Wow... where to start! Fortunately, I am fairly sure that all four of us are going to blog about this event, so if I miss anything, it'll probably be in one of the other accounts.
We left Morehead early, not as early as I had hoped, due to the fact that I dropped my car keys in the snow as I walked the third of a mile or so up to my parked car. Very frustrating! However, I got into Morehead (BTW the temp was 10 degrees F), picked up the university vehicle and the other three team members and we drove on off to Frankfort. We didn't get lost much, so we managed to arrive in time for Kelli's planned visit with her legislator (or senator... not sure which one it was!). Meanwhile, Brittany and I registered and set up the poster (a complicated affair consisting of alligator clipping the poster to a board - took about one minute!). After that, we wandered down to the snack bar and picked up a drink before heading back to have our photos taken in the big group photo. This was followed by opening speeches. We talked with Dr. Andrews (our university president), and our provost, then went back to "woman" the display.
After a while, we decided to go and see our Rowan county senator, so we did. He was gracious enough to have us in his office and talk to us, and then later on he visited our display. We had our pictures taken with him. We also had our pics taken with the president and Dr. Mattingly (the MSU professor who started up the undergraduate research fellow program). Lunch was taken in the annex (which was enormously crowded), and the rest of the early afternoon was spent at the poster. We had no chairs! Probably ok for our young, fit undergraduates, but us old people were really feeling it!
Once the poster session ended, at about 3pm, we wandered up to the senate (our senator had suggested we go on up and visit the floor). We were given tags, and introduced to the senate. It was a real buzz for me! We sat down and watched/listened for a while, and then recess was called. "Doc" Blevins (our senator) called us up to the front of the room where the senate president was, and we posed for a photo which they are going to send to us. We all felt rather important! LOL.
We left after this, and drove to Lexington where we planned to find a camera. One of my colleagues (thank you Elizabeth!) had given us the name of a good store, so Kelli and Brittany sat in the back with Brittany's iphone and directed us to the store. The guys at the store were helpful, and they gave us a good deal, so we now have DSLR cameras for the trip. These will be particularly useful for the classroom visits, as well as for video recording.
Next, we stopped off at Best Buy to see about iPads, but they weren't able to do what we needed them to do with the tax, so we just left. We'll probably just order online. After that, it was dinner time and we parked ourselves at Logan's for dinner. We talked a lot about New Zealand (oh, and by the way, we listened to NZ music in the car, as well as "My Old Kentucky Home") and had a great time.
We left Lexington at about 7pm and drove home. I dropped everyone off, dropped off the car keys, jumped into my car which of course immediately started (NOT), and eventually got home around 9ish. My husband (Peter) welcomed me with the news that he had found the car keys after a couple of trips up and down the driveway, so that was a relief.
After that exhausting day, I simply crashed into bed at about that point! :-)
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