Our Trip to Washington D.C.

 Our Trip to Washington, D.C.

Izzy

8/19/2021

    We got back from Washington, D.C. a couple days ago. I had a great time with Koko and we did so much fun stuff! We hadn’t been to D.C. in a few years so it was good to be back. My highlights of the trip were going to the D.C. United game, staying in the tree house, going to the zoo, and the Spy Museum. I remembered some of the zoo but it was fun to go back. It had been a while since we went to the Spy Museum and it was so cool to do all of the interactive stuff for our secret mission. The museum store was also really cool and I got a few souvenirs. I was sad we didn’t get to go the Holocaust Museum because it’s supposed to be a really good museum. Even though we didn’t get to go, we packed in a lot of other fun stuff during our trip.

    The humidity was definitely something I wasn’t expecting. It was in the 90s and very humid so you got very sweaty whenever walking around. I also loved getting DoorDash for dinner. I got to try a few different restaurants while we watched movies at home. I liked it because Koko let us get whatever we wanted for three days and we’ve only done it a couple times before so it was fun. We also watched a lot of movies - Chaos Walking, Wall-e, Top Gun, A Bug’s Life, Rio, and Rio 2. 

    Something I noticed was that Koko’s neighborhood is a lot of row houses which you don’t see in San Diego. Similar to our neighborhood, pretty much everything is within walking distance. I like Koko’s area and D.C. in general. It was an awesome trip!

The International Spy Museum

 The International Spy Museum

Izzy

8/15/2021

    Today we went to the International Spy Museum. We got there a little before our assigned entry time at 9:15. We’ve been to the Spy Museum before but it was a while ago and they moved buildings. This new building looked really cool and fit the Spy theme. 

    We went inside and were sent up to the 5th floor where we picked a random badge. We had to go to a screen station where we got our cover name. We were given a bunch of random photos and had to pick the one we liked best. We did this three times and it was to get a sense of our interests to determine the mission we would get. I was a veterinarian named Gal Tate and my hometown was Tokyo. For my mission, I had to go to Amsterdam to get intel from an inside source about artificial intelligence that a tech firm created. 

    In the first museum exhibit, we saw different things about real life spies and their missions. There were videos playing of them talking about their mission (if they are still alive) and videos about the spies from the past. Seeing it was really cool because all of their missions were really crazy. One of the spies highlighted, Mata Hari, was a spy during World War 1 and her video was talking about how factual the movies made about her are.

    Throughout the exhibits, we got to do more things for our mission. One task was to contact the source and get the clue from them. I also had to remember my cover because twice I was asked questions about “myself” I had to answer. Another task was to find surveillance threats in an area to see if it would be safe or not. I had to also do a dead drop which is where one person discreetly leaves an object in the place agreed upon so that the other person can get it easily without suspicion. The information I found was left inside a dead rat. 

    There were lots of cool exhibits like one on codes and cyphers, one on finding Osama Bin Laden, and one on disguise. There was a cool thing on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden where they would analyze the parts of the compound he was in and compared it to a normal house, and then thought about what person would require the increased security of the compound. This was the decision process that ultimately led them to finding him and killing him. For the one on disguise, we got to take a picture and add things to disguise ourselves like different hair or a hat. My disguise was pretty funny:

    It was a really fun museum and I’m glad we went. I completed my mission and my top skills were “Analytical Thinker” and I got a “Keen Observation Award. They had a really cool gift shop and I even got a safe that’s disguised as a book. I woul definitely go back to the International Spy Museum!

My Trip to Washington D.C - Review - By Ethan V.

            My Trip to Washington D.C - Review

                                                                            By Ethan V.

                                                                               8-16-21

    Today we flew home from Washington D.C back to San Diego. I had a very fun trip to see Koko, so it was sad to go. Some of my highlights from the trip were going to the zoo and seeing the creepy Caecilian, becoming an amazing spy at the International Spy Museum, and staying in a treehouse for the first time ever. Other highlights for me was being able to get Popeyes (my favorite fast food restaurant) everyday and watching a ton of movies with Koko. I wish we were able to do things that we weren’t able to like going into the Holocaust museum which is supposed to be amazing, and also the African-American Museum. We tried to get into both of them but when we went they were both sold out of tickets. 

