Hello! My name is Payton Bush, and I am a freshman at Westover and the 4C Academy. My FIRST Robotics Team 6919, or the Commodores, qualified for the World Championships in Houston, Texas. This blog will include daily journal entries about our team's activities during the robotics trip.

Traveling from Albany, we could see the differences between our city and state once we got close to different borders. Each state had different scenes that were unique.. For instance, in Alabama, we saw farms and cows and abandoned buildings. In Mississippi, we saw the coastal town of Gulf Port and passed through a tunnel that went under the ocean. Some of us held our breath. We passed gambling signs in Mississippi because gambling is legal there. In Louisiana, we passed crawfish farms that looked like little orange balls in the swamp. We passed buildings with murals and french colonial-style structures. We passed over the Mississippi River, which was huge, along with other ports.

As we got closer to Texas, we saw several oil wells and plants. We saw more abandoned buildings, factories, nuclear plants, and power plants throughout the trip. Farm equipment shops, shopping centers, truck stops, restaurants, and hotels were other common sites. We saw multiple people fishing on the bridges and boats. We saw marshes that went over yonder. We made two pit stops in total, both in Louisiana. Tall buildings appeared from the clouds as we traveled on the overpasses, and we knew that we were in Houston. It was a long day of travel, but it seemed to go by fast on the bus with our friends. As we drove into the city, we were greeted with tents under the underpass occupied by the homeless and beggars. Houston is a big and beautiful city. However, I realized that, like every other city, it has its problems.

Once we checked into our hotel, we were divided into 4 groups, each with a chaperone - yellow, red, green, and blue. I am in the blue group. After dinner, Mr. Hatcher introduced a daily scavenger hunt game. The group that wins the competition will receive a prize at the end of the trip. Tuesday’s scavenger hunt will be at the NASA Space Center. We will have to write three intriguing facts that we learned about NASA and take 3 group pictures. I can’t wait until tomorrow!