Storyline

Friday

Woke up at about 6:45 and, after taking a shower, headed over to the dining hall for breakfast. I ate alone then headed over to the computer lab, getting there at about 8:15. Josh, Will, and Richard were already there. Sheri and Shani arrived about 15 minutes later. We set up the computers and waited for the students to arrive for the very last chatbots session.

The students arrived and they began to finish up their chatbots. Near the end, we got JAWS on speaker from the computer up at the front and we demo-d each students chatbot to the rest of the class. There were some pretty cool bots! The translator bot was working, a girl had made a fashion bot that would give advice if you asked it about what colors would go together, and another student had a psychiatrist bot that would threaten to tell your parents about whatever you were consulting it about!

After that, Richard talked about careers in computers and then we all took a group picture outside. I wish I had a copy! Hopefully they’ll email it to us sometime soon.

Shani and Richard were going to meet up with someone for lunch, so us undergrads were on our own. I waited at Annapolis Hall while the others got their bags packed up and such. Then we all went down to Potbelly where we ate another delicious sandwich. Afterwards, we went back to the dorms to grab our things then went to Annapolis Hall to check out and wait for everyone. I got there about when Richard, Josh, and Will appeared, and then it started raining really hard. Shani and Sheri came in during the rain – luckily, both of them had umbrellas. Poor Sheri, however, was carrying a bag in each hand and wearing a backpack, so she had been holding her umbrella with her neck! It was funny because later I caught her putting the laptop bag she had been carrying over her shoulder and making an “oh!” in surprise. Haha.

We then walked over to the metro station in slightly damp, muggy air. Ugh. It was a relief to get on the train. We were going to go see the Youth Slam march on Washington, but it was so rainy and hot that we decided to forgo it. Thank goodness for being able to have that option.

We soon got to the airport and checked in. Shani was going on a different flight than us (she was heading straight to her friend’s wedding in New Orleans) so we waited around while she was checking in. I took some pictures.

Afterwards, we chilled at Dunkin’ Donuts for a while and talked about the week. I think Sheri put it very well when she said, “In terms of value, this week was one of the best in my life. It might have not been the most fun times, but it was definitely the most valuable, in that I had a great experience.” That’s so true. It was a privilege to be part of a good experience for those high school students that we worked with. Plus, it was great getting to know Richard, Shani, Josh, Will, and Sheri better! I hope that we can all see more of each other in the future!

The plane ride was long. We were sitting behind or in front of each other and not side by side, so I was extremely bored the entire plane ride. I saw Josh sleeping, so I decided to try and do the same. It was really hard. I don’t think I fell asleep at all. But once I had sat down, all I could think about was how tired I was.

Getting off the plane, Josh, Sheri, Richard and I walked off together (Will was getting picked up so we didn’t need to wait for him). We all said goodbye to Josh and Sheri and I got dropped off by Richard and his wife.

That’s the end of Youth Slam for me.

It was really awesome.

I would love to do it again sometime.

And, I hope the students we worked with learned a little something!

Thursday

Again, woken up by the Youth Slam girls getting up early, and again, falling back asleep until about 9:30 am. Particularly tired because I had stayed up a bit trying to guide my sister as she tried to make her way from King’s Station to UW on her own. Michael was really helpful and picked her up from the Campus Pkwy bus stop to take her to my apartment. Thank you~

After taking a shower, I worked a bit more on that music concert chatbot. I still was having no luck with parsing the website – it just seemed like there was too much source code for the bot to look through – so I began to look for different RSS feeds. I found Upcoming by Yahoo!, which would let you subscribe to an RSS feed version of a search for a band. Exactly what I needed!

At around 12:45, I headed over to the dining hall to meet everyone for lunch. They had cupcakes and – angelic chorus – grapefruits! And these were good grapefruits, not sucky, flavorless ones. Delicious ones! After lunch we headed over to the computer lab to set things up. The students arrived at about 2:30 pm ish, and we straightaway got them working on their original chatbots. A lot of helping this time was long and one-on-one. I was working with Deaven probably 90% of the time we were running the workshop. I really need to look up how to copy and paste things through the keyboard, because I ended up having to do a lot of that for him because neither of us knew how he could do it by himself. I felt kind of bad!

