#nwcta

Continued from Part II...!

Return to the A-Tech Chamber After a very brief jog upstairs, I returned to a much-more-populated A-Tech room. The group I hung with consisted primarily of Connor, Vivian, Parker, Spenser, and Krystal (though others like Kaili and Jackie were there, too). I remember when I entered, Parker was giving just about every description there was of Connor to some girls. LOL.

After that, we all kind of just hung out. Apparently a lot of others went elsewhere, like McDonald's to eat, since the food at NWCTA wasn't exactly the greatest. When the discussion died down, I did some more reading in Return of the King (Quarter 4 Book Analysis), while Mr. Henderson switched from playing Bejeweled to Fruit Ninja. That guy is awesome. Jesstin came back, and I did some wandering around the school since Northwest is so interesting. During the time of the further reading, the upperclassmen (like Jared, Victor, Nick, Patricia, Bea, basically everyone else) came in, and my golly, there were a lot of 'em. But as time flies, we soon enough were ready to make the journey downstairs.

Award Ceremony That show hall thing was huge. I liked how it had the lights at the top, that sort of reminded me of the way movie theaters did things. Then there was the wooden, somewhat staggered ceiling... Anywho, some chairs were put out for us so we didn't have to stand, and our aforementioned group chilled in the back on the right side. There was another A-Tech group with Kyle, Caitlin, and a few others further up, as well as the upperclassman group on the left side. I was surprised to see such a massive sea of middle schoolers, too!

When the event began, some Nevada politician spoke to us about a student legislature and we got some application forms if we were interested. Then there came the awards. After grinding through the nerve-racking portion of it all, Jared took home Senior Individual Website, Victor and Nick got Group Individual Website, Parker placed Second in the paper division, Bea got second in the Individual Performance, Tim and Phalguni got third in Group Performance, and Jesstin got a coolio Nuclear award, too. I was clapping so much, my hands hurt afterwards. It was great to see all those A-Tech victories, and considering Jared was practically my NHD tutor, he deserved to win! After the event, I went over to congratulate the seniors before going back to join my peoples.

Epilogue (just waiting to leave) With the festivities concluded, the party began to disband. We went outside into the burning heat for awhile, where we got to see people taking out some mighty fine project boards. Since the event was over an hour or so early, I called up the mother to get me, but since my 'lil siblings picked up the phone, I simply had them relay the message. Vivian also got a picture of this group of dudes who all wore black and white. So with the departure of Parker, Spenser, Krystal, and Jesstin, our party of Connor, Vivian, and I went back inside for a bit.Then we went up front, where we derped around for awhile. I remember we discussed something about the FUN assembly. Odd that mother never came.

After the departure of my sophomore people, Victor, Nick, and Ms. Woods came over. It's funny because Nick Winner got a "Winner's packet." And apparently with Victor, his mom just sees competition victories as just other expenses (because they kind of are). Then there was some talk of DC, some happenings with the upperclassman, college acceptances, etc. Finally, the mother came because the little people never bothered to get off League to go wake her up. But at least she came! Anywho, that concludes that.

Continued from Part I...!

Arrival to Lunch at NWCTA So after a quick journey downstairs, I arrived in NWCTA's quad, where they were serving lunch. The food was pretty derp. You could get basically a freezer-food equivalent of a personal pan pizza (cheese or sausage & pepperoni), a Capri-Sun or water, and a cookie (oh, those are funny). Anyway, and got my lunch, glanced around the area for A-Tech people, found Jesstin, and went on over. Turns out he was talking to some coolio LVA girls (a talkative one, goofy one, and sarcastic one), so it was pretty darn interesting to hear about the culture of their school in comparison to A-Tech.

Lunch at NWCTA I've no idea what Jesstin and the others were talking about before I arrived, but almost immediately after I showed up, the two of us started exchanging experiences of the morning, since I was wondering what happened to all the other A-Tech people (and here I thought there was only a handful of A-Tech people even there). From that, I learned most of the others went elsewhere to eat (considering the food at NWCTA wasn't the most exciting, anyway). Apparently, Jesstin was able to get his mind-boggling project to rotate by the awesome powers of a Lazy Susan. Eventually he proceeded to open up his cookie, which was apparently a pretty big feat since the cookies were packaged in a really weird and complex way (and they had to stab theirs with a straw). So then I opened mine, too, and we pretty much blew their minds with our A-Tech powers. I don't remember the exact flow of the conversations from there, but overall, we were there for a pretty long time since I eat ridiculously slowly. When times got quiet, usually the talkative one tried to pick up the conversation again. One of the first of those conversation-starters was using some inside-joke that that she'd been a vegetarian for 14 hours or so, counting the time she was asleep the previous night. (Hey, I thought it was funny.) Random Talk at Lunch As for LVA culture, they were talking about how lunch there is pretty chaotic, with people singing all the time (and apparently doing random serenades to strangers, lolwut?). They also made a joke about how people are ridiculously open about everything at LVA. Either way, it was pretty interesting to hear about their school in comparison to the relatively-tame A-Tech society. The goofy one also made a comment that we were "AmAsian," and I was like "omg, I'm using that" (and I use it). The talkative and goofy ones were pretty punny people, considering the goofy one (who also has a love for food) used to be a Tumblrist or something, which embarrassed the relatively quiet sarcastic one. (heh heh...) Often I forget that most high schools in this valley don't have Asians as a majority group... At one point, the goofy one commented about the gigantic pigeons of NWCTA eating the scraps of the lunch people. And also interesting enough, one flew right past our table really close by. Real city pigeons, those were. Then there was this other time where the talkative one was getting schooled in French by the sarcastic one. I keep forgetting other high schools teach languages other than Spanish, too...

Since Jesstin and the sarcastic/quiet girl were done eating early, they went off somewhere else, while I continued to finish up my food. Towards the end of my eating (probably 12:45ish), Connor and some other A-Tech people called from the balcony above, so with my food finished, I returned to the A-Tech room above.

On 3/28 and 4/6/13, I did interviews for a Summer Business Institute internship and for the National History Competition. Both experiences were pretty darn new for me, so on this day I shall share the latter with you! Here's my website entry, btw.

Making the Journey to NWCTA With all the directions printed and spiffy clothes donned for the third time (second time was Easter 2013), I hoped we'd be ready by 11am. However, Mother wasn't going too quickly, so we weren't quite set 'til 11:10am. On the journey there, she took a few wrong turns, extending a 20min drive to 30min. So at 11:40am, supposedly with 10min to spare, it was time to explore the school!

Arrival at NWCTA So at first, I entered what seemed to be a side-hallway. Some people were selling shirts, and there were signs telling of all sorts of directions to travel. After some stumbling around, I eventually encountered Joe, who happily directed me to the upstairs area where A-Tech was lounging. There I briefly met up with Parker, Mr. Henderson, and Ms. Woods, before descending to the outside of Room 313, where I'd be waiting for my interview. It was totally awkward waiting for the interview, since a bunch of other kiddos were gathered around, most all of them with name tags. Luckily, I was reassured that these weren't required. Eventually Zack showed up (even though he was really, really sick that day), so then I had someone to talk to. Kudos for the effort, yo. Apparently the interviews were running 20min behind, to the point where a dude even came by and told us we could go get lunch already. I wasn't actually brought in for my interview until around 12:10pm. Oh, the suspense.

National History Day Interview First of all, this interview was sooo much chiller than the interrogation-like SBI interview of the week prior. Plus, I was only talking to one person. And for much of the interview, I just had to point out things in the website, anyway. So as for the way the interview went down, I basically had this fairly young, cheery lady have me explain why I chose my topic (looking at you, Byzantines), what was the most interesting primary source (looking at you, Atatürk's speech), and what can be gained from this topic (looking at you, Brits, Turks, and Arabs). Also, I knew we were supposed to shake their hand first, so that definitely prevented any awkwardness! After the interview, I explained how it went to Zack, then I made the ascension back up to the A-Tech room. Saw Mallory on the way, too. Upon arriving back to the A-Tech lounge, Kaili greeted me, told me everyone else went to lunch, then directed me to the food tickets (so kind). And thus began my journey to lunch. Quad of NWCTA Now I must say, the quad of NWCTA is pretty darn awesome. I honestly spent enough time studying how it was designed, I could probably draw parts of it off of memory! So instead, I shall describe it to you. From the door into the quad (where the food was on the right), if you turn left, there's this lower area where the majority of the circular tables were set up. At the end of this area was a pretty big 'ol stage, with some spotlights, too. And really high up above this entire section was about five or so triangular tarps (the kind of things you see in typical Vegas playgrounds). This entire area was enclosed by some outdoor staircases with outdoor walkways, reminding me of Cimarron Memorial HS, but less open horizontally. Anywho, outside the tarp-enclosed  lower area were a bunch of pretty tall palm trees, so typical Vegas vegetation, there. I loved how NWCTA had such wide windows, too!