Aaron & Janice

Well, I'm finally back from Girls State! It was held at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho, from Sunday (the 10th) to today. Basically, Girls State is a week of mock government. We were put into cities and counties, and we were either Federalists or Nationalists. We could run for city, county, and state offices, and we debated and passed bills in either the House or Senate. Etc. There were some fun parts, but I don't think I could say that it was a fun experience. Basically, I was counting down the days until I could go home. Here is a group picture of everyone there. I'm the person in the back in the red circle. You can click on this picture to enlarge it, but I don't think it will help much. I'm still just a little dot in the back. This is a picture of the Idaho Governor and his wife. We were able to listen to them talk, and then each city had their picture taken with them. So here's my city: (I'm in the bottom row, second from the right.)Thursday was inauguration of the new Girls State Governor. Everyone had to wear formal dresses, so it seemed like a good time to take pictures. By the way, we had to wear dress clothes every day. Here is most of my city:At Girls State we did a lot of singing, clapping, standing and clapping, and debating bills. We were always doing something, and we generally didn't get to bed until past 11 o'clock, so I was feeling really tired most of the time. I felt overwhelmed, but I also felt bored lots of the time. Contradictory, but that's how I felt. I was incredibly bored during bill debating. I really didn't have phone access to call home, so I spent most of my time writing down everything that happened in my journal. It took my mom two hours to read it today. Really. It's like I wrote a book, not a few journal entries. I'm proud of myself, so I included some pictures of my journal. The middle pages are from Girls State: