A dozen doughnuts

Yearbook conventions are the best. (Well, if you want to get technical about it, it’s the Journalism Education Association’s high school journalism convention, but we all know what the best part of high school journalism is–yearbooks!)

Anyways. After waking up at 3:45 a.m. on Wednesday morning for our flight out at 6, I proceeded to have a deliciously relaxing day chatting with security guards as they oh-so-tactfully told me that the way I was proceeding through their security line was entirely unacceptable. (Apparently 5′ 10″ Dutch girls with red basketball backpacks look like horrifying terrorists.)

After that, the string of lovely experiences extended to include sprinting through airports, and drinking cheap and overpriced coffee. (Don’t you just love airports?)

By the time we finally made it to Washington, D.C. and wrapped our California brains around the fact that water does fall from the sky in some areas of the world–for those of you back home, it’s called “rain” and it’s actually pretty awesome, if you have something called an “umbrella”–we were thoroughly tired.

Thursday was sightseeing day. We went to pretty much every museum in the area except the Journalism museum. (Irony, anyone?) But we did manage to find a Starbucks and drool over the expected tourist attractions, so I’d say we were extremely successful. Plus we ate inordinately large amounts of food, which just completed my good mood.

Then, 7:30 p.m. rolled around, and who was speaking? Nick Clooney! Keynote has never been cooler, at least not in my four years of convention-going (though a few have come close). He was witty, humorous, and provided some great insights into journalism today as well as its changing dynamics over the years. There was even a Q&A session afterwards, which was cool. What a great speaker, and an even more amazing journalist! I almost forgot he was George Clooney’s dad. (Almost.)

So, now that the tourist stuff is over–including me daring the skinniest girl at our school to eat a dozen doughnuts, her taking the dare, and her subsequent failure to eat more than two–let the sessions begin!