B3 Astronauts and such 08/30/12

Hey all, hope everything is going well, I know that many of you are
starting school soon so good luck! Not too much is going on today but
we get to Galway tomorrow!!! I am very very excited! Ireland is going
to be fun but busy--for those of you who don't know the Notre Dame v.
Navy game is being held in Dublin so there will be thousands of people
there to watch.

Last night we had the seminar with the Astronaut Kathy Thornton which
was so amazing that I cannot put it into words. She has been to space
on four separate occasions and has worked on the Hubble telescope and
the International Space Station (ISS). She told us stories about how we
got to where we are in terms of exploring space, told us about her
missions, and just talked about space in general and what it is like to
be up there. She also shared many pictures that she, or her colleges,
took in space: of the Hubble or ISS, of earth, of each other, etc. It
was fascinating to hear about all of her experiences and I am super
jealous! When the astronauts are up in the shuttle they work on
multiple experiments, some involving looking at how space manipulates
our bodies, but also have some time to goof off :) She also told us
that they have had multiple arguments about which way is north when they
were up there talking about their descent--lol. She also said that her
team was called the Maggots and that on one of their missions they tried
to gain weight in space (most of the time people lose weight). Before
the missions they picked out their meals and each person had a different
colored dot, so your meal bags would have a blue dot, the pilots would
have a red dot, etc. Well, the maggots would all bring different
colored dots up with them and if they found someone else had food that
they liked they would put their color dot over the one on the bag so
that they could have it! Anyway she also played us a slide-show of
pictures with some popular songs where the lyrics had been changed to
fit their missions. Some included: Beach Boys--Gotta put the Shuttle
Away (Surfing USA), My world (My Girl), and then of course What a
Wonderful World to end it. She said that they used to play these songs
before launch to "wake up" the astronauts but it got banned because the
press started to cover the songs more than the actual launch!

I will have internet tomorrow in Galway and will be able to post some
pictures for you--YAY. So be on the lookout for those. Miss you all!
~Colleen

P.S. in the entire month of September we only have 7 days of class :)
Be jealous