This father's day I was sort of out of ideas for a card, so I flipped through an old Rolling Stone.
I came across that lovely picture, so I decided to draw it. Once the faces were set in pencil, I thought, "Hey. I could very easily make that into me and my brother kissing my dad's cheeks." Sure, it doesn't really look a ton like my dad, but it has the right eye color, the goatee, and the hair color. I'm surprised me and Jimmy came out looking like us, considering our faces were originally of men's.
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Okay, change of subject! This past week I went to Girls State. It's a camp sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary, and it's supposed to teach you about the government, the flag, our country, respect for veterans, yada yada. So here's a scene from the Opening Ceremony, my first day there. Needless to say, I was a bit creeped out.
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The camp actually turned out to be amazing, I met amazing people in my county (go Horne!!). But we were kept ridiculously busy, we hardly had time for bathroom breaks. In a day we usually had a flag raising and a flag lowering ceremony, three enormous meals, two sessions of legislature (I was in the House of Reps), two General Assemblies (with lots of guest speakers, along with singing practice, cheering, dancing, etc.), some sort of speech-watching thing for our campaign session (or many activities later on, like Whistle Stops), and Reflection Time. Thrown in there was a party and a bunch of miscellaneous activities for Party Delegates or for journalists, or for people running for something, etc. It was hectic!! Actually, 4 hours sleep felt like sleeping in. Usually I'd get from 2 to 3. So needless to say, I didn't get much a chance to draw. But here's one thing I half-finished during Legislature, when I let other people do the debating for me.
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And here's something I doodled during a General Assembly, even though I was really into the speaker, Secretary of State.
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And here are some "politcal commentaries." The first girl, Caitlin Patten, ran for Girls Nation. The doodles say it all, as does her autobiography The second girl rapped her speech, it was semi-cool.
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AAHHHH BRENDA!
Man was she crazy.

Girls State was amazing, I'm psyched for college now, where I expect I'll have similar experiences. People at GS (in our amazing county, anyways) are intelligent, involved, thoughtful, kind, down-to-earth, hard-working, loving, non-judgmental, and fun. It was such a breath of fresh air to be able to have a conversation with someone about current events, or about books, or about religion and philospohy. (Actually, we mostly talked about boys hahah.) People there don't believe in something without ever thinking about it; they believe in something
because they've given it a great deal of thought. Sure, I might have stumbled across some dunces in the House of Reps, but the girls (including staff members!) in my county were wonderful. We stayed up ridiculously late each night getting to know each other. It was a no-judgment zone, mostly because of Reflection. In Reflection we would expose our most vulnerable parts to each other. I left one night's reflection completely understanding each girl's situation, and why they are how they are.
I'm sorry, I'm not being very articulate, but Girls State is so hard to explain.
Anyways, I'm officially 17! I got awesome birthday presents and yeah... I don't feel much older, but hey whatever. I got bangs! Yeah yesterday my mom cut my bangs, we went to have dinner with my grandparents, I got presents/cake, then I went to work. At least I was working with Thomas, and got to hear about Boys State -- a lot less liberal in the setup (the citizens were generally liberal, though), but tons of fun. Also not so touchy-feely as estrogen-run Girls State, hahah.
All for now! OH and I got a facebook!