Lunch at the Science Center

When i say lunch back home, it means just a meal, but here when I say lunch or hear the word lunch break, in my mind I hear go on, it's a new opportunity to learn something new. In Iraq, people don't tend to talk while they are eating, but here, the most beneficial talk happens during lunch time, because people will talk freely. They always talk about their experiences, and how they overcome any obstacles they have in life, and those are the kind of stories that I want to hear and benefit from.

Marti and Christine invited Sarbast and I to lunch, where we spoke about Iraqi technology, politics, and business. One of the things we talked about is the difficulty we face as an intern, to transfer whatever we find here in theU.S. back to Iraq. Here in the U.S., we find many ideas, and they are really good, and at the same time, they're not applicable in Iraq because we don't have the infrastructure nor the mindset to make these projects work.

Marti was very nice to share with me this story about her mother. She said when she was in Mexico, she came from a poor family, and whenever she wanted a dress, her mother made something from the small bits of clothes she gathered, and made a good dres for her. She continued, that our role as an intern, should we want to apply these idea in Iraq, is to find a way. It's all about creativity, and she emphasizes this. "Don't wait. Do it with what you have and you'll find a way."

After we finished the meal, the Science Center team brought us some gifts and a free ticket to access the Science Center again. They are such nice people, they gave us their card and invited us to come again and to contact them whenever we want to come.

After that, I thought that I have seen everything, but I was wrong. There is more interesting stuff there than I could imagine. We saw little kids playing with toys, they built an arch (a very famous building in St. Louis)
to cross to the other building, and beneath it, the street. They have a device that you can point to a car and you see on the screen how fast the driver is driving.

The other building for the Science Center dealt with space. We met a very kind gentleman, but i forget his name, who helped us a lot and gave us lots of information about the center and guided us in the tour.

We saw a little bit of history of the space ships; we calculated how much money we would need to pay in order to go to space on this nice device that calculates your weight and gives you the amount of money you have to pay.

At this time I was thinking people don't need to participate in the "Biggest Loser" show in order to lose weight, they just have to come to St. Louis Science Center and see how much difference one kilo can make. In cost, the device calculated that I have to pay $1,645,000 in order to go to the space.

Afterwards we moved to another place, which is really unique to the whole world. It contains a device that has the ability to show you the stars and moon and other planets from any night. Patrick put it back to the night when we were born to see what it looked like, and this is it.

             The night I was born

Then we went to see and touch the rock from space. They told me that it is the only place I can do so. After that we saw a live broadcast to the space station and one of them is from St. Louis. It was a great day in which I saw things that I never dreamed to see before. I want to thank Patrick, Debra, and all the people in Science center for the wonderful tour.