Minnesota

You might have noticed that I've made it a point not to mention the names of the people I reference in my entries. I do this for two reasons: A. to keep myself anonymous, and B. to protect the privacy of others who might not want their doings published online. However, the events that I am about to relate involve 6 people so it's nearly impossible to tell my story without mentioning names and I have nothing negative to mention anyway. Friday, I left for Minneapolis for the Economics Challenge with Elissa (valedictorian of the senior class), Emily (salutatorian of the senior class), Stephanie (#7 in the junior class), Mrs. Newell (my AP History teacher last year), and Mr. Couch (my AP Econ teacher). Our plane was supposed to leave at 7 AM, but we were delayed about half and hour because of a thunderstorm. We flew Delta and I was surprised at how much food they gave us: not only did we get a snack, but we had choices and could take as much as we wanted, but I later found out that was because the flight was operated by Comair, a Canadian company I believe. We made a connection in Cincinnati and arrived in Minneapolis at about noon. I was very pleased to discover a note in my suitcase from TSA indicating that my bag had been opened and searched. That's 3 times in a row for me. (I carry strange things in my bag like textbooks, calculators, and food processors.) We stayed at a Hilton about 2 miles from the airport and half a mile from the Mall of America. Across the street was a wildlife preserve. After we checked in we took a walk through the preserve where we saw grey squirrels, red squirrels, ground squirrels, red-wing black birds, woodpeckers, dragonflies, ducks, geese, a garter snake, a beaver dam, a fossil, and an abandoned goose egg. We returned to the hotel and while Mrs. Newell retired for a nap, the rest of us discovered a Mediterranean restaurant in a city guide and decided we'd go there for dinner. For the next two hours we sat around the radio which we were able to hook up to their iPods and my CD player (ancient technology) and listened to a variety of music, discussed the quality of certain voices, and learned about Emily's obsession with Keith Urban. Did you know he's Australian? It was around 8 when we left for dinner. We hired a taxi, but the driver had never heard of the restaurant we were going to and had no idea how to get there. That worried us a little, but after a phone call, a look at the map, and a few wrong turns he found the place. I was an old house in I guess the college district of St. Paul. We went inside and knew by the smell that it was going to be good, but we also discovered that we should have made reservations: we had to wait about half an hour to be seated. The food was delicious. I had some soup made with chicken broth, herbs, and chick peas and a salad with artichoke hearts, goat cheese, and olives. When we returned to the hotel, I was disappointed to discover that there were no free cookies! Hotels like that always have free cookies or some kind of snack at night! Anyway, after Stephanie and I locked ourselves out of our room, we all watched a bit of TV and went to bed. I got up at 6AM so I would have time to get some reading done before we went to the mall. I only had 10 pages left, but we had to catch the shuttle so I had to leave it unfinished. The mall was huge! It has more than 500 stores, an aquarium, a wedding chapel, a church, a movie theatre, and an amusement park inside. We first went to a bakery in the park where we got some bagels and a giant doughnut. We spent the next probably five hours in the amusement park. We had a caricature drawn of all of us and then visited a few stores. While we were walking around we decided that the easiest way to ensure our victory at the tournament would be to invite the other teams to a party and get them all drunk...I'm not sure why we didn't follow that plan ;). Mrs. Newell returned to the hotel; Mr. Couch, Emily, and Elissa went to the aquarium, and Stephanie and I visited some other stores. I was in desperate need of chocolate, but skipped Godiva because it was just too expensive, but we found a Lindt store (Swiss chocolate) where I bought an 85% cocoa bar and some truffles and Stephanie got some chocolate bunnies on sale from Easter. At about 7:15 we met up with the other three and went outside to catch the shuttle. There we met the other team from Alabama who was competing in the other division. Stephanie was quick to "make friends" and by the time we got off the shuttle she had secured their MySpace addresses or e-mail or something. I was in a hurry to finish my book and had 3 pages left when we had to go to a gathering of all the econ teams downstairs. The fellow in charge of the whole competition was from the University of Minnesota and he was, well.....weird. The other teams there looked defeatable except for one...the Minnesota team looked too smart. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota supplied us with $10 each for dinner so we ordered out $50 worth of Chinese food which was very good, but way too much. I finally finished the book, but then I was hit with the reality that the competition was tomorrow and I hadn't studied in 3 days, so we had sort of a cram session before we went to bed. The next morning we all dressed up and packed up our belongings before heading downstairs to the competition. We were the best dressed team there. We were in suits while almost everyone else was in a t-shirt. We were served breakfast and then began the test. The first test was Micro and it was INSANELY difficult. Out of 450 possible points, our team only had 55, but we were still 3rd with the first team, Minnesota, having about 150. In the second round, Macro, we did better but were more than 100 points behind the second place team, Oklahoma. We did way better in the third round where we only missed three questions and we made a gain of 75 points on the team ahead of us, but we were still behind them 30 points so we were out of the tournament. The top 2 teams competed in a quiz bowl round which was comprised of mostly stupid irrelevant trivia question such as, "How many gallons of oil are in a barrel?" Since neither of the competing teams knew the answer, they offered $10 to anyone in the audience who could. Mr. Couch told me it was 42, so I raised my hand and got the money. Of course Minnesota won and the fellow in charge tried to console us by telling us that Minnesota was only able to win, because unlike most states their state has "educational standards" for economics as if that was the reason they won (can't you see me rolling my eyes). After collecting our t-shirts and Federal Reserve Bank pens we took the shuttle to the airport where we met up with the Oklahoma team. Once again Stephanie quickly "made friends;" she got their contact information and took a picture of them as well. I believe it's her favorite picture from the trip. :) We were early at the airport so we looked around at the various shops and took a picture with a giant snoopy figure before boarding our plane for Cincinnati. As we got off the plane, Elissa and I were expressing our sorrow that our trip was coming to an end, but Mr. Couch said (I might even say prophesied) that the next adventure was probably right around the corner. When we turned that corner, we ran into Ms. Vermilion, another teacher at our school who would be returning to Huntsville on our flight, but we also noticed that under the sign that displayed our flight information were the words: "Flight overbooked; volunteers requested." They needed four people to give up their seats and spend the night in Cincinnati in return for 400 Delta dollars each. We volunteered. Delta gave us meal vouchers and put us up in a hotel, but they couldn't get our baggage off the plane, so we had no clean clothes. Mrs. Newell didn't stay with us. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant and....you know sleeping in a suit is really uncomfortable...the next morning we returned to the airport and ate breakfast at Moe's. Before boarding the plane, I got a SkyMiles account. Our flight was short. When we arrived in Huntsville, our bags were already waiting for us, but alas, mine had not been inspected (I was hoping for 4 in a row). So I got out of school which made me happy, but instead of doing the schoolwork that I had with me I decided to watch the new Harry Potter movie since I had never seen it. Now I'm trying to decide what do with my Delta dollars. Where should I go?