Recently in our humanities class we have been researching the atomic bombs that were created as a result of the Manhattan. A project that was put in place to create the bombs and had multiple locations throughout North America one of them being Hanford Washington. As PLP is a hands on program it was only fitting but to drive the 7 or so hours so we could truly understand what we were learning about. To here from the source and really learn so much more then if we were to simply use a textbook.

So we started the journey from Seycove to Portland. And once in Portland we went to one of the greatest shops in the world (at least in my opinion)….. Powell’s Book store. The largest book store in the world takeing up a full city block storing as many books as you can imagine. Now I’ve been to this store a few times before (once spent 5 hours in one day there) however with the PLP it was a little bit of a different experience. While we were there we had a few tasks that we had to complete. The first was to pick a book that had to do with a hobby we were interested in but was something that was kind of quirky. I chose this book called Canine Confidential by Marc Betkoff, I chose this because not only do I have two dogs but I love animals in general and may even become a vet tech when I graduate.

The next challenge we had to complete was finding a book with a weird title and then recreating it in a picture form. I was in a group with Izzy, Mimi and Kate. We found a book called billion dollar whale and well that caused for a very funny and interesting book cover recreation. Here is the book and then the video is our picture.

 

While we were in Portland for the one night we also went to see Mamma Mia 2 which was so fun because it was in an old elementary school so not like your regular old movie theatre. But since it was such a short trip we didn’t spend a lot of time in Portland. However before we left Portland in the morning we were able to visit Reed College where there is a current reactor in use that we got to see! This was so amazing to see and was truly a once in a lifetime experience.

Then there was a lot of driving but we also got to see some amazing sights such as a lookout point over the Columbia River.

And as we looked on our itineraries we learned that not far away across the river in Washington we would be visiting a museum called Maryhill art Museum which is an amazing museum containing Augustin Rodin a famous sculpture work as well as much more. At the museum we also had an activity to complete and that was to find something in the museum that made us curious and the explain it in a video. Here is my video:

Then it was on to actually Hanford and the Manhattan Project. On this trip we went on multiple tours which all happened to be very interesting. The first tour was about the Hanford area before the project and was led by two men who actually worked on the site. This was truly interesting and taught me a lot. Plus we were able to film a lot for our video on this tour. As this was a trip that was to teach us more about the Manhattan Project and allowed us to learn so much and get on site filming, if you want to see the result of this unit read this blog post.

The next day we went on another tour about the actual Manhattan Project and we even got to go to the B-Reactor which was actually used during the Manhattan project. This was an amazing experience to be able to see where people actually worked as this project affected so many peoples lives in positive and negative ways which are still to this day very controversial.

But really the highlight of this whole trip was…. Endless shrimp at Red Lobster. This was quite an event that we were preparing for weeks in class (not really but kind of). This is a PLP tradition and a lot of people try to see how many they can eat. And though two kids ate 142 shrimp I was not able to reach that “standard” but rather achieved 80 which I’m still both proud and ashamed of myself for.

Overall this was a truly amazing project and trip in general that even though it was a short one it taught me a lot and gave me experiences that are definitely once in a life time.