28th October, 2011.
Houston.

We woke up pretty early today. It was freezing cold outside, so we were served breakfast in one of the rooms. Cereals, juices, etc. Almost the same routine. We left early for the Space Center and reached there a little earlier than we expected. So we had a little bit of freetime. We bought some stuff from the shop that sold souvenirs of NASA. We also spent quite a lot of time in the gaming zone, playing a simulated game of aviation. The effects were amazing and objectives of the game were pretty hard.

Today was our scheduled meeting with an astronaut where we had lunch with him. Finally, we were called and told to go upstairs into a room where we were served lunch. As we began eating, the astronaut arrived. His name is Brian Duffy. He has four space flights to his credit, and after a bit of research, I found out that he spent 40 days, 17 hours, 34 minutes and 59 seconds in space. The session was really good. He shared his experience with us. All about living in space and the feelings and emotions associated with it. He talked to us about life, about setting our goals and working hard to reach them. He talked to us about hard work and determination, leadership and about doing what one wanted. It was really a memorable experience. The teachers had told me to speak a few lines, thanking the astronaut, which I did at the end of the meeting. He smiled, warmly shook my hands while saying a few things, thanking me and went out of the room with an escort. I won’t forget this.

We were taken to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab after that. We got to know our NASA instructor, Lauren, a little more. She showed us around the lab and explained the different components of the lab. She explained that this lab gave the astronauts a similar environment that would be there in space due to the neutral buoyancy experienced underwater. It is the largest indoor pool in the world, and it has exact modules of the parts of the International Space Station ( ISS ). This is put up so that the astronauts can practice in this simulated environment of space.

After that, we went for a quick dinner and made our way towards the hotel room. Tired due to the activities of the day, we barely lasted for long.

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After this, we went outside and spent some more time in the NASA area. We had missed out on our schedule so the Tram Tour of Johnson Space Center was postponed to the next day. We went shopping after that. Soon later we went back to the hotel room where we were got free time to do whatever we liked in the hotel room.