Intro & First Day

This blog is about keeping a record of everything that happens at the 2009 inauguration. I am part of a youth conference call the Junior Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference (JrPYIC), which takes place, obviously, around the time of each inauguration. In 2007 I was part of another conference, the Junior National Young Leaders Conference (JrNYLC), and because I am an alumnus of this, I am invited to yearly conferences; this year it is the JrPYIC.

Today was the first day of this conference. I had to get up at about 5:30 in the morning to fly from Dallas, Texas to BWI Airport in Baltimore. Our flight was delayed for about 2 hours, and we had to get on another plane. When my mom and I finally arrived, we spent a while trying to find the group I am in (the conference names the groups from famous former Presidents - mine is James Madison); then I said goodbye to my mom and we had about a 45 minute drive to our hotel, the 4H Youth Conference Center. When we arrived everyone had to check in and then we were free to hang out around the rec room until about 5:00 when we met with our group (within James Madison there are about 35 groups).  At the first group meeting, I met many of the new people I'm going to be spending time with for the next few days. After that we went to the Hilton Washington hotel to have dinner and listen to the first of the speakers who will talk to our conference, Erik Weihenmayer. He is the first blind person to climb the seven peaks, the tallest mountains in all seven continents. These include Mt. Everest, Mt. McKinley, and others. He has a book out, Touch the Top of the World, in which he talks  about his experience. It was a great speech; he talked about how things like blindness, loss of limbs, paralysis, etc. are obstacles thrown at people, and some people take those obstacles and use them as fuel for their determination to overcome the obstacles. I know that sounds confusing, but here's another way he put it: some people are modern-day alchemists. They take the lead poured on them (the obstacles) and turn it into gold. 

I thought Erik Weihenmayer did a really good job of driving this point home, and he was very inspirational. What he told us was one of the biggest things I took away from my trip. And now that it's been pointed out to me, I'm beginning to see examples of this throughout my life (I added this part in italics after I got back; I'm going to put all my afterthoughts in italics throughout the blog).

We were rushed from the registration, to the group meetings, to the dinner, so unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures except a couple bad ones on my phone.