Nationals

And so I sit here...avoiding my homework like it's the bubonic plague.

Instead, I decided I will write about my trip to Nationals!

The National FFA Convention is held in Indianapolis, Indiana each year. In October of 2007, me, Emma, Lorie, and Miriam won 1st place in the Agronomy Competition at Snow College - I got a $500 scholarship to USU for placing first in state - I was pretty excited (but I really have no idea where it is...or how I pick that up now that I'm preppin' for college - kind of a problem ya?). Along with the scholarship money, I got a blingin' gold pin, and we each got $50 for placing in the top eight and $300 for travel money to make it to nationals the following October. I can't believe it's already been a month, but on October 21-26, 2008, me, six other students and my advisor, Mr. Openshaw, went to Indianapolis. It was fabulous!!!

Well, the $300 given to us just wasn't going to cut it, so the "Agronomy Team," as we call ourselves, grew an acre of corn on this piece of land that the High School is leasing. It pulled in about $1300, and we probably could've got more, but corn is a beastly thing... :) We divided the money by how many hours you worked and by the end, I hauled $700 out of it and my trip was paid for, including spending money! It was rad.

We got on the plane at 4:30 AM on October 21 and headed out to Fort Worth, Texas, which would connect us to Indianapolis. It was a looooong morning. I had only been on a plane once up until then (the first time was when me and Ariel went to go visit Heather when I was 11) and now I was going to become a seasoned flyer on this trip. We finally reached Indy. We were traveling with the State, so we had a pretty fancy hotel...in the middle of nowhere. We had no nearby restaurants except for a Denny's! We did end up at my very first White Castle. Scrumptious? Meh...

Our friend Brent was going with us to Indy because he had been selected to play his fiddle for the talent performances - so him and Talia, from the Pleasant Grove, Utah FFA chapter, went up a few days earlier to re-try out to see which portion of the convention they would play in. The rest of us couldn't do ANYTHING until we knew what Brent's schedule was like, so Openshaw put us under house arrest. When we found out where and when Brent would be playing we found out we could still get tickets for the Taylor Swift Concert that night! We waited in line for an hour and got our tickets. That night...we missed the first shuttle to take us downtown by 1 minute, thanks to the elevator, so we had to wait an hour to catch the next one. When we got downtown, we had to wait for Ms. Hadfield to round up her FFA chapter at the mall. While waiting we got ambushed by four drunk men - scariest thing! Eventually we made it down to the Lucas Oil Stadium where the concert was to be held - that's the new stadium where the Colts play...if you were curious. :)

We were in the boondocks of nosebleeds people. When we asked the ushers where in the heck our seats were, they looked at our tickets and laughed! We were on the third level in the back. The concert was fun though...I'm not a fan of country, but I hadn't ever been to a concert before (unless you count the AirSupply concert - but I was the only one under 30 at that one).

The next day was the first part of our competition. We took team pictures in a building that smelled like barf (sorry) and got signatures from a person from every single state including Puerto Rico! How many people can say that? Lorie spilled Pepsi all down Openshaw, and then we went to our competition. It was the team event, so everyone sat down and the judges gave us a scenario and we had to come up with an answer. None of us are farm girls, but we were able to pull off that you should grow watermelon in Georgia organically...because we had no idea what kind of pesticides you should use. Then we interviewed with the judges and left. The judges seemed to like us so we walked away feeling great!

The next day was the other half of the competition. Openshaw made us get on a taxi early and ride down to the fairgrounds to study (we named our cabbie Jamal)...Miriam and Lorie are now college students and hadn't had much practice since the original competition down at Snow College, so me and Emma were trying to help them. The competition went form 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM! It was ridiculously long! The national competition has a lot of different pieces to it that aren't on the state level so there was a lot of guessing going on. That was the longest day of my life - and we couldn't say a word the entire time...

We went to the Indy 500 Race Track after that. It was awesome! We looked at all these old cars and trophies and rode around on a shuttle that took us all the way around the track! Me, Brent, and Emma had a wonderful power nap as we watched a documentary on the race track. :) There was also a hypnotist that we went to go see that night.

On friday morning we went to the Ag Expo and bought t-shirts and souvenirs for home. We got tons of free stuff and ate "Ozark Lollies" and had the hottest beef jerky ever created - it killed my taste buds. We even got a picture with Jeff Gordon's race car! Later was the agronomy luncheon where they announced the winners of the competition. It was fancy! They had two forks. We sat across the team from Texas and the waiter helped them pour their dressing because apparently they were doing it wrong. :) For as crappy as we felt about how we did, we got top of the Bronze (26 out of 35)! If we had beat one more team we would have gotten silver! We were amazed. Individually, me and Emma got silvers, and Lorie and Miriam got bronzes. Openshaw was proud. He better have been. ;)

Then we walked down to the zoo. It was fabulous! The Indianapolis zoo is like Sea World - they have dolphin shows and walruses...it was cool! We got to ride for free on a "haunted merry-go-round" that moved backwards - the lady was cool.  We saw all sorts of animals and took bazillions of pictures! Oh, and I totally touched a shark - boohah!

On Saturday, Brent and Talia were scheduled to perform for the closing session - the largest and most attended session because that's where they announce the next National FFA officers. Brent and Talia had been performing like crazy that whole trip, so we finally got to see them that last day. They performed in front of 15,000 people! Can you believe it? They did a great job and are now officially posted on youtube.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AluxTdJgC9c)

At the session we were informed that there were 54,371 registered FFA members in attendance to the convention! Needless to say, Indy was a sea of blue. :)

On Saturday night, we went to a comedy club called ComedySportz. It was so hilarious! Openshaw heard somewhere that it was all you can eat ribs and we were all starving. We were very disappointed to find that those "all you can eat ribs" were in reality all you can eat Dominoes Pizza. We did get cheesecake though!

On Sunday morning we packed up and were at the airport destined for Chicago. While waiting in line to get our tickets we saw a Sarah Palin-look-alike. When I got on the plane, I found out my seat was right next to hers! Co-inky-dink! So I met her and she was really neat. We talked about religion, and she is very involved with politics in Washington. The flight was only 45 minutes, but I enjoyed every minutes with her! Yes, I got my picture with her...it wasn't the first she said. :)

We arrived in SLC at 1:00 PM and my dad was there to pick me up! I missed him. I missed my family! I was so excited to see them when I got home! That was probably the longest trip I have ever been on, but it was totally worth every minute! I came home missing FFA-ness. Never thought I would say that, but I did!