June 26, 2011

Day 2

After a lovely night’s sleep, we all bounded out of bed, ready to begin the next leg of our adventure. Well, “bounded out of bed” may be an exaggeration. I think we were all still tired from the long drive the day before.

6:37 a.m. Rise and shine and…no, I think I’ll stay put. Except Katie said we had to have our hinies on the bus at 7:15, and I still have breakfast to get. Groannnnnn….

7:15 a.m. It was really nice of Franklin Tech to donate these “Restore Joplin” t-shirts. My breakfast? Peach yogurt, some kind of flakes and a pear. It only gets better from here, right?

7:31 a.m. So we’re gonna be late based on a whole room of boys (the Troublemakers’ room—go figure) who were still asleep when Jeremy went to find them. Some people….

9:50 a.m. Welcome to West Virginia! I’m pretty sure I’ve never been in WV.

10:15 a.m. Welcome to Claysville, Pennsylvania. My jaw hurts from smiling for all these pictures.

And speaking of pictures, I like to give credit where credit is due, so let me say now that some of the pictures I will use came from Miss Cassie Reid, a very nice young lady who provided a lot of life on this trip and took about 800 pictures. (I’m serious.) Since my camera wasn’t available for some group shots and such, I got copies of those from her. Thanks, Cassie!! (She blogs over at Rural Girl Dreams about her life and aspirations as an Ag student at Missouri State. Go give her a look: I bet you’ll enjoy what she has to say. ;-) )

(All of us in our sleepy-eyed glory.)

11:39 a.m. It doesn’t matter what state I’m in, Madagascar will always make me happy. I like to move it!

12:01 p.m. What is it with us and faulty busses? Now the AC is failed on this second bus. Wow! I think God has a sense of humor.

12:18 p.m. Turkey Bacon Guacamole sub from Quizno’s? Heaven….

12:37 p.m. So, I considered getting something from Cinnabon, but at their prices? No way! My money’s not worth the experience.

1:49 p.m. Third bus of the trip. Will Washington ever show up??

1:58 p.m. We’re driving through Pennsylvania, and Jeremy says we’re in Amish Country.

2:00 p.m. The Allegheny Mountains! The official tunnel, anyways. I’ve actually been popping my ears for a couple of hours.

2:27 p.m. Bedford, PA. And we’re on our 4th driver. I think Night at the Museum 2 has the same theme music as both National Treasures.

3:18 p.m. Welcome to Maryland! I wanna see Baltimore….

4:47 p.m. National 4-H Youth Conference Center! Finally!

(Our beautiful accommodations for the week. This was the main building where most of the activities took place. We lived and ate at a couple of other buildings to the right of this one.)

Our first “task” after arriving was to meet in the Minnesota Room (almost all the rooms at the Conference Center are named after states) and discuss Missouri’s plan for the week. Once we got all the preliminaries squared away, we left to get settled in our rooms, and then EAT!!

(Our room. Counter-clockwise from top left: Kayli’s bed, Abigail’s bed, Cheyenne’s bed, and my bed.)

After dinner, we headed to the auditorium for Welcome to Washington. This was a kind of “pep rally” to jumpstart our week and make sure everyone knows why we’re here and what we plan to do while we’re here.

6:40 p.m. Welcome to Washington. Some kids are just plain loud! The states here this week are Missouri, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Colorado, Ohio, California, Arizona, and Michigan.

Then we discovered the reason we needed a pep rally: we jumped headfirst into our “work” for the week. All of the nearly 600 4-H members were divided into groups based on a colored sticker on our name tags. Each of these eight color groups became, in a sense, a committee that worked on writing a congressional bill about a nationally-important issue. There were four issues to discuss, and two groups were responsible for discussing each issue: one for the pros, and one for the cons. The two groups would then meet in committee and compromise to create a bill that made both sides happy. At the end of the week, we would hold “congress” and vote on the four finished bills. I was in the Red Group, and we discussed the pros of Issue 1: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food purchasing restrictions.

The first step in this process was the CWF Toolbox Workshop. This is where we delegates began to explore and define what it means to be a good citizen and learn how to use our individual skills to become leaders in our own communities.

8:20 p.m. I am in Communications Committee meeting. Just got out of Workshop. I wanted to punch some of those boys. Disrespectful and immature as 3 year olds!

9:22 p.m. Communications is off to a good start. My group is making a newsletter about this week’s events. All 5 girls, counting me, in our group seem to have doppelgangers. How very interesting!

After workshop, we went to a different kind of work: committees! These were a variety of groups that were responsible for planning different aspects of CWF. I chose Communications committee, because, well, frankly, I like to talk. Yes, I do. Other committees were Healthy Living (they planned a Derby, which is outdoor games), Government (they were responsible for organizing our end-of-the-week Congress), Talent (they organized the Talent Show on Friday), and Open-Mindedness (they were in charge of the Town Hall, which was a group discussion of current topics).  Communications was responsible for a newsletter, a blog, a compilation video, and a scrapbook. I’ve had a little practice with a newsletter, so I went with that.  You’ll get to see that later. :-)

9:29 p.m. Pin Trade/Social. This is as loud as Convocation. For real….

Once our work was over, it was time for some fun. We headed to another state room to trade pins, or bracelets, or some other little thing that represented our state with kids from other states. There were a lot of interesting little items making their way around the room.

After that, those who wanted to participate in the Talent Show had auditions. I had prepared a sign language solo, so I quickly headed back to the auditorium.

10:17 p.m. I finished my audition. I did well—I only missed one sign, scrambled one other, but my hands didn’t shake! My eye contact was great, and my facial expressions matched perfectly! Daniel and Tonia would be proud…. I just hope I qualified.

I did qualify, and you’ll also get to see that later.

11:00 p.m. Curfew. I’m beat.

I think this was my first ever 8 hour work day.

My Daily Lesson:

There are all kinds of people in this world. Learn to tolerate the annoying ones and do your best to work with them.

Movies Watched:

8 Seconds, She’s the Man, Madagascar, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian, Cars