Hey everybody! Before I begin talking about our adventures/misadventures in the short hours we've been here, let me extend another thanks to everyone who made this trip possible. My parents, Bill Stickney and Belinda Nickle, my brothers, Shane and Joshua Stickney, my Aunt Wendy, and my friends, Amber Hunter, Brody Carpenter, Omar Flores, Teddy Steinhorst, and anyone who has chipped in to any STAND activities prior to this one! Your support has been invaluable, especially considering we apparently have to pay 10 dollars a day to use internet here- aka the amount of money it would take to feed 10 starving children- aka students at Weber State University.
But beyond mild complaints about exorbitant fees, this place is actually really awesome! Our hotel is very nice and very huge, and we're only a few blocks away from the national mall, which I'm sure we'll explore extensively as soon as we get some free time. The people running the conference also gave us some free books and a free ticket to the Holocaust museum! Needless to say, we're pretty excited to get started.
Coming in here on Friday, though, there wasn't a lot we could do. We came in a bit late due to a layover in Dallas, so when we got here it was already pretty dark outside. We were all very hungry, so we went to the restaurant in the Hyatt to see what they had. The cheapest thing on the menu was a kid's meal priced at about 17.50, so we decided that whatever that restaurant had to offer wasn't exactly what we were looking for. We wanted to pay about that much for, well, all three of us! So after that we wandered around looking for food, finding only a few cool looking monuments (but too hungry to check them out) and running in to people muttering to themselves on the street (I imagine every big city needs one, or fifty thousand). So after we tried and failed to find food for 40 minutes, we came to the hotel to use the internet, which as mentioned costs ten dollars for a freakin' day! Hungry as we were, we purchased said internet and found a place to buy some really delicious burgers. All in all, a great success.
Friday night we only had one conference-related event, which was a bit of a mingling period which regional schools. We met some interesting people and talked about our ideas, our successes, and what we could work on. This was a good time to get a few ideas going, but the greatest thing I took from that session was inspiration. In Utah, we don't have a lot of really active human rights groups, so I think sometimes it's easy to get demoralized or to feel like we're alone. But from this meeting, which was only a few groups from Western states, was more than enough to make me realize how universal our cause really is. We had people from Missouri to Alaska, and even a man from Costa Rica and another man from Sri Lanka. This is in a room with only a handful of the people at the conference!
Anyway, I need to get going to breakfast, but I will post some more updates and with any luck some pictures tonight. Thanks again for your support!
-Zach
Dude, the basement at Union Station has cheap and delicious food, particularly the orange chicken at the Chinese place. So if you've got some time between conference events or at the end of the day, I don't think it should be too long of a walk. Anyhow, stay classy and have good times in the D.C.
ReplyDeleteIt's always good to be reminded that not everywhere sucks as bad as utah. have fun up there broham!
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