Wednesday, Trip to the national center

What would you only expect for Youth Slam; early mornings and late nights. Wednesday was nothing different from the normal. The difference today was we went to the national center in the afternoon. In the morning the mentors and mentees went to there pods/STEM Tracks as usual; shortly after lunch everyone met back in the quad to be put on buses that would take us into Baltimore. I was on bus 3, and the ride to the national center was fairly uneventful. Although we were late, for reasons I will explain further down, getting everyone off the buses didn’t take as long as it took getting on. One of the main reasons we were all going to the National Center for the blind was that there was an important press conference and an award ceremony happening. Since I don’t remember much of what the press conference or awards were for, I can’t explain too much of this. After these activities were over, all of the Marshalls were assigned to different groups and positions to help students and Mentors through the building. Since there was a large amount of Mentors and mentees groups had the opportunity to spend some time in the Independence Market, the Access technology center or in the exhibit hall looking at the STEM displays. From my perspective Marshalling in this large building was much easier and much more controlled; I was also happy to be in the AC after being very hot for the past 5 days. At some point right before dinner, I happened to run into Joe, so we decided to have dinner together. I had at some point also picked up sever of my Maryland young ladies, who then ate with us. Dinner was in a large banquet room served by waiters and waitress; overall it was nice but much more fancy then I would have anticipated for teenagers. While we ate our food there was entertainment in the form of a talent show, both by the mentees and other NFB members. I don’t remember what was for dinner, who sat at our table, or who performed in the talent show; I do know that Joe and I had a good time laughing and being silly. One of the highlights of the talent show was that a professional singer preformed for us; Braille the rapper provided a small selection of his music and provided all of us a CD to take home. During the talent show a popcorn popper was brought in for snacks. I didn’t know at this time that Joe could not smell, so as soon as I smelled the popcorn popping; we learned that we both loved the delicious corn snack. I can’t say for sure, but we went up to get popcorn several times during that evening. Our Youth slam group left the National center fairly late to get back on to the buses. As much as I didn’t want to leave Joe, I had to return to my Marshalling duties; but we did make plans to hang out once we got to the university campus. Even though it was late and I knew I needed the sleep, having an easier afternoon and evening helped my energy level; which meant that Joe and I were able to hang out and talk long into the night. We talked about all kinds of topics and subjects; finding out that talking with each other was very comfortable and easy.

One of Joe’s mentees went home due to sickness; which was spreading through all of the mentors and students. Even though we started the camp with several hundred attendees, those numbers were going down quickly due to sickness or how students could not handle the amount of activity we were doing every day. Several mentees from my dorm and others even had to be hospitalized through the week. But now that we made it to the half way point, the rest of the week should be less stressful and full of the unknown.