NASA and San Antonio, TX

July 9th, Thursday

I've always wanted to go to visit NASA, and today, I finally did!!! We arrived to the Houston Lyndon Johnson Space Center at 9. We had a private guide, but he wasn't the usual commercial guide. Al is a Rotarian, he was the head of international youth exchange a few years ago, and he worked in NASA for all or at least most of his life. He was in the control center when they landed Apollo 11 on the Moon. He met several astronauts personally. I think it's really cool that we got to meet him!

  The first thing we did in the Space Center was get on a tram ride, that took us to two sites that were away from the main building. The first was the old control room. The one they let us in is on the third floor, and not functioning anymore. We sat in the room the relatives of astronauts and journalists sat, in the very same chairs, and we could see what the old control room looked like. It's pretty incredible, that they landed people on the moon with equipment like that. The memory space of those computers is 2 MB!! My Iphone takes bigger pictures than that! Pretty amazing. A camera showed over a TV, the status of the current, functioning control room. That one is much more modern, and it's keeping contact with the International Space Station.

  After a young man told us the history of the room, we went over to the Rocket Park, where we could see some huge soace traveling equipment. One rocket, that was inside a big building was so big, it didn't fit in my camera, only when I stood in the far corner could I get the whole thing in one picture. Al gave us a tour, explaining how the rocket was built, but due to budget cuts, it never flew. He presented the Apollo missions, and told personal stories of what happened to him as a control room worker. When the astronauts were in trouble, and they would say: "Houston, Houston, we have a problem!", they would call Al and his team. Really cool.

  We had 2 hours to spend when we got back to the main building. I went around the exhibition, looking at special clothings, history of space travel and presentation of equipment. I saw the pod of Apollo 13, and I even touched a rock from the moon!!! 

   We watched a movie on the history of NASA with some original footage of voyages. We saw the landing on the moon, astronauts jumping with different gravity circumstances, takeoffs and the Challenger catastrophe. It was sometimes sad, sometimes inspiring, but all in all, it was very interesting. The whole experience at NASA made me want to become an astronaut. I still might, who knows?

   After the Space Center, Mike Wilcox said goodbye, and we drove to San Antonio. I didn't know anything about the city. It was very close to the Mexican border. We were dropped off at the Alamo, where we formed our little groups. I was with Mikayla (Australia), Non (Japan) and Sarah (Germany). And we had 5 hours to discover San Antonio by ourselves.

  We started with the Alamo. It was a house, where a battle was fought in the civil war. We didn't stay long although it was very nice inside, because it was cold. Outside, we could feel the typical summer Texan weather: hot hot hot!! Even in Houston in the morning, we were boiling.

  After the Alamo, the others got ice cream at one of the sidestores of the Mengler, a supposedly haunted hotel right on the main square. We walked down to the famous riverwalk, and suddenly, I was in love. In the middle of San Antonio, a tiny river flows in a tiny canyon. This river is surrounded by beautiful little restaurants and shops of all sort. It was just breathtaking. I could really live here!!

  In the Riverwalk,  we picked up Luca (Germany), and Nikolaj (Denmark), and the 6 of us continued on exploring. We spent a lot of time walking around, enjoying the view. At dinnertime, we sat down at a Mexican restaurant, which was the perfect place to eat. The cuisine fit the style of the city, it was pretty and relatively cheap. We just drooled at the site of giant fishbowl margaritas with an upside-down beer in it, that were on the neighbouring tables. They seemes so cool and refreshing, but of course we couldn't get them. I shared a guacamole with Luca, and it was plenty for dinner. It was very good! 

  Afterwards, we walked around more, untill the buses picked us up at 9 pm. We just went to the hotel and slept. Everyone was super tired, after a busy day. This day was one of my favoyrites so far. So many things happened, and I've done and seen so much, I'm very happy I had the opportunity to do so.