Marra's Version (!!!)

Before we left for New Hampshire, I wrote a note to all of Marra's teachers, explaining why she would be absent for up to 4 days of school. In each note, I encouraged the teachers to assign a project to Marra based on her experiences chasing candidates. Fortunately, one of her teachers took me up on the offer, and asked Marra to write a one-page summary of the trip. Marra was thrilled (insert sarcasm here).

She refused to write about the trip while we were there, insisting that the trip had to be completed before she could put pen to paper. I insisted that she entertain herself on the 10 hour drive home to Virginia by getting it done. Here below is the first draft, three hand written pages plus recap. Be forewarned, she loves the exclamation point - it's her favorite piece of punctuation:

"On Friday, October 12th, my Dad and I left for Manchester, New Hampshire. We got to see six candidates for the 2008 election! We saw John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Huckabee, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, and Hillary Clinton. We also visited the headquarters of Barack Obama, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Chris Dodd.

Let me start at the beginning. First thing, we went to a global warming conference. We had a huge lunch and listened to a guy make a speech about global warming. Finally, we got to hear three candidates talk. I didn't know that there was so much to know about global warming, and I had never even heard about nuclear power plants!

Nuclear power plants are a form of energy that takes atoms and splits them to cause a mini-bomb. This is cleaner, but the plant lets off a very dangerous waste that can cause cancer. Right now, they just put it in a barrel and either bury it or throw it in the ocean. You can see why that can cause a terrible accident.

After the global warming conference, we went to the Huckabee house party. House parties are my favorite event. You go to somebody's house (in this case because of the global warming theme, it was a green house. A green house is a house that uses solar power. Plus the floor was made of bamboo and the carpet was recycled!) and you can walk around and maybe talk to the candidate personally. (I met Mike Huckabee and got a picture with him!) Then he/she will give a short speech and answer questions. Plus, there's food!

We went to an Edwards event after the house party. John Edwards is my favorite candidate. I like all his ideas the best. This event was a town hall meeting. He gave a speech and answered a few questions. I was so glad to go to bed that night. I was sooooo tired!

The next day, we went to a house party for Edwards. Immediately after, we went to Young's restaurant where Rudy Giuliani was walking around, talking to people! My Dad and I were lucky to get a seat by the door, so we were the first people he met!

I felt like we were stalking Rudy Giuliani! After the restaurant, we saw him at a town hall meeting. I sat on the edge of the balcony so I could look down at him and not have to look over someone's head. He made a speech, then answered a few questions. After that, we just hung out at the hotel pool until we had to go to church.

On Monday, we visited all the candidates' headquarters in Manchester. Some of them were really cool, the Barack Obama's headquarters. The guy who showed us around, Garrett, was very thorough and let us sign the wall to show that we supported Obama. Others, like Rudy Giuliani's headquarters, had people who hardly talked to us. Overall though, most of the headquarters were really cool.

After the headquarters and eating lunch, we went back to the hotel to do homework. Yuck! