Catching up!

Well if I did my calculations right I missed about 3 blogs. And since I SUCK at every other subject in school:), I really want to catch up on these cause I really need the grade. Plus blogging is awesomee:) But for this one I'm going to blog about RYLA. RYLA stands for the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards Conference. I went to it last June in 2007 and it was held at Hartwick College. I would like to add that the campus there is absolutely horrible when it's humid and gross out. It's so hilly and takes forever to get to the dining hall and dorms. But anyways, the juniors are getting interviewed for RYLA 2008 soon which makes me super sad cause I would LOVE to go again. Plus, I got a letter in the mail today about the RYLA 2007 reunion at the end of this month. Let me just start with how amazing the conference was. It was probably one of the most rewarding weeks of my life. I had so much fun and learned so much about myself and made so many good friends. I still talk to my roommate at least three times a week to this day. It actually was her birthday yesterday!:) I would go back in a heartbeat if I could. I could seriously write about this for a lifetime. It was just a week for learning about leadership skills and communicating with other people. The first day we were separated into "small groups". Mine was called the "Barber Shoppe" because our counselors last name was Barber. We met with the small group at least twice a day for an hour or two to do activities and talk about the day. There was at least one guest speaker a day, and might I add that they were all HILARIOUS. They were really open and some cursed like it was their job and said probably TOTALLY inappropriate things haha, and that wasn't why it was so funny or cool it was just how they tried to relate to us as much as they could and get us to open up and not feel awkward considering we were with a bunch of people we had never met before. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day in the dinning hall and each meal was like two hours long so we had at least an hour to go back to the dorms and hang out in the lounge area with everyone. We had a dance one night, and a RYLAthon, which we competed with our small group against all the other small groups with physical activities they required teamwork and leadership. Then the second to last day was a whole day of doing all these crazy things with your small group. Like we had a group of at least 13-15 people and we all had to be standing on this tiny block so like I was on some one's shoulders who was one someone elses shoulders. It was crazy, it was like dangerous what we had to do! Haha but it was so much fun. Then every day for an hour we met with an "interest" group that we chose on our own. I did public speaking. Then the second to last day there was a public speaking contest for everyone who was in the group and I won! :) The cool thing about it was public speaking was totally not my thing, I'm actually a HORRIBLE public speaker as you could tell in class, but my speech was about something I truly believed in and I put my heart in the speech and it was definitely rewarding. Then the last day we had a banquet with our parents. Because I won the contest I had to recite my speech at the banquet. I didn't tell my parents and they were wicked surprised! It was so sad to leave. We all sang a song together at the end and it was wicked corny but we all opened up so much during the week we had so much fun doing it. I still to this day talk to a ton of people from there. I have the job I have right now because of a person I met from there too. I absolutely loved it and I missed so many things but I don't think I could describe everything in words. It was absolutely amazingggg and I wish I could go back!