But, we did get it so that the chatbot would show us the first 2 entries of the results for a search for the band the chat user typed! He had some fun with that. Some other chatbots being made were a translation bot, a joke-telling bot, and a hip-hop news bot.

A friend of Jeff’s was the interviewee today – Jennison. Really nice and smart guy! He was really able to talk about the job market and business side of life for a blind person, being an IT professional. The students asked a lot of questions.

After that was another sorting algorithm activity by Richard. They had fun with that one, too. I walked into a spare classroom and drew on the board.

The students left after the activity, at about 5:30. We all headed to the dining hall for dinner. I got turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, a slice of apple pie, and another cupcake! We had fun talking to Jennison and he gave us his business card, which had Braille printed on it, and we had fun trying to decipher that. Josh and Shani apparently knew a bit of Braille since they work on tactile graphics for their research, so they were able to say a bit about how it worked.

Afterwards, we headed over to the Fraternity Row lawn to check out the Recreation X event that would be taking place there. It was supposed to start at 8:30, so we arrived then, but there were no students to be seen. All the rides were set up though – there was a giant slip and slide, a mechanical bull, a rock climbing wall, and this really cool bungee jumping + trampoline thing that I really wanted to go on. In fact, Sheri, Josh, and I, after milling around in reluctance and shyness for a while, sought out the person running this particular event and awkwardly asked if we were allowed to participate in having fun, too. She said okay, but to wait an hour to let the kids get on first once they arrived, since it was for them. She also asked if we’d be willing to help out with traffic control if she needed. I agreed right away, but then we all walked off later – Shani and I to the tea place on Baltimore Ave, and Sheri, Will, and Josh back to their rooms. I wrote some journal entries, then we all met up at Fraternity Row to try and grab a spot in line for the bungee jumping ride.

There were huge lines for pretty much everything when we got there! Will ran off to take pictures of everything, like usual, and Sheri, Josh and I stood in line for bungee jumping, but 20 minutes later we hadn’t moved at all. Plus there were these really rowdy boys giggling over the way a water bottle cap pops off if you twist the bottle, and they were shooting their friends and such. I had almost completely forgotten what high school/middle school had been like.

The only thing that didn’t have a ridiculous amount of people around it was the giant basketball hoop. In fact, there were no people playing with it. So we had fun trying to awkwardly launch a huge, air-filled ball into a giant hoop. It was a lot of fun! We attracted some other people and played with them, too.

After some time we trekked back to the dorms. It was my first year anniversary with Michael so I called him and we talked for a long time! I think I stayed up kind of late, but I don’t remember now. I really should write these journal entries the day of rather than after the fact…

Wednesday

I woke up at about 6:15, but before I knew it I was opening my eyes again at 7:05. Crap! Again! We had a morning session at 8:30 and I was supposed to have met my group at the dining hall at 7! I jumped out of bed to take a shower and get dressed. When I came back to my room, I noticed Sheri had called me. I tried calling her back, but no answer. I just grabbed my backpack and headed straight towards the dining hall.

When I got there, I looked around for my group and didn’t see anyone, so I tried calling Sheri again. No dice. I gave my card to the cashier so they could swipe $8.50 off of it as I grabbed a sole bagel and walked out the door towards the computer lab. As I walked, Sheri gave me a call.

“Hey Joy, where are you?”

“Where are you guys? I looked in the dining hall and didn’t see anyone!”

“Oh, we were in the back dining room! I had to wander around a bit to find everyone too.”

“Oh. Well, I’m heading to the computer lab, I thought you guys would be there.”

“Yeah, we’re leaving now too, so we’ll see you there!”