    One thing I wasn’t prepared for was the humidity there. For most of the days we were there the weather was 90’s with high humidity, which was terrible to walk around outside in. Something I loved indoors was Koko’s vacuum. She has the Dyson v15, and I normally don’t like vacuuming but it was really fun using this vacuum. I would vacuum the whole house for Koko because of how much I loved it. The reason I loved it was because it has a green light on it to show where the dust you need to vacuum is, and also it has the number of how many particles you have vacuumed. 

    Overall, this trip was a ton of fun, and I can’t wait to go back!

                   International Spy Museum 

                                                                  Ethan V.

                                                                  8-15-21

    Today was our last full day in D.C with Koko so we decided to go to the International Spy Museum. I had been to it before, but it was years ago and since then they had completely moved it and remade the museum. When you first walk into the museum, you go to a table where you pick up your spy badge. This spy badge is your identity for the time you are going through the exhibits, and you can use it to scan into computers and play games/crack codes under your spy account. For example in the first exhibit I played a game where they showed a trunk full of items, and I had to remember as much as I could in 15 seconds. After the 15 seconds I had to answer questions about the items to test my memory. This was one of the side missions. Their is also a main mission tied to your character as you go through the exhibits. Mine was about finding secrets that a tech company was hiding.

    As you went along, there was also gear used by spies and stories about what some spies did. When I went through the exhibits one thing I noticed was that there are a lot of spies in the Middle Eastern Terrorist Organizations like Al Qaeda and taking down Osama Bin Laden and East Berlin during the Cold War. 

    One of the things about the museum that I liked the most was the short documentary stops, where they would have a small theater with a short film playing. One of the short films was a lot of spies speaking about their experiences spying. 

    One of my favorite exhibits in the museum was the exhibit about how they caught Osama Bin Laden. They sort of made it into a game, where they had questions on screen and you had to pick what you thought was right. For example it was about Osama Bin Laden’s compound that he was killed at and it was asking questions like “This compound had 10 foot walls while the rest of the houses in the area had 6 foot walls. Who would most likely have these walls? A criminal, a businessman, the Al Qaeda Leader or Osama Bin Laden?” and you had to select all that could be it. 

    I really liked this museum, because I really had no knowledge of spying before this. Also at the store after the museum I got a can of Spaghetti O’s but it was actually empty and I can fit money in it. Hopefully my dad doesn’t see this and steal it!

The National Zoo

 The National Zoo

Izzy

8/14/2021

    Today we got to visit the National Zoo. We got there pretty early when it wasn’t too crowded. First we went to see the Pandas and went on the Asia trail. We saw two otters that were running around their enclosure and one was waiting at the window that the zoo keepers open, probably waiting for food. We saw a Fishing cat and some Asian Elephants before we went into the Panda building. They were all sleeping inside - two adults and a baby who is about to turn 1 year old. They were all so cute just lying there. 

    We went on the North America trail and saw a cute beaver eating veggies. We also saw some Harbor Seals and California Sea Lions (pictured below) - one of the sea lions was posing right at the fence of the enclosure which was funny. We saw an Andean Bear climb all the way up it’s tree so that it was hiding in the leaves. 

                        

    Next we saw some cool amphibians. There were lots of frogs - we saw a lot of small colorful poison frogs but we also saw an African Clawed frog swimming around. They had weird looking eyes. Later in the Reptile house we saw lots of turtles too. My favorite was the Alligator Snapping Turtle which was looking right at me. Other cool turtles we saw were the Matamata Turtle which had a funny snout and the Fly River Turtle which looked more like a sea turtle.

                      

The Matamata Turtle

The Fly River Turtle

    We got to see a Tiger and a Lion. The Tiger was more alert and it got up to walk around but the Lion was just relaxing. He was lying on his back, unbothered even with all those people staring at him. There was an outdoor enclosure for lemurs and we saw them run around and jump into the trees. There was a pond at the bottom and I counted over 30 turtles in it! I also saw one duck and one tortoise with them. In the Great Ape house we got to see some Gorillas and Orangutans. There was a baby Orangutan that was eating with one of the adults and then went to play in the bubble bath. It was a really fun trip to the zoo!

