martinzoo

Jump to Comments

This weekend I organized a trip to Washington, DC for some of the homeschoolers in our group.

We began our trip at 9:00 and drove, without traffic, for a little over two hours. GB has a fascination for the Asian culture so I knew he’d be thrilled to bits when he found out that the Spy Museum is right near China Town. So we immediately walked over to Chinatown to choose an authentic Chinese restaurant for lunch. There were so many good smells coming from everywhere that we could hardly choose. Ultimately, we went on the recommendation of a local and ate at Tony Cheng’s.

My favorite Chinese dish is chicken with cashews, so I ordered that in order to compare to our local restaurant. Wow! What a difference! It was far and away more superior to our place. Not that I won’t still like our little place. But this was a lot more flavorful.

GB doesn’t eat meat so he got the Vegetarian Rice, which came in a huge bowl, meant to serve more than one, I’m sure. And he did some serious damage to it’s contents. I think there may only have been about four forkfuls left. He loved it and the atmosphere!

Then it was on to the International Spy Museum for the day’s main event.

Time is ticking…a terrorist operation is unfolding in DC…sleeper agents are ready to activate a device that will bring the city to its knees. Can you find the hidden password to deactivate it before the terrorists launch their attack? In the ultimate intelligence game, you will piece together clues and decipher messages that reveal a world of ruthless terrorists and deadly choices. As a Special Security Division (SSD) agent armed with a Geo-COBRA, the latest high tech device issued to counterintelligence field agents, you prowl the streets of DC uncovering secret messages, tracing hidden signals, scanning for fingerprints, and breaking codes. Can you foil the plot? Only your wits and time will tell…

This is the COBRA device that gave us all the clues. We broke into five teams and all set off to foil the terrorists. My hubby and I didn’t get too much of a chance to see the screen because GB was insisting that this was a ‘kid thing’.

But we tried to keep abreast since I figured there would be points where he would be confused. And I’m glad we did because we needed all three of us to figure this out.

This is a great program but littler kids would have a very hard time. We had one team who dropped out because their kiddos were having a rough time.

And GB was off!! He kept telling me, the whole time we were trying to figure this stuff out, that it was just like one of his favorite tv shows, The Amazing Race. And it really was, minus the gross food eating parts…..LOL!

I was very impressed with how well everybody was able to work together. We usually had one or two parents per team to help out.

Every once in a while, you would hear the unit alert you to an incoming text or results from a fingerprint scan that you got off of a postal box, or something like that. So GB used these moments to get a bit of a respite.

And then he’d be off again. This is in front of the Newseum, where my hubby had to go in and ask them if they had ever heard of the NW Council because we couldn’t find it anywhere. The guards let him by so he could ask the people at the desk and they had a good time Google-ing it for us. Nobody could figure out where it was, but GB figured out that if you used the map on the COBRA, which was a GPS, and followed the dots on the map, it would guide you to where you were supposed to go. Guess you gotta be a kid to figure that out. Once we got there, the clues began again and we were able to finish our mission.

We did have trouble with our COBRA twice, once in the beginning before the mission began, giving us a late start. And once midway through the mission, the battery gave out and we had to walk back to the Spy Museum to reprogram another unit.

But we finished and we had a great time. And it was a great way to learn our way around the city and see what else it had to offer besides the traditional museums on The Mall.

We had planned to go through the Spy Museum after the mission was over, but we took so long that it was time for us to journey up to Maryland for our evening’s activities. We decided that we’d come back to the Spy Museum the next day.

Here are some games and info from the International Spy Museum:

Games

Spy Guide

Share This