Day 3

Josh got food poisioning so he stayed in the hotel all day. So my parents and I walked the whole National Mall and saw some cool stuff.

Above are the statues at the Korean War Memorial.

Mom and I getting along at the Lincoln Memorial.

Dad at the WWII Memorial

We toured the Supreme Court building. This was the nicest place we went to the whole trip.

Washington Monument. A guy offered us tickets to go inside and to the top but we passed.

Day 2

Day 2. This was one of my favorite tattoos that we saw. This woman had four visible tattoos of Disney characters.

Our first stop was the Pentagon. There were several signs up letting us know there was not photography allowed. So we took some pictures.

Next stop was Arlington National Cemetary. It was a little weird to pay for tour tickets and ride a bus around but I'm glad we did because this place is big. Interesting fact we learned here, only two U.S. Presidents have been buried at Arlington, Taft and Kennedy.

Inside Arlington they do not allow bicycles. They do allow cars, trucks, buses, horse drawn carriages, and limos. This policy is probably making us all safer in some way I haven't figured out yet.

The Changing Of The Guard was one of the most interesting things we saw this whole trip. Here is a link to some information about it if you are unfamiliar with this ceremony.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/ceremonies/sentinelsotu.html

Washington DC Day 1

This year my immediate family decided to travel to Washington, DC for our family vacation. My mom was already into on business. My dad, Josh, and I arrived on Wednesday afternoon. The first day we didn't do much. Due to the time change we were traveling from 6:00 am in Denver until 4:00 pm when we arrived in town.

I was very impressed by the Capitol building and how conviently located our hotel was, nice work mom.

In between Josh reminding me how he "is a boss", and mom reminding all of us that she had been here before and surely knew the way, we managed to see a couple sites and do some fun stuff.

More follow with days 2,3,and 4

STL to Chi-Town

My first week of TFA training came to an end on Friday in St. Louis.  I spent the week at Washington University and it felt a little like my freshman year of college as I stayed in a dorm the whole time.  It was quite a week as I learned a significant amount about the problems that currently face St. Louis such as poverty, educational inequities, and segregation.  I spent most of the week talking with others about ways we might overcome the challenges that go along with these issues.  Along with that, I met a lot of awesome people with whom I will be teaching starting this August.  I think every major region of the U.S. is represented among the 104 corps members with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii.  There were a lot of activities that also went on so we could get to know each other outside of the discussion sessions which included: a night at St. Louis's famous pub McGurk's, a night eating at a pavilion in Forest Park (followed up by some fantastic karaoke), and we also got a tour of Anheuser-Busch (or as I like to call it, Mordor) which was followed up with some tastings of what they call beer.  I was sure to rock my New Belgium shirt on the tour though ;-).  At the end of the week I was filled with tons of new information but was extremely exhausted.  I was so tired in fact that, for the first time in my life, I actually fell asleep while playing Xbox at Amanda and Brad's house Friday afternoon.

My cousin Josh, his wife Mariabelen, and their daughter Lucia were nice enough to drop me off and pick me up from my training and then even drop me off to catch my bus to Chicago on Saturday.  It was my first time ever using a bus as a means of long-distance travel.  I rode on a double-decker bus, so naturally I sat on the top part of the bus.  It was a little cramped, but I think every one should do it at least once in their life.  Plus, it is super cheap (you can get tickets for $1 if you buy them early enough).

I have never in my life felt like a small town kind of kid until I stepped off the bus in the middle of downtown Chicago.  This is my first time being in Chi-Town (well except for one time when I was in O'Hare airport, but I don't think that counts) and I am already having a blast.  When I got in on Saturday I walked just five blocks to where my friend from high school, Mary Hayes, works.  She was kind enough store my bags at her place of work while I explored the city and waited for her to get off of work.  I more or less walked this path while I was in Chicago.  I bought a sandwich and sat under a tree in the park for lunch.  I also sat on the pier for a little while and just looked at all of the boats out on the lake.  I was passed by a segway tour which literally made me "lol."  After my adventure I headed back to my friend Mary worked and rode the bus to her apartment.  She and her roomies were gracious enough to let me crash on their couch for the evening.

Sunday I arrived at the Illinois Institute of Technology where I will spend the next five weeks teaching summer school.  I will be teaching U.S. and World History at Julian High School which is on the South side of Chicago.  Today was our first day at the school and I was overloaded with information.  I will spend this whole week learning how to teach...again.  I am very excited to learn more and become a better teacher so it should be fun.

I also just found out that I officially have job!  I will be teaching at the Construction Career Center, or "Triple C."  It is a charter school just a few miles south of downtown St. Louis and about 2 miles from my and Megan's apartment.  The school focuses on providing students with a solid understanding of concepts that would help them succeed in college in the fields engineering, construction, management, and other construction related areas of study.  Instead of a gym they have a giant workshop that is super cool.  I am excited to tie the schools focus on engineering and construction into teaching about history, geography, or whatever social science I end up teaching.

I am in the works of getting a camera so hopefully soon I can put some actual pictures up of my adventures.  Sadly though, I am very far away from Megan and Gizmo, but we Skype about every night and it always brightens my day to see their cute faces!

Luke

The New Place

The first part of our big move took place over the past week.  Megan, her mom, and I drove the 900 or so miles from Denver to St. Louis.  Aside from the fact that my car had no A/C and I melted like a popsicle on the 4th of July, the drive wasn't too bad.  We did encounter the merging of the great 17- and 13-year Cicada awakenings at our stop in Columbia, MO.  Megan was less than enthused.  Apparently Cicada's also make great ice cream.  They were everywhere and the sound made me think we were encountering the eighth plague in Egypt (the one with all the locusts).

We finally arrived at my sister, Amanda, and brother-in-law, Brad's house in Southern Illinois right outside of St. Louis.  They were gracious enough to put us up in their awesome house for the weekend and let us store all the stuff we brought from the 303 in their basement for the summer.  We had three days to find our apartment for the coming year.  I honestly don't know what we would have done without all of the help from my sister Amanda.  St. Louis is very confusing when you first get there and she offered to be our guide and drive us around on our great apartment search.  The city has all these different living communities (Soulard, Central West End, and South City to name a few) that we had to navigate in order to find our prospective apartment and without Amanda I don't think we would have been able to get around to all of them to see what they had to offer.  Over the course of Thursday and Friday we made countless phone calls to set up our viewing of fifteen different apartments across all the living communities.  Some were old and some were new.  Quite a few were retro and cool.  Most looked safe, but some, well....not so much.

We were starting to feel quite discouraged as we had visited 14 out of our 15 apartments and had not found one place that fit us.  Then as soon as we walked into #15, Megan and I looked at each other and nodded in agreement.  We filled out the application within the half hour and are just waiting for our official confirmation.   We picked a 730 sq. ft. garden level space just on the outskirts of downtown STL.  The building is about 100 years old and used to be a stove factory.  Plus it has a good-sized back patio just for Gizmo.

Speaking of Gizmo... While we were in STL, she hung out with Aunt Sara and my parents.  We missed her on the trip, but thankfully Sara and my parents sent us lots of updates.

Megan and her mom head back to Denver tomorrow.  I spend the week in St. Louis and then will head to Chicago for five weeks, all for my Teach for America training.

Luke