Dakar Academy Alum in Space

Former Dakar Academy student Scott E. Parazynski completed his fifth space walk yesterday. As the Space Shuttle's lead space walker on STS-120 (the 120th shuttle mission), Scott was in charge of installing the massive, new HARMONY live-in unit at the International Space Station (ISS). In the next three walks, he will oversee the moving of another huge part of the ISS, a project he likens to the structural relocation of a huge Victorian house which he witnessed as a child.

Scott grew up as an international traveler, living in the US, Lebanon, Greece, Iran, and "two wonderful years in West Africa, in Dakar, Senegal," where he attended Dakar Academy as a junior high school student.

To read more about STS-120, the ISS, or Scott (including his biography, an interview, and even the meal menu for this Shuttle voyage), go to

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts120/index.html (The above photo of Scott is from www.nasa.gov)

Home, Sweet Home

This remarkable image of the coast of West Africa is NASA's "photo of the week" (http://www.nasa.gov/). It shows a dust storm blowing over the Atlantic Ocean from Mauritania. If you could zoom in close enough, you'd see me on that little green peninsula near the bottom.

Actually, if you go to GoogleEarth, you can zoom in that close! When you do, find the airport on the west side of the penninsula. Due southeast from the airport, near the opposite shore, look for a large brown patch. That's Hann Park (the Dakar Zoo). Zoom in on that, and you can see the Dakar Academy campus across the street, near the top left corner of the park!

The campus has several buildings, a couple of parking lots, a basketball court, a sand lot, and, easiest to spot, a large grass-less, gray soccer field surrounded by trees. Near the bottom left corner of campus, there's a backwards-L-shaped building. That's my apartment house. I'm the guy on the roof waving at the camera.