actual day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.) Yes, we are a little bit geeky — and proud of it! 🙂
Last week I had coffee with a former student (who is now an undergrad at Georgetown University), and next week or the week after, I’m getting together with another former PRISM student at Johns Hopkins University. I love keeping in touch with all of you!
Please let me know how you’re doing, and whether you’re excited for the upcoming school year.
Much love,
Mrs. Cohen
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