Come as Yourself in Middle School Party

Jeff and I had a party on Saturday night. The theme was "come as yourself in middle school" which we thought would be pretty fun, since lots of us were even more awkward and geeky then than we are now. And even if you were cool in Middle School, it was still the 90's, so any clothing choice you made would still be pretty funny. Jeff and I wore matching MathCounts T-shirts, which I thought was pretty reminiscent of something I would have done in middle school. Paired with my glitter eye-shadow, I was really in the spirit. We even bought tater tots and mini corn dogs for party snacks. Lots of Jeff's friends from his Econ program came (though mostly not in costume, since they mostly had school uniforms in middle school). That was really nice because I hadn't gotten a chance to talk with all of them before. Here are some pictures:

Kindergarten!

My friend Stephanie's mother is a teacher in a kindergarten class, and right now they're learning about space. On Friday, Stephanie and I went to class to help with a project. They had just learned about Mars rovers and how they have to take fragile equipment and land safely on the planet. Their project was to build something to hold an egg and then drop it about 20 feet without the egg breaking. They had styrofoam, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, empty water bottles and duct tape. In my group, which had 5 kids, each of them had an idea they were really excited about or an item they wanted to use, so ours ended up being all of those things taped together, with the egg wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in the middle. One little girl told me more than once that "this is just a test, so it's ok if our egg breaks... and even if it was a contest, its still ok." One little boy insisted that the big piece of styrofoam he wanted to use (clearly the heaviest item we were using) should be the parachute. We had a fun time building, and then we went and dropped the contraptions we'd built with the egg inside. Nobody's egg broke, which was pretty excited - I was a little nervous.

After the project, we went back to the classroom and they told us some of the facts they had learned. These 5-year-olds knew the name of the first person in space (Yuri Gagarin), the name of the first American in space (Alan Shepard if you count sub-orbital, John Glenn otherwise), the names of all three Apollo 11 crew members (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins). They even knew some of Newtons Laws ("If you put something somewhere, it stays where it is unless acted on by a force.") It was pretty cute.

Then Stephanie and I told some space stories. Stephanie explained what it was like being at the shuttle launch in Florida last month, and I told a bit about the design of the International Space Station and how there is no up and down in space, so you can walk into a room and see someone else standing on the ceiling or the wall. They seemed to enjoy that.

Overall, very fun day - it's so fun to work with kids and see how excited they get about space!

Cherry Blossoms

There are a lot of cherry blossom trees in DC, and in Spring they all blossom and are very pretty. I haven't made it down to the river, where they're supposed to be the nicest, but on my walk from work (at NASA) to class (at GWU) saw a few and took some pictures.

Buenas Dias!

Hola! I keep meaning to write, but I've been really busy - this is the last month of classes, and since all of my classes have a major final paper, I have to really focus.

Also, now that I know I'm going to live in Spain for the summer, I've been trying to learn Spanish. I wanted to learn Spanish anyway, but this gives me a great reason to finally start making an effort. I found a website that has some really good lessons available for free online. The website is just studyspanish.com - pretty straightforward. They have written lessons, quizzes, and vocal lessons. Each day I try to one or two lessons.

They also have some podcasts, so I downloaded a few of those, as well as some other free "learn Spanish" podcasts, and I've been listening to them while I walk to school or ride the metro. They're all a bit different, but I've found that corny-ness is a common theme.

Actually, I don't have an iPod, so the first day I listed, I used Jeff's iPod. Then I thought maybe I should buy an Ipod. So I looked into the cheapest option. An iPod shuffle would be out of the question, since I wouldn't be able to really control the order in which I listened to the podcasts, which is pretty annoying if you're trying to follow a lesson plan. Next up was the 4 Gig iPod nano, which is pretty cool, and sells for about $150. However, I don't listen to music that often (which is probably why I didn't own one already), so I'd only be using it for podcasts. Also, I had only been doing that for one day, so what if I got sick of them after a week and then didn't use my new iPod? Another issue is that if I'm going to listen to something, I like to listen to radio - particularly NPR (yep, I'm pretty nerdy), and iPods don't have the radio. And then I remembered that a few years ago my parents had bought me an mp3 player for Christmas. It wasn't an iPod, but it did play the radio. I had lost all the cords, but it runs on on AA battery, and the memory is an external SD card (like I use for my camera). I pulled out the old electronics box, fished the mp3 player out of the bottom, grabbed my extra SD card from my camera case, and voila - I suddenly had exactly what I wanted - and I'd spend $0. Life works out pretty well sometimes.

Anyway, now I look like a crazy person, walking down the street, speaking in Spanish, saying things like "Where is the gift shop?" and "There is my ticket and passport." or repeating slowly "Where is the bathroom?" But I'm having fun - and with any luck, by the time I go to Spain, I'll have at least a basic ability to speak Spanish.

Nuestros Planes del Verano (Our Summer Plans)

Jeff and I have just finalized our summer plans, so I thought I'd send an email and let people know what we're up to now and what we're planning for this summer. Let us know if we're visiting a place where you'll be so we can get together!

It's been a busy spring for us - we're still living in Washington, DC and attending graduate school. In addition, we've been traveling quite a bit. There are lots of pictures and stories there about each of the places we've gone on earlier posts in my blog. Most recently, we traveled to Ecuador for a 10-day visit. We saw cities, jungle, and mountains, and had a great time. Now we're back to studying hard to prepare for the end of the semester.

This summer is going to be busy: In May, we're going to Boston for a friend's wedding, and then I'm going to be visiting California and Colorado as part of a two-week space policy seminar. Following the seminar, in June, we're going to spend three weeks in Minnesota. We'll take a weekend break while we're there to go to San Fransisco and see Jeff's brother's college graduation. Then we're flying back to New York for Jeff's Grandpa's 90th birthday dinner, before heading back to DC.

At the end of June, we'll fly to Barcelona, where I'll be studying at the International Space University (ISU) for the summer. ISU will last throughout July and August, so I'll be living in Spain that whole time. Jeff will stay throughout July, but head back in August to take his qualifying exams for his PhD program.

Here's the abbreviated version:

May 9-14: Boston, MA: Visiting friends and going to a wedding
May 18-21: Los Angeles, CA: (Mariel) Attending Space Policy Seminar - (Jeff in DC)
May 21-26: Colorado Springs, CO: (Mariel) Attending Space Policy Seminar - (Jeff in DC)
May 26-30: Washington, DC: (Mariel) Attending Space Policy Seminar - (Jeff in DC)
May 30-June 20: Minnesota
June 13-16: San Fransisco, CA: Attending Dave's graduation
June 20-23: New York City: Jeff's Grandpa's 90th Bday
June 23-24: Washington DC (or Baltimore)
June 24: Fly to Barcelona, Spain
July 30th: Jeff returns to DC
August 30th: Mariel returns to DC
September 2nd: Classes begin in DC

Religion in Outer Space

Today in my Space Law class, we had a guest speaker who talked briefly about the issues of practicing religion in outer space, which I thought was really interesting. The speaker was Rabbi Steven Glazer, and in about 30 minutes, he gave an overview of Jewish Law and its application to outer space.

Though how to follow religious law in outer space may not seem like a pressing issue, it got a bit of a boost in 2002 when the first Israeli astronaut went to outer space. Recently a Malaysian astronaut, who is Muslim, also raised such questions.

Rabbi Glazer began by explaining that Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe in the divinity of the Jewish texts, which provide Jewish law. To allow the law to be understood throughout time, there are scholars who provide responses to specific questions, allowing interpretations of the law that apply to changing situations and technology. The responses are provided in the form of legal position papers, so they are pretty rigorous. Also, they are based on precedent, so you have to understand the answers given by previous scholars throughout history and base arguments on that. He said that there are three basic issues to address in the case of space travel: dietary restrictions, sabbath and daily prayer requirements, and holiday observances.

The issue of dietary restrictions is the easiest to deal with, because astronauts get pre-packaged food. It is not difficult for the food to be chosen to follow Jewish law for a particular astronaut.

The question of prayer and sabbath are more difficult. Jews are required to pray three times a day, and are also required to refrain from doing any type of work on the Sabbath. However, a day on Earth is defined as the amount of time it takes the Earth to make one rotation on its access. If you are in space, what is a day? The shuttle and station revolve around the Earth every 90 minutes, so some say that is a day when on the shuttle or station, your day lasts 90 minutes. Given this situation, there have been about 5 basic answers by different scholars about what and astronaut should do, which are:
1) Don't go. You can't observe properly, so you should not put yourself in that situation at all.
2) Go, but don't observe. The rules about prayer and sabbath were meant for this planet, so if you're not on the planet, you don't need to observe them.
3) Go, but just observe what you can. Essentially, do you're best.
4) Go, and observe strictly, meaning pray three times every 90 minutes, and every 7th 90 minute segment, you should observe the Sabbath, and rest. This would essentially require you to pray and rest the entire time you're in space.
5) Go by Houston time. Since Astronauts set their watches by Houston time and do other work on Houston time, they can observe prayers and the Sabbath based on this clock. (This seems to be the most widely accepted option, though not doing work on the sabbath still provides an issue for astronauts, who don't really get a "day off" while in space. A space tourist, however, may be able to adhere to this.)

I mentioned earlier that the responses have to be based on precedent. In this case, an example of precedent was a question long ago, before modern technology, by someone visiting an area near the pole, like Norway. Since in the summer the sun shines constantly, and there is no night, the person wanted to know how they can observe the laws of praying three times a day, etc. The answers given were similar to the ones above. Another example is a question someone asked about being lost. How can you observe the rules if you're lost and have no way to know when it's the Sabbath? The answer there was, if you have a watch or a way to keep time, just rest every seven days, even if you don't know that is it the correct day of the week.

Another issue with the Sabbath is that one of the restrictions is on travel - you're not supposed to travel on the Sabbath. If you're on the shuttle or space station orbiting in the Earth, stopping is not an option, so what can you do? It turns out there is a good precedent for this as well. Long ago scholars decided that if you are on a sea journey that goes over the Sabbath, it is ok, as long as you do not embark or dis-embark on the Sabbath. So as long as you're not taking off or landing the shuttle on the Sabbath, you're ok.

The last issue is holiday observances. One example of an issue is lighting the menorah at Hanukkah. Clearly, you can't light candles in the shuttle or station due to safety concerns. A possible solution may be an electric menorah. Similarly, for Rosh-Hashanah, you are supposed to blow a ram's horn, however, in an enclosed space like the shuttle or station, you could damage people's eardrums. In these cases, changes to the traditions can be justified based on the Jewish law requiring that you do not cause harm to yourself or others. Another holiday requires building a hut with branches and fruit, another thing that will be difficult or impossible in space.

For Muslims, a common example of a difficulty is how to pray towards Mecca. Mecca is essentially below you, on Earth, but also, since you are moving very quickly as you orbit the Earth, the angle changes as you are praying.

There are lots of pressing technical and organizational issues with space travel, but I thought this was a really interesting thing to think about.

Happy Easter!

Not too much going on today. Jeff and I have been relaxing at home - he's studying for a midterm tomorrow, and I'm catching up on email and watching Battlestar Galactica (Season 4 starts Friday!) Time to get back in the swing of work and school!