Youth Court Conference

I've been so busy lately! I'm not that home-schooled-in-Japan, totally bored person that wrote on my blog EVERY day anymore. With Youth Conference, Youth/Peer Court, Girls Camp, getting together with family, and Youth Court Conference, and trying to work at Larry's in between all of this, I don't even have time to clean my room or post on my blog/check my email anymore. Hopefully things will wind down again until EFY (that I'm so excited about!) in early August. So anyways, I will make a long-awaited post:

I will tell you about Youth Court Conference!!! It was way funner (is that a word?) than I thought it would be!!! I just started youth court 1 month ago. They only meet twice a month, once to prepare for the trials, and the other time for the actual trials. So I have hardly any experience, but I went to this conference. It was pretty crazy right before I left. We had gotten back from Girls Camp on Friday, I worked Saturday, we drove up north to get together with family on Sunday (We blessed Gracie while we up there), and I slept over to see my grandparents off. They are in Guatemala now!!! (We haven't heard from them. I hope that they're okay). Well back to my story, I worked on Tuesday, had youth court, and then the next day Wednesday, we left. And on top of all this I'm trying to unpack and organize my room from the move.

(above: me and Tashi)
I went and picked my paycheck up at Larry's, cashed it, and then we met at the Sheriff's office, got in the van, and drove all the way down to St. George. Me, Tashi, Sam, Noah, Eden, Austin, and Megan went. (Noah and Eden are siblings, and Austin is their cousin).

(above: Megan and Eden)

My seat belt was broken, so I couldn't unbuckle it. I had to loosen it and crawl out. The van was very interesting. Chocolate licorice and peanuts grown out of holes in the seats haha

All of the people from East Millard Court (that' us!) are mormon, and we had just gotten back from Girls Camp and EFY and such so we were expecting another one of those. But the second we got there we realized that most of the other people weren't mormon. That first IMPROV skit thing...whew! Now I know why Sam warned me about it. There was such a bad spirit in the room at that time. I was so glad when that was over. IMPROV was the only thing I didn't like.

(above: Megan, Tashi, me, and Eden's feet on the edge of the hotel pool)

We just had sessions on youth court and such. We would rotate, and listen to guest speakers talk. We learned a lot of interesting stuff. In our free time, we would play ping-pong. I got a little bit better at it.

(above: Sam and Nathaniel playing ping pong)

The first night we had pizza at Pizza Hut. Look at that yummy pepperoni pizza!!! We all had the salad bar except Megan. That was funny. But I guess that she wasn't giving into peer pressure. haha

(above: pepperoni pizza from pizza hut)

After we got back, Eden showed us girls her "trick". But for privacy reasons, I will not talk about the "trick" any further. The 4 girls watched TV until after midnight. We got hysterical at one point.

(above: Eden, me, Tashi, and Megan at the edge of the pool)

The sad thing was we had to be at breakfast at 7:30 am. We planned to get up at 6:30 am, but the alarm didn't go off so we woke up at 7:00 am. Ah well. We needed our sleep. What was funny though, the boys always took twice as long getting ready. Even though girls put makeup on. Everyone around us was dressed immodestly, swore every other sentence, and were very negative. It made me realize the difference between a conversation with a church member, or a non-member. I'm not being prejudice here (that was like our theme at this conference), it's just that most of the conversations with non-members were negative and crude. Why does it have to be crude to be funny?! Why do I want to listen to a negative conversation?! I don't! (Sorry letting off some stress here).

(above: me and Tashi at the edge of the pool!)

All the boys from Millard are gentlemen! They were really popular! They always held or pushed the door open for a girl. One time I held the door open for Sam, and he's all like, "That's my job!" haha that was funny.

(above: me and Tashi wearing our matching pajama pants)

Our room and the boys' room connected, so the last 2 nights, we hung out in the boys room. We played cards, and watched youtube until after 1 am. We kept getting "shunned" so me and Tashi ended up hanging out with the boys most of the time.

