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(note from mom…I put all the pics in a gallery for Chelsea but she still needs to get on here and change all the captions. So for now there are both.

SO, as promised, here are my pictures from the FIRST Robotics Nationals Competition! I know it’s taken forever, but I swear it’s just because I love to keep everyone in anticipation.

This was NATIONALS [thats right, Nation-wide] for the FIRST Robotics Competition, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Georgia. If you’re not sure what FIRST or robotics actually IS, I’ll explain. The Robotics team operates like a club here at LASA High school, and we compete in two main events. The first is BEST [or Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology]. BEST is a Texas based, state competition. Did I mention LASA Robotics took first as BEST? *brushes dust off shoulder* But BEST is a warm-up compared to FIRST [or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology]. The FIRST Robots are huge in size compared to BEST Bots [and the cost carries that same trend.] FIRST was created by Dean Kamen, the inventor who made the Segway, and believe me, he was like a ROCKSTAR at Nationals. Here’s a link if you want to know more, and please, if you’re at all interested, get involved! http://www.usfirst.org/

Here we are! Still at the school, waiting to take off. Note the happy faces-soon to change, after the 20 hour bus ride to Georgia.

Awww…Krista fell asleep while studying. If you want a picture of the typical LASA kid, this is it. STUDYING while on a trip…

This is me being…me.

We finally made it to Atlanta! This is some of the damage downtown Atlanta suffered, due to some tornadoes that hit about a week before nationals. Our hotel and the Georgia Dome, where the competition took place, all suffered damage.

We arrived in Atlanta the day before the ‘practice’ day, so we could settle into our hotels and unwind. Before we got to the hotel, our beloved mentor, Danny, gave us a tour of Georgia Tech, where he went to school.

This was a wall of all of the patents made at Georgia Tech. You could just SEE all of the kids wheels turning. It was really inspiring.

And FINALLY, the next day, we made it to the Georgia Dome. Today was the practice day, which means no real competition, but a chance for everyone to check everyone else out. We were all EXTREMELY tired…

There we a lot of other teams waiting with us. The doors weren’t quite open yet.

Yeah, we’re SUPER happy to be here, in the cold, at 6:00, waiting….

A few of the other teams.

Me and my best friend, Erin. No comment on the face I was keen on making that day….[This is my favorite picture of the bunch...]

Erin was VERY tired. AND happy, obviously.

Erin and Mitchel. Mitchel is our Project Manager, and he’s the next Dean Kamen and Bill Gates COMBINED.

Me and Danny, our amazing mentor. He works for National Instruments. [ignore the crazy boy in the background. his name is Abraham, and he's 'boyfriend. He doesn't matter.] [Also, ignore my face. I was in a weird mood that morning.

YAY! We got to the stands, right up front.

There were four fields to compete on, and all were named after famous engineers and scientists. We were on Curie field.

I’ll post the rest of the pictures tomorrow morning. For some reason, the other twenty I uploaded aren’t showing up. More to come soon!

-Chelsea