I actually met up with them on the way there and we did the usual routine of getting the computers set up with the software needed, then waiting around for the students to arrive. I began to work on part of a chatbot that would help one of the students, Deaven, make his chatbot for looking up music concert times. Will pointed out to me that I could parse the information I needed using the WebpageToString method that had been implemented, which was really helpful. Thank you Will!

But regardless, I still had a lot of trouble using C# regular expressions… ugh. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it tomorrow so that student can actually work on his chatbot!

Anyway, the students began to arrive, and they got started on their work. Shani went over RSS feeds and using web services, as well as how to use the FlatFile parameters. Most of them were at least beginning to use if/else statements, which was cool to see. After some working time, the students got to interview a student that Richard knew, who is currently an undergraduate at Stanford University. Finally, Jeff presented WebAnywhere to them.

And it was during this time that I realized how much Will likes languages! He was writing what looked like Lord of the Rings script on the whiteboard, but it was actually Georgian. He doesn’t know the language but he knows some words and how to write them, I guess. It was pretty cool to see.

Anyways, we all headed back to the dorms to drop off some things, then met up at Potbelly’s for lunch. Shani and Sheri had gone there yesterday and were fervently recommending the sandwiches there. It was just as good as they said. I wish they had these on the West Coast!

After that, Will, Sheri, and I walked to the metro station to make another round of touring DC. Josh couldn’t go because he had some schoolwork, and Shani and Richard also had some schoolwork to do. Oh well. Will tried to show Sheri how to juggle a little bit as we waited for the train. He’s really good at juggling!

At the stop we got off at, we found that the escalators weren’t functional – one of the sides was being fixed, so we snapped a few pictures of it. Actually, Will and Sheri snapped a few pictures of it, so I don’t have any to post here, haha. But it was interesting seeing the insides of an escalator!

We emerged from the metro station to the street level disoriented and confused. Finally we figured out that we were behind the National Archives building, so we began to walk towards the Capitol building. There were some cool statues and a pool along the way. I walked off to a near building to use the restroom and found that it was some sort of Botanical Museum, so here are a couple pictures from that.

Anyways, we began to walk around to the back of the capitol building. On the way we saw this pretty little structure — it was apparently called the summerhouse, or something? — and we walked in to check it out. It had stone seats and a water fountain in the center. Anyways, on the East face of the Capitol we realized that there was a tour entrance. We approached, but it turned out they wouldn’t let any bottles come in with us. This was a problem because Will had a water bottle and a thing of sunscreen, so… I guess we’ll have to see the insides of the Capitol another day.

We did make it through security at the Supreme Court building. That was kind of fun to walk around. There were just a bunch of cool details that building held. There was also a baby that cried really, really loudly.

One thing that I particularly remember is the display that held Abraham Lincoln’s notes for a case he argued for. It was rather hilarious because we were trying to figure out what the “Oral Arguments” mentioned on the Supreme Court building tour pamphlets were (we can’t even read the tourist brochure… wow.) and after seeing that exhibit we realized that’s what they call what lawyers do when they’re arguing for one side of a case.  Anyway, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t that good of a lawyer, I guess.

After that we walked to the National Museum of American History, and, too our dismay, the museum was deciding to close at 5:30 instead of 7:30 like it was supposed to ugh we only had 45 minutes! We looked at the Star-Spangled Banner exhibit (which was amazing, I’m extremely sad we couldn’t take pictures – they had the flag that inspired Key’s lyrics to our national anthem on display!) and then wandered into this random exhibit that we were trying to hurry through and so didn’t really understand. Whatever. Then we wandered into the First Lady exhibit, and had fun looking at all the dresses.

Oh crap, it was 5:15.

We spent the last 15 minutes running around the top floor taking pictures of random things. Whatever. We found Kermit the Frog, Oscar, the Ruby Slippers, and the Ninja Turtle costume, so I was satisfied. Richard had mentioned something about old computers to us but we couldn’t find them before the security guards shooed us out. Bah.

