Mo-Kan-E

The majority of us here at upward bound stayed for the conference this weekend, and i am glad i was one of them! we had the most amazing time listening to the speakers, and the sessions, and especially the dance!! One of our speakers was Mike Donahue and man is that guy great at his job! He was really funny and down to earth so it was easy for us all to pay attention to him. he started to get into the serious stuff but we were still listening and he kept my attention the whole way through!! Some things he talked about were judging people at face value. It happens and it sucks. because honestly i don't know why you are who you are and it really isn't any of my business. I personally got to reflect on it because I can be really mean sometimes and really hurtful with my words when I'm upset or in an argument. R5, and i don't remember exactly how it was said, is more focused striving for your dreams then on staying away from drugs and alcohol. You need to have a clean, healthy body to be able to reach your full potential but R5 is happy to see kids with a dream. Another speaker we had was Carlos ~~~. He is a Trio achiever and Upward Bound graduate. He talked about all the good influences he had in his life and how he overcame his challenges to get where he is today and live his dream. He lives his life and takes leadership everyday by the Three R's and The Five B's. Read-for one half hour a day, Run-keeps your body and your mind straight and healthy, and Relationships-having someone their to lean on when times get tough and to celebrate your successes with. The five B's are "Be Brief Brother, Be Brief." He was a great speaker! Earlier that day we had all of our sessions to go to . You were given the choice from four break-out sessions. First i went to the one with Mr. Ragone. He has a Twenty-four year old son who was in a bad accident one morning when he was drinking and driving. It happened so fast and sudden that it could have just as easily been me or my family or Friends. The pictures We saw and the sadness in his voice made a good impression on me and I'm sure the room had a better realization of Drunken Driving. Right at the very end of that session Kelli passed out in class. we all thought she was just really tired but maybe it was something worse. but tough little Kelli came back for the rest of the conference. The next session i went to was Mrs. Courtney Lee's. She is the theatre teacher and a really cool person. Her lesson was mostly three things, owning up, gearing up, and powering up. She did really good with her demonstrations and all her video clips and games she had us do so we could better understand. One of the other sessions was taught by Mike Donahue, the motivational speaker from earlier that morning. I didn't go but some of my team did. i heard it was about our circle of trust and how you know how to trust and when is the right time to start trusting someone. Then we went to lunch!! We went to the monument to that day. All of us at WNCC have at least seen it in the distance or when were driving past it. All the out of town kids looked like they were having a pretty good time though! It was a nice day though and it felt good to be out in the sun! The blue van, which a bunch of us were in on the way up, overheated and it was kind of scary. but after that was all situated and we were back at the dorms getting ready for dinner, we were all hyped up about the dance! after the dinner was the dance and it was crazy-fun!!! We got Cassie out there and she did the worm backwards and it was super cool!! I was going crazy to the Eminem song!! And me and Drew got some crazy butt-dancing going on! I did my best to include everyone but there are just some people who don't like to dance. I dance even though i suck at it! It was really fun and i really liked it all! Can't say that enough! Sunday morning was the Quiz Bowl finals and award ceremony. It sucked we had to get up early because the dance lasted until eleven-thirty then my team had a "sleepover" in DD and Machi's room so we didn't go to bed until nearly Two thirty. Everyone did really well though and congrats on the trophies everyone!! We got to watch the two finalists for the impr0v contest and they were really funny!! I wish i could be that funny!! After the long first week and the long weekend it feels really good to be back home, even for just a few hours. So i Probably win for the longest blog entry!! Hope you enjoyed it and i don't blame you for not reading it all if you didn't!! Please leave me lot's of comments!!