The baby Orangutan

The National Zoo By Ethan V.

                            The National Zoo

                                                                       By Ethan V.

                                                                         8-14-21

    For todays adventure with Koko we decided to go to National Zoo, which is the zoo in D.C. 

    

    We got a Lyft there at around 9:30 and when we got there the first thing we all wanted to do was see the Pandas. To see the Pandas we had to go through the Asia Trail, which has other animals form Asia in it. One of the cooler animals I saw before seeing the Pandas was the fishing cat, a cat from Asia that hunts fish. The crazy thing about it is that they fed it live fish, and it had to catch them itself. It seems like that would be normal but normally they give even the biggest predators already dead food. Also on the Asian trail we saw the Asian elephants. Elephants are my favorite animal, so it was cool to see them in action.

     Then we got to the Pandas. They we are all inside a building, which makes sense because of how hot it was outside. We saw three and they were all sleeping.   

    After seeing the Asian Trail, we went on the American trail. There we saw two Harbor Seals, a Bald Eagle, and some Sea Lions which we see back home in San Diego all the time. Also on the American Trail was the Andean Bear, which lives in the Andes mountains of South American. These bears were very cool because they actually are very skilled climbers and spend most of their time in trees. There were two there and one of them was walking on the ground but the other was actually climbing a tree in it’s exhibit. 

     Next we went into the Amazonia exhibit, which was right next to the American trail and had a lot of reptiles that live in the Amazon. We saw some Poison Dart frogs and Salamanders but the weirdest of all was the Caecilian, which I had never seen in my life. It looked like a worm or tapeworm but was in the water. It looked like an Alien, because it was so long and had no eyes like a worm. It was a very interesting animal. Another one of my favorites from the Amazonia exhibit was the African Clawed Frog, which looks like a normal frog but actually swims, and we saw it swim right in front of us. 

    Another one of the coolest things I saw at the Zoo was the reptile house. We saw a Cuban Crocodile that was staring at us, and a lot of snakes, turtles and lizards. The best, though was the Alligator Snapping Turtle and another Turtle that looked very similar to a dinosaur with a weird nose and claws on its flippers. 

Overall, today was very fun and I learned and saw a lot of new things!

Wall-e

Wall-e

Izzy

8/13/2021

    Today we watched Wall-e. I haven’t watched it recently so it was pretty new to me. I really liked the movie and thought it had a good message.

    Wall-e is set in the future where Earth is covered in trash and humans live on a giant space ship. Wall-e is a robot who has been created to compact the trash into cubes and is the only robot still working in the city. One day he finds a plant while collecting trash. When a ship comes to Earth with a robot named Eve, Wall-e is fascinated by her. She is looking for signs of life and feels hopeless until Wall-e shows her the plant he found. She shuts down until the ship comes back to take her to the Axiom, the space ship the humans live on. Wall-e gets on the ship to go back with her. She shows the Captain the plant and he hopes that they can go back to Earth. On the ship, everyone sits in hover chairs and stares at a screen all day. They were only meant to be on the ship for 5 years while the robots cleaned up Earth but it’s been 700 years. Over time, the people’s bones have grown further apart and they are all more obese than normal. When the Captain tries to make the ship go back to Earth, the autopilot tries to stop him because it doesn’t think that they can go back. The Captain is able to turn off the autopilot and gets them back to Earth where they start growing lots of plants. 

    I think this movie is trying to show a possible future for us and to show the consequences of throw away culture, where we all think we can just throw everything away without worrying of the impact on the Earth. I think they were also trying to make people aware of what could happen if we just stare at screens all the time. At one point in the movie, a woman’s screen gets turned off and she notices that there is a giant pool on the ship which she never saw before. It showed that we can miss so much when we get too sucked into whatever is on our screens and don’t appreciate what is happening around us. One last point is that they were trying to show that we can turn things around for the better. When the captain realizes he can take full control over the ship instead of relying on the autopilot robot, he actually brings them back to Earth and plants the plant which is the start of a new age for humans. 

Eve and Wall-e