Virginia Tech for NACTA

I spent June 24-28 at the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) Conference. It was held at Virginia Tech. I traveled with Aaron and Tyson and we decided to give ourselves a tour. The first night we roamed into the athletics department. There were a few cool museums and we toured the stadiums.

We also roamed past the library.

We saw the war memorial. There is a chapel below and these pillars up top that are lit at night. It was beautiful. It is above a chapel and overlooks a grassy area of campus known as the drill field. Other than Aaron harassing a young couple on a date, we were hardly noticed. We played pool in the student union and won a free pizza at Tijuana Toss night at PK's

We toured ourselves around the first night and never came across the memorial for the VA Tech shooting victims. The next night we roamed to Norris Hall, site of the massacre of students in April of 2007 thinking that might be where the memorial was located. They have since turned the classroom into a Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. I don't know what I was expecting but the "normalness" of the building hit me hard. The stairwell looked like every stairwell I have taken to class as a student and teacher for nearly 30 years.

As we wandered our way back to our rooms for the night, we passed the memorial. There are Hokie Stones for all of the students and faculty lost during the massacre. There were flowers left for recent birthdays and letters to those lost. It really was touching. I stayed up part of the night reading about those who were lost. This site does a nice job of remembering those taken.

We took in the conference and shared posters and presentations but I didn't get pictures of any of that. Just trust me... we were working.