(above: our team mascot, Fabio when we were making bridges our of newspaper)

All of the activities were fun, but I had more fun hanging out with the Millard kids. We made up all of these inside jokes. Noah kept bursting into song randomly. The other kids knew him by that. Nut hey, life is a musical right?

(above: 3 hot girls wearing their sunglasses. Megan, Eden, and me. Megan looks like a secret agent)

Tashi ended up buying some glasses at the mall. (Peer pressure? no, JK) But we kept using Charlie the Unicorn, a video on youtube for jokes a lot. It's so funny! Go watch it!

(above: Sam posing as a model at PACSUN)

We went to the mall and Sam snuck into this store when we weren't looking. He stood in the window like that, and when we passed by, we're all like, "That looks a lot like Sam" and it was. He looks like a manikin!

(above: Sam and Noah wearing matching shirts from American Eagle)

Sam and Noah bought matching shirts when they went to American Eagle. It was really funny, especially at the karaoke party when they both went up to sing together.

(above: Sam's amazing tower of cups!!! Austin is on the left)

The karaoke party was funny. They only had really old songs. Me and Tash tried to sing Walking on Sunshine, but it was so pathetic, Sam and Noah came to save us. But we looked more pathetic in a way. Haha another highlight. I have a video of Sam and Noah singing "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". I'll post that.

(above: another amazing stack of cups!!! I can't remember who made it though...)

Sam, Noah, and Austin kept making towers out of everything they could - drinking cups, Smarties, applesauce cups...

(above: Sam wrote Peter Parker on the back of his nametag)

Sam wrote that his name was Peter Parker on the back of his nametag, so I wrote Elizabeth Swann, and Noah wrote Bruce Wayne.

(above: Noah and Sam with their wonderful makeup)

The advisors kept asking for people to volunteer to come up to the front of the room. It was always a surprise what they were going to do. The time Sam and Noah went up, the advisors made the volunteers into couples, and they had 2 1/2 minutes to do eachother's make-up. You should have seen Sam with his bright red lipstick on. By the time I got this picture, it had already faded.

(above: Noah and his makeup)

They said whoever kept their make-up on the whole day, got a prize. So Sam and Noah did. Noah looked just lovely.

(above: Noah, Austin, Sam, me and Tashi in the Hotel pool)

The kids kept playing bad music on their iPods, so Sam and Noah would go put their iPods in, then they would. It turned into a tug-o-war of the iPods. I mean, who wants to listen to the F word 5 million times a minute? Not me!

(above: at the banquet, Doug, Austin, Eden, Tashi, Noah, and Sam)

The last night we had a banquet. We had to dress up. We had a 3 course meal. And intead of having our meals in the tent provided for us, the hotel catered. The hotel catered the rest of our meals too, but this was fancy.

(above: the 4 girls: me, Megan, Eden, and Tashi)

(above: Eden, Tashi, and Noah at the banquet)

Noah and Eden are so cute together. Everyone thought that they were a couple, instead of siblings. Eden goes by her middle name, I found out. She won't tell me her first name. I shall have to discover it!

(above: all of the East Millard court: Sam, Austin, Noah, Tashi, me, Eden, and Megan)

The Holiday Inn rocks!!!!

The dance was so fun. I danced with Sam, Noah, Austin twice, Doug, Conner, and another guy...I can't remember his name, but I remember his face.

(above: the drive home - Sam asleep, Austin, Tashi, and Noah)

Everyone was so tired the 4th day. I was tired, but still hyper. I couldn't sleep in the car. I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

(above: Megan and Eden asleep on the way home)

I had a really fun time. The 2 boys said that they're going to be the leaders next year (well, they want to anyway), and they want to change the bad stuff around there. More modest clothes, cleaner speech, better dancing...

(above: it looks like we're bad kids being taken away)

Can't wait for next year!!!