First day Frenzy

Today was our first day of competition, a hectic but fun day. We were supposed to wake up at 5:45 this morning, and the girls room managed to do so, however the boys decided to use Tim's iPad as an alarm. Tim forgot to set the time on his device to the proper time zone, so we woke up an hour late. Still managed to leave the hotel by 7:00!

At the Sheraton, the first task was to help Quin set up in the Extemp Prep Room, which is perhaps the most terrifying room at the tournament. Here's some pictures:

If you don't know what a normal prep room looks like at a normal tournament, you know that it's usually about 1/10th of this size. Intimidating, I know.

After getting Quin all set up, I proceeded to Tim's Congress chamber, Senate Chamber 5, to sit in on some legislative action. After nearly falling asleep during debate on a bill that would cut military aid to Pakistan and replace it with civilian aid (money and food), I went to the 38th floor of the Sheraton and experimented with the zoom on my camera. A picture of the DART rail system we've been using:

 I met up with John Garrity, our good friend from St. Pius, who is also an "observer" at the tournament. We went to a killer pizza parlor and had some delicious pizza.

After eating, we made our way up to the 37th floor to watch some more Congress, which was more interesting the second go-around. Tim was elected as Presiding Officer (essentially a Speaker of the House position) in the second session, and he did a great job. Unfortunately, although the New Mexico Speech and Debate Association enforces the NFL's rules at local tournaments, many of the standard procedures from New Mexico congress did not carry over to the National level, which made it a bit difficult for Tim as a P.O. The judges thought he did great though.

After scoping out the general competition, I'm a bit underwhelmed. The Senators in the congress rounds I observed just weren't all that impressive, but perhaps it was simply a day-one parasite. We'll see tomorrow!

Tim feels confident about his performance today, as do the rest of our Qualifiers. Erin claims confidence that she won all four of her debate rounds today, but we'll try not to jinx anything. Quinlan says the prep room and overall atmosphere is intimidating to the point of throwing him off a bit in his speeches, but we're confident that the combination of his skill and high level of preparedness will help him pull through. Marc, Jessi, Madi, and Poiette all witnessed some extremely good Duo's today in their rooms, but are content with their performances.

There are two more preliminary rounds left for all events, set to go off tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon marks the beginning of out-rounds, and we will receive postings tomorrow around mid-day. You can expect more coverage of our team for the rest of the trip, so be sure to check the blog out every once in a while!