Busy As Can Be!!

Hey guys! It's Alissa again, coming at you with another update on how my internship is going. I first want to start out by apologizing for not writing this sooner! I promise I have a legitimate reason as to why, which you will read about in a very short while. So get comfy, grab a snack, because my weeks have been nothing but EVENTFUL since I've last stopped by to write.

Let me just say how AMAZING Franklin County's Extension office is!! They are super nice, friendly, warm hearted, and really make me feel a part of the team. May 26th - May 30th was filled with preparation work at the office, with an exception to the 27th where we taught Lemonade Wars at Good Shepard Elementary School. With Longest Day of Play, our trip to Washington D.C., and Teen Conference fastly approaching, we had to make final preparations that week.

May 31st - June 6th Whitney, my 4-H supervisor, Ms. Shawn Moore, 4-H program director for Kentucky State University, and I took 7 children to Washington D.C. to attend the Citizen Washington Focus Conference at the national 4-H conference center in Chevy Chase, Maryland. On this trip we had a lot of first time flyers, first time in D.C., first time riding the metro, first time meeting other children from Nebraska and Tennessee, first time at the monuments, and so much more fantastic experiences. The purpose of this trip was to teach delegates how to write a bill and inform them on the legislative process that each bill goes through in congress. They got to discuss some real live issues that impact Americas today such as Body Cameras, Water Privatization, Mandatory Vaccination, and the Regulation of Drone Usage in a mass assembly setting and had the opportunity to argue in affirmation or opposition and vote on each bill. The delegates also got the chance to meet John Yarmuth and Mitch McConnell, Kentucky's Representative and senator, to talk about their journey to working at the Capital and advocate for 4-H.

 We also got to see every monument in the National Mall and surrounding area including Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Civil War Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Iwo Jima, Washington Monument, Mount Vernon, World War II Memorial, Pentagon Memorial,and Arlington National Cemetery, had a chance to visit Fort Myer for a show entitle Twilight Tattoo, visit the animals at the Smithsonian National Zoo, Smithsonian Museum of Air & Space, Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Holocaust Museum, the African American Civil War Museum, and much more! Lets just say we walked all of D.C. several times, saw and learned many different things, and by the end of the trip the children, and definitely myself, were EXHAUSTED!! All of the children that we brought on the trip, including all of the adults, learned something new about how are government is run, our history as a nation, and made more memories and friends than we can count! This trip will definitely be one of my highlights this summer being a 4-H intern!