Around DC

National Book Festival
This was held at the huge convention center by my apartment. There were tons of authors. I tried to  see David McCullough, but the line was gigantic and I didn't get in. Instead I saw David Baldacci, who was really interesting. I saw a children's author by chance. She was deaf and interesting to listen to. She didn't know sign language because she grew up in a time when they taught lip reading. Supposedly Buzz Aldrin was there, but I missed him. Finally, a friend and I went to a poetry slam. There were 8 highschoolers and they were incredible!! Slam poetry is great, but they were brilliant.

Busboys and Poets Poetry Slam
As a whole team, we went to a nice restaurant for a poetry slam. This one was no where near as good as the one at the Book Fest, but it was still entertaining.

H Street Festival
This was a big block party/street festival. It was 10 blocks of food, music, performances, business, samples, and crowds. I bought some mambo sauce - unique to DC and super delicious. It's like runny, sweet, and spicy ketchup. I also had Korean bbq tacos for lunch from a food truck. It was great! We were there for a few hours and, according to my new phone, we walked about 8 miles.

September LDC
This is City Year's monthly Learning and Development Conference. The entire corps reunites for 2 days. We began with a unity rally right in the middle of the Navy War Memorial. It was great because a lot of people just got into the PT group (an extracurricular like Service Reserves), so it was fun to see them lead. At the LDC we learned more teaching techniques, City Year incentives, exchanged ideas/experiences/frustrations with similar grade levels, and met with people with the same coordinator roles. One session was about how to call up businesses to in-kind food and other services to events. They had one corps member come up to the front and make a phone call on the spot to a cupcake place. The company was going to throw them out anyways, so the volunteer would request that they be donated for a Service Reserves Training the next day. It was Anthony from my team, and he successfully arranged to pick up about 40 cupcakes! It was awesome.

Back to School night
I worked with our Positive School Climate Coordinator (Hannah) to bring a City Year presence to this event. We had a table with handouts, some tables with our after school clubs, and set up a rotation schedule for the corps members. Not too many parents came. There was a brief lecture and there only looked like there were 10-15 parents there.

Service Reserves
Service Reserves had training one Saturday. We went to Ketcham elementary to learn and use power tools, how to measure wood, set up tarps, set up paint areas, hammer, and use electric drills. It was pretty fun. We also ate the cupcakes that Anthony had in-kinded.


Hiking at Billy Goat Trail
On my birthday, I went hiking with Danny and a couple of his friends. It was along the Potomac and about 30min away from the city. We walked through the forest and passed about 3-4 locks. It didn't look like they were in use.