March 10th- A Day At The State Capitol And In The Rain

    March 10th was quite an interesting day. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm a part of a program called Youth Leadership Wilson. Ever since a little bit before the beginning of 2016, we've met once every month. This was that day, and we were supposed to meet at the train stop in Mt. Juliet before 7:30 in order to take the train downtown to the State Capitol. Firstly, I woke up at almost 6:30. My aunt who was taking me to the train stop told me she would come pick me up a little bit before 7, but didn't specify how much a "little" was. I was kind of freaking out, so I threw on some formal clothes and shoes and waited anxiously for her arrival. The clock was already at 7:10 and she still wasn't at my house yet. Thankfully, she showed up at around 7:18 and we booked it to the train station. It seemed as if I made it with only seconds to spare, because after I grabbed a chicken sandwich from the Chick-fil-a booth at the station the train pulled up.

    That was only my second time ever on The Nashville Star. It was really nice, as usual, and I got to sit and talk with my friend Matt the whole time. I had no clue that you could actually flip the seats on the train to make them face the other way! The train made 2 or 3 more stops before we made it to downtown. Once we got off the train, we were told to get aboard one of the two metro buses that were sat aside for us to use. That ride was fairly short, and we got out and hiked up to the Capitol building. We had to go through security, then we got everything every started when we met up at the Legislative Library. (This is actually where we met up a lot to hear people talk.) Our group was greeted by one of our state senators, and two representatives. We dispersed to the gallery following the introduction to go watch a "session". This "session" sadly wasn't a jam session or anything full of too much excitement. It was just the General Assembly discussing and passing some laws in a very fast-paced manner. Truthfully, it sounded like a auction. It was unreal. We left from there to go back to the library to listen to more people talk. Which, I'm sure those who were talking weren't actually as boring as I made them out to be, but it was a frigid room and I was in the back. Guess who is short? They both talked about worker's compensation according the schedule we had for the day on this green paper I'm reading off of. All I remember is he said that certain body parts cost more than others if they get injured on the job. Matt and I just played a drawing game called "Add On".

    Next, we got a photo with the governor! Due to my height I was (not to my own surprise) in the front. It was definitely one of the more interesting parts of the trip. And just to skip to more interesting parts as well, we walked to the Farmer's Market for lunch. I had a cheese crepe and a Dr. Pepper from this crepe stand inside this building that had a bunch of different food places at the market. I sat with a bunch of my friends from Youth Leadership Wilson and it was great! My only complaint is that a plastic fork doesn't do a crepe justice honestly. Like, it proved very difficult to try to cut it with that flimsy thing. Alas, I still managed to. Our group split in half after lunch: some went to Supreme Court, while everyone else went to the Archives. I chose the Archives, which was slightly cool but looking back on it I regret choosing it. It only merely peaked my interest with the microfilm and artifacts they had from Wilson County. There were loads and loads of books about anything and everything you would need to know about Tennessee. The guides said that a lot of people come to the Archives to research genealogy.

   Another thing that was high on the "cool" list of stuff we did was we had a mock session as if we were the General Assembly. We had a heated debate on whether or not Moon Pies count as cookies or cakes, and what our official state cookie should be. Two more people talked to us for a really long time, and we started to play "eye spy" through our group message, and just anything to pass the time. People were falling asleep, and I was fiddling with the lever on my chair, moving it up and down. The day was coming to a close, and lo and behold it was time to leave. And although it was dry the whole day, it started to downpour once we had to walk to the bus stop from the Capitol. Rather than having two buses to ride on this time, we only had one, and we all had to cram onto it. I was quite literally on the edge of my seat. Traffic was terrible due to the SEC tournament happening downtown... and we missed our scheduled 4:20 train just by a few minutes. We could've actually made it if the bus driver lady didn't DROP US OFF LIKE 5 BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE STATION! It was ridiculous. We had to trek through the rain just to get to the train station. Almost no one had umbrellas or anything. The next train was the 5:05 one, so we had to wait it out until then.

The train even arrived early, but we still had to sit there for at least 15 more minutes before we left. Nonetheless, it was an oxymoron of a day. There were highs and lows, but overall it was definitely unforgettable.

(I also worked on math homework for like 3 hours at Hallie's house after I got home and I'm pretty sure I've never wanted to go to school less than I did on Friday.)

Love always,
Allison