Brooke in DC

A message from Brooke:

As most people know I was nominated for NYLC (National Young Leaders Conference). I was the only person from my school who went and it was a great honor. I went to Washington D.C. and they had us busy from 7:30 in the morning 'til 11 at night. At the hotel we were assigned to a group that we met with every day. This group was our Leadership Group Meeting (LGM). In our LGM we discussed what qualities a person had to have in order to be a leader. We came up with 2 pages front and back full of qualities. We voted on a president and my new friend Josh from Mississippi won the election. We also held our own press conferences. At the press conferences we had to ask the President (Josh) questions about the war on Iraq, the economics issues, and what would happen if his plan had failed. During the conferences I was the Economist. LGM wasn't all just business though we had fun too. We played games and I even learned that our leader, Anthony, was really good at break dancing and a really good singer!
At the hotel we also had Model Congress (MoCo). MoCo was to prepare us for a session where we were to have Cacauses and Committees. There were 4 committees. The Democrat Criminal Justices Committee, Republican Criminal Justices Committee, Democrat Telecommunications Committee, and the Republican Telecommunications Committee. I was on the Democrat Criminal Justices Committee. The Cacauses A-G were democrat and the Cacauses H-L were republican (democrats had majority because of the congress today). The Cacauses were to come up with amendments for 2 bills, a criminal justice bill and a telecommunications bill. The Committees were to ask the Cacauses questions about the amendments they had come up with. Committees voted on the amendments and turned them into a bill. The next day we had a huge session with all 380 people and voted on the bills to make them laws. Both bills passed and became laws.

We didn't just stay in the hotel though we also went to museums, monuments, memorials, and shopping. Some of the museums that I went to were the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, and the Holocaust Museum. I had the most fun at the National Museum of Natural History.

One of the monuments that I went to was the Washington Monument. Some of the memorials I went to were the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, and the WWII Memorial.

The shopping was great and my new friends and I had a lot of fun.

We had some pretty fun nights at the hotel. We had a karaoke night, a talent show, and on our last night in D.C. we had a dance at the Marriott! My friends and I had a lot of fun and even though I didn't know them for that long, I still miss them and I am keeping in touch with them.

Thank you again to everyone who helped to make it possible for me to go on this great trip!

Love,

Brooke