We decided to walk back towards the National Gallery of Art, but stopped by the Sculpture Garden on the way because the Roy Lichenstein house was puzzling us. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was at this time that we saw a sign showing the hours of the Gallery, and we were informed that it had closed at 5. Guh.

We then decided to check out the National Archives, but the line was ridiculously long, so we just went back to the metro station. But we didn’t go back before Sheri had bought her ice cream, during which we witness some guy hand over a block of dry ice to some other guy who had pulled up in a van, and that guy just like, took the dry ice in his hands and walked away.

As we were walking back to the University from the metro station, it began to rain a lot. We met up with Richard and Josh and we all went to Ten Ren’s Tea Time for dinner. I got this Pork Stew with Rice, and it was really, really good. The dinner was really long, too. We had this good conversation about baseball, and china, and languages.

“Okay, so you guys guessed the first 4 top taught languages in colleges… what’s the 5^th?” Richard asked us.

“Uh… Chinese?” “Italian?” “Russian!”

“No, no, you guys are on the wrong page. What’s my favorite language?”

“…uhh…”

“ASL! Come on!!”

Well, I totally should have thought of that!

Afterwards, we walked back towards the dorm, but not before Richard pointed out fireflies. Both Sheri and I had never seen them before, so we all waited around for a while until both of us had seen one (what nice guys they are!). Then Sheri walked back to the dorm while I took a walk around campus while talking to Michael on the phone. Then I came back, and am now writing this journal entry.

Tuesday

As we only had an afternoon session for our workshop, I slept in! At first I set my alarm for 7 am, but then set it for 8, fell asleep, woke up, set my alarm for 9, fell asleep again, then finally got up at 9:30 and took a shower. No one else was awake yet, so I went to see if I could get internet at the bubble tea place we had all gone to on Sunday. Darn. It only opened at 10. I was a bit hungry so I tried the bagel place again, but apparently it was closed due to a power outage. Huh. I sat outside and listened to music until the tea place opened. After it did, I did a bit of email-checking and internet-surfing and ordered some food because I felt bad for using their internet for free.

Around 12pm, I wandered over to the dining hall and met up with Richard, Josh, and Will for lunch. At 1 we wandered over to the computer lab again and prepped the programs, which didn’t take too long. At 2:30 the students came in again, and this time most of them got started on the actual tutorial. Shani briefly went over some concepts like data types, concatenation, and parameters, so some of the students were doing that. It was a bit difficult to explain things to students that were pretty much completely blind and relying only on the screen reader to do things, but some of them were getting along okay. Hopefully I can explain things better from now on!

And hour and a half later, they held an interview with one of the mentor volunteers, Shani. She had gotten a bachelor’s degree in computer science at a small liberal arts college, and she was going to be a graduate student under Richard at the UW soon! So, I’ll be seeing her around I guess!

Most of the students asked questions about college in general, and a lot of questions about how she managed to get accommodations for her visual impairment as she went through college. The basic idea she stressed was to be organized and to make sure to talk to professors to get what you need ahead of time.

After that, we took the students to a separate room to do a Computer Science Unplugged activity. Richard led a sorting algorithm activity, and it seemed like the students had a lot of fun sorting themselves the way a computer would sort an array. I wish I had taken pictures!

Afterwards, we headed back to the dining hall, and had a good conversation about language. We played a sort of game where Richard would do ASL signs for animals or for food and we’d guess what they were.

After that, we all went back to the dorms again. Still tired, even though it was a shorter day. Tomorrow we have a morning session so I’ll have to get up earlier. I spent my free time uploading my DC pictures onto Facebook and posting my Youth Slam journal entries on my blog. Now that I have room on my camera, I’ll be able to take pictures of the students working in the lab, maybe. I’m also excited because we’re going to stop by DC again to see the American History museum and some other things! I’ll have to make sure to secure batteries for tomorrow.

Monday

I wake up to the sound of the blind high school students giggling and talking excitedly out in the hallway. I glance at my cellphone. 6:15am. I groan and try to go back to sleep so that I can be woken up by my alarm at 6:30. No luck. Instead, I lay in my bed half-asleep until the girls leave at about 6:45. I take a shower and walk over to Annapolis Hall to meet my group for breakfast.

We walk over to this bagel place near the school. I had never seen something like it before! You could order a breakfast sandwich that had bagel halves for the bread. Shani was saying that these sort of things were all over the East coast, but not as common on the West Coast. It was pretty good! I got an egg and bacon sandwich.

We then headed back to the school to try and find the computer lab that we’d be running our workshop in. For the week, we were going to be teaching blind students who were in our workshop basic programming techniques so they could program a simple Windows Live Messenger chatbot.

It took us a full 20 minutes to find the place, and we were all trying to suppress our annoyance levels, because we only had from 8am to 10am to make sure all the computers were working – for some reason, we hadn’t been allowed to come in the day before or any earlier than 8am today to set up the computers.

Well, Murphy’s Law kicked in and everything that went wrong did so. Long story short, we had a really helpful resident IT guy give us a temporary admin account so that we could install the version of the programs we needed, and all was pretty much good from then on!

The students started coming in. It took a long time for everyone to find seats. After everyone was settled, Richard introduced himself and we and the students introduced ourselves in turn. I mentioned that I liked video games and got some applause, to my surprise. Yes!! Some video game nerds in the room!

After that Richard went over what the students would be doing in the workshop over the week. Then, we began the hard work of getting everyone signed up on Windows Live so that they could talk to their chatbots. This actually took the 2 hours that we had with them to do. By the end, however, many of the students had exchanged usernames with each other and were chatting happily.

Lunch was from 12pm to 2pm. The line moved along a lot more smoothly this time, but I was rather nervous as it looked like freshmen orientation kids were getting lunch at the same time, so it was really crowded and I imagine kind of stressful for the blind students. I grabbed a sandwich and walked over to the drinks area, and, after accidentally dropping my empty cup into his food tray, met a really nice blind guy. I helped him find some Mountain Dew and we talked for a little bit. He asked me how sighted I was and I replied that I was fully slighted.

Anyways, after we had all eaten lunch, we walked back to the computer lab for the second half of the session, which was from 2:30 to 5:30. People were still figuring out registering chat accounts for themselves and for their bots. A few people got started with actually messing around with the HelloWorldBot. For those 3 hours, our team was running around helping students. I was really exhausted afterwards. We kind of sat around after the workshop was done, then headed off back to the dorms to drop off our things before we went to dinner.

I went to wash my face while I was in my room and, being really stupid, tried to dry my face while my towel and my glasses were in the same hand. Of course, they broke. The screw that was holding my left lens in popped out. I called Sheri so she and Shani wouldn’t wait for me, and I spent about 30 minutes trying to screw the glasses in with my fingernails, then tried the front desk to see if they had any screwdrivers. They did not, so I headed to the CVS/Pharmacy store and asked one of the cashiers if they had glasses screwdrivers. He said, yes, aisle 6, on your left, so I wandered into aisle 6, looked around, and realized I wouldn’t be able to identify anything without looking at them from half a foot away. He sort of shouted out at me and followed me so he could direct me to where the screwdriver was. How embarrassing.

After I fixed my glasses, I headed over to where dinner was being held, which was not the usual dining hall but a gymnasium area called the Armory. Pretty cool name for a gym if you ask me. As I walked inside, high-school-esque dance music began to play ridiculously loudly. Students were already forming a mosh pit in the center. I stood in line, got myself a hamburger, and found my group and at my dinner, all the while watching the students dance in the center. They looked like there were having a lot of fun.

I also took a hilarious picture. But what that was a picture of is a secret

As we were walking back, it started to sprinkle, then to torrent. We all ran back to our dorm rooms and, after I dried off, I laid in bed listening to the thunder. I played a little bit of FF6 on my DS, called Danny, and Michael.

It’s pretty late now. I suppose I should go to bed.