History Day Trip: Part 2

Okay, here's part of the rest of the history day 2012 experience:

Sunday, June 10, 2012

The communal showers at the University of Maryland are disgusting, so I wore my sandals the whole time in the bathrooms. As we were leaving the breakfast hall, we found the Guamanian group and I asked if anyone had known Jessie Okiyama when she lived there, and I actually found her cousin! Thats her in the picture below. Jessie though it was really cool that I ran into her cousin, whom she hasn't seen in a while. Also on this day, Ansel got to set everything up for his project, and I got to see what he was going up against. There were almost 100 other exhibits in his division, and it felt like almost half of them were on the Civil Rights Movement or women's rights. Unfortunately, every other North Scott student decided to go into D.C. leaving Ansel and I at the Student Stamp Union, which is basically a huge building used for many of the projects to go on display and present. 

After a while of wandering, I met a pair of siblings from Missouri and talked to them for a while, and then met a group of cool Texans, one of which it turns out had beat Allie and I out for a top three position last year. It was cool to meet so many people from everywhere. 

That night was the opening ceremonies in a grassy field at the university, where every state was recognized and a frenzy of button trading took place. By the end of this night I had the overwhelming majority of the 55 affiliate buttons.

Afterwards, we headed back to the Stamp where we had dinner at McDonalds, and I got a chance to catch up with the Nashua-Plainfield History Dayers that I became really good friends with last year. Unfortunately, of the 20 different Iowans that I bacame pretty good friends with at either state of nationals, only one from Nashua-Plainfield returned. This year, she brought along new history day partner, her boyfriend who didn't qualify, and a group of two other girls.

After we got back to the dorms, we went straight to bed since Ansel had presentation the next day.

Monday, June 11, 2012

This day was Ansel's time to shine! After presenting he was a little scared, but thought he did all around  good. I spent the day walking about with my Nashua-Plainfield friends, and then at night we all made our way to one of the best parts of nationals: the dance. For three hours we hit the dance floor, which was basically a huge crowd of students smashed into one ball of sweaty heat. Last year there was some inappropriateness going on, so they had to turn the lights on, but this year they didn't play any slow songs, so they kept the lights off. With everyone jumping to the beat, you could literally feel the floor move underneath you. Last year my mom hit the floor, and this year she made a return and everyone made a circle around her as she battle danced with some other kids. It was awesome. One of our new Kentuckian friends later said that his favorite part was when "the old lady danced." Allie Stutting, who herself is an awesome dancer had a dance battle against another guy and it was hilarious to see it. At some point they got me to go in the circle and rap Nikki Minaj, which they loved. It was a crazy time, and by the time we got on a bus to get back to the dorms, we were sweaty messes. 

Back at the dorms, I got to meet the new Kentuckian friends in the lounge, which Allie and Ali met the night before. We spent a good few hours playing a new card game that they taught us called "Egyptian Ratscrew" which was awesome fun, except that I was terrible at it. The Kentuckians went to bed early, so we stayed in the lounge until one playing card games. 

History Day Trip: Part 1

Yesterday I had to do some yard work and then ran the Bix course, so I was whipped by the time I got home. Anyway, here is a summary of the History day part of the trip! I'll tell more about Lancaster, PA and Broadkill Beach, DE later. Actually, after a little typing, I've realized that this is going to be a lot of writing if I tell you everything about the History Day trip all in one blog, so I'll only do the first two days of it today.

Ohh, and also, Mrs. Laber, my mom and I saw you out jogging this morning on my way to weightlifting! My mom didn't recognize you at first and said, "Wow, look at this woman. She must weightlifting".

Friday, June 8, 2012

My parents drove out ahead of me to Lancaster, Pennsylvania where my sister lives, so I was left with one of her friends. Her friend had another elderly friend over for lunch, and they told me all of these stories about my older siblings that I had never heard. I also got some more of my history day thank you packets done, including one to Erkki Tuomioja, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs.

At 5:30 we all got on the bus and got settled in for the overnight ride. It was a fun time with all of my history day friends crammed into the far back of the bus. We stopped for dinner at the same place we always do in Indiana Amish country, up by the Great Lakes. At midnight all of us in the back finally decided to go to bed, but then this really weird looking bug crawled across the covers and everyone freaked out. We were just hoping that there weren't more bugs hiding in the bus.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

At around one, we stopped to refuel in Ohio and we all had to get off the bus. We all had finally gotten comfortable at around three, when the bus stopped three times in about a half an hour and woke us all up. Then we started talking and laughing and it was really hard to go to bed. At 4:30, I woke up again to because someone was moving around, so I decided to watch the sun rise over the Pennsylvania mountains while listening to the Band Perry. It was a good time. After a few more hours of on and off sleep, we arrived at a truck stop in Pennsylvania and we all wandered out to try to clean up the best we could. It wasn't a very pleasant morning. The only water at the truck stop was boiling hot and the bathrooms smelled awful, so every time I tried rinsing toothpaste out of my mouth I gagged and then I finally gave up and swallowed a mouthful of toothpaste. Needless to say, it was gross and made me almost sick.

A few more hours later, we finally got to Gettysburg, which I found out is pronounced "Gettisburg" by locals. Driving through the town, I felt like the tourists outnumbered the local residents. We went to the museum and watched a VERY cool "cyclorama" presentation on the battle of Gettysburg. The cyclorama was a very large and old painting that spanned the entire way around the circular room and depicted the Battle of Gettysburg over its three day course, with a full narration and lighting and sound effects. Since my parents weren't along for the trip, Ansel and I hung out with Matt Griebe and his mom at we wandered around the battlefields and ate a mediocre $15 lunch. Afterwards, we drove up to "Little Round Top" where part of the battle occurred. Little Round Top is the most fun part of the experience because of all of the Huge rocks that dot the big hill, sometimes forming caves and making for a good rock climbing experience.

Later in the afternoon, we checked in at the University of Maryland and got to our dorm rooms, which are air conditioned this year, luckily. The dorms are really grim looking, like a Soviet style apartment building. The only thing that they contain are a lobby desk, some offices to the right, and a lounge area to the left, and then eight identical floors of dorms, each with its own lounge room. When Ansel and I got to our room, we started rearranging the furniture and were horrified to find moths flying out of every piece that we moved. The dorms were already gross enough without the bugs. The picture below was our room.

That night Ansel and I went with the Griebes to Applebees for dinner and had a really fun time and then got some ice cream from Cold Stone. After a while of walking in the dark to get back to the dorms, we went to the Iowa lounge on the eighth floor where we found four seventh graders form Decorah working on their door design, so Ansel, Matt and I decided to hang out with them. Immediately, the three girls from the group gave each other "looks" that signified we were NOT welcome and wouldn't hardly say a word when we tried talking to them. The one boy of the group sort of talked to us, but it got really boring and was NOTHING like out awesome times with the Akron-Westfield kids last year. At close to 11, the Allie and Ali group finally arrived back at the dorms after a nightmare trip home from Applebees, in which they made the mistake of hailing a cab driver who spoke broken English and had no clue where the dorm was. After some more talking, we decided that the Decorah kids were boring and lifeless so we moved on to bed.

Home Again, Home Again!

Well, today I finally am back on Iowan soil! I had no time to rest, however, because tonight was the history day closing party at Mrs. Green's house. At the party, I won a NHD shirt- from Guam! Jessie Okiyama's parents translated the text as "Land of the Chamorros." Its pretty cool to have a Guamanian friend! I'll definitely be wearing it to school next year!

Tomorrow I'll put together a summary from each day in Pennsylvania, Maryland, DC, and Delaware along with some pictures. I just never had enough time to do any blogging! I heard that the Europe trip bus broke down on the wahy here :/ Hope the rest of the trip went smoothly for you!

Organizing :P

I've been going through my room organizing stuff and filing all my school papers into binders, and I just realized that I forgot to come back for my history notebook! Is there a teeny tiny slight chance that it may have been saved? Its okay if it wasn't- I've still got all of my essays that I wrote.

Also, I've been trying to clean up everything else in my room before leaving for the east coast so I come back to a nice, neat environment. So far its going all right, and I reserved my whole chest-of-drawers area for Finland related items. I couldn't even fit all of the Finnish stuff on it. Well, I'd better keep this short. I still havn't even started packing yet, so I need to get on that.

Final Preparations!

Its been a a really busy few days, from history day stuff to birthday parties. Last night was my former history day partner's birthday party, and that was really fun, but today was a full day in the history day room finishing all of my thank you packets (which are still incomplete), and helping out with everyone else. Since the theme this year is the "history games" we are dressing up in the costumes of different districts and made mini-banners. I'm District 10, which is a livestock producer, so I'm dressing as a cowboy :D The bus is out of here on Friday, but I still haven't finished a majority of the thank you packets, including one to the Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, so I feel rushed to get them done. Next year the topic is "Turning Points in history: People, Places, and Events", so basically you can do almost any topic. 2014 is Geography related things, and 2015 is Rights and Responsibilities. Maybe you'll give it another try, Cheyenne? I hope so. I'm looking at doing next year's on the Finnish Famine of 1866-1868, which wiped out 15-20% of the population, as well as a few other famines that struck Europe at that time, including the Irish Potato Famine. My Finnish friend in Florida, who has had a relative involved in almost every event in Finnish history, had a direct relative who was born during the famine, so it should be an interesting time collecting family stories on it.

The picture is of our junior division qualifiers this year.
(L-R)
Ansel Bare, 8th grade- Polish Home Army in WWII: Exhibit
Ali Watkins & Allie Stutting, 8th grade- Nellie Bly female investigative journalist: Performance
Matt Griebe, 7th Grade- Leonardo Da Vinci and renaissance: Exhibit

Musikki/Musica/Music

Today I was exploring the biographies of my favorite artists and trying to find songs to do karaoke to at my friend's party. Last time I did karaoke, it was with my friend to the song "Super Bass" by Nicki Minaj and it was pretty awesome. I've almost got all the words down to Shakira's Spanish version of "Loca", but I keep messing up and she goes really fast. Anyway, I found some interesting information on some of my favorite European singers that Cheyenne might like to know about! I think that if you heard some of their music, you would be interested too Mrs. Laber.

I did not know this, but my favorite Scandinavian singer voiced the kid in the Norwegian dub of "How to Train Your Dragon." The singer, Alexander Rybak, was born in Belarus but immigrated as a baby to Norway, who he won Eurovision for in 2009. His music is AMAZING and it incorporated Norwegian violin melodies into it and its really popular throughout Scandinavia. He even wrote a song about how awesome Finland is- "Soumi"- which makes me love the music even more :3 Also Cheyenne, I found out that you can write to him and get an autograph. :] We should try it. Not only that, but I found out that his next album is going to be in Russian!

ALSO... My favorite Eastern European singer, Ruslana from Ukraine, FINALLY released her songs on the American iTunes after eight years. Her winning Eurovision song, like Rybak, has a lot of ethnic Ukrainian sounds in it mixed with pop and it sounds awesome. She also released the album that she wrote about the 2004 Ukrainian Revolution, which is also a really good one.

One of my favorite Serbian singers, Marija Šerifović, actually has a Finnish version of her song that is available in America, so I'm really happy about that too.

ALSO... In the world of Euro-dance, Romania's Alexandra Stan is about to release another album. One of my favorite Baltic singers, Ott Lepland, released his top song in four languages, AND the Icelandic and English version of Iceland's Eurovision song from this year was released, which contains an epic violin solo that I love soooo much. Sweden's Loreen, who just one Eurovision, is holding the #1 position on the charts in many countries, but its still not available for purchase here :(

I'd say this year is going to be a good year for music. I encourage you to check out some of the artists I mentioned, if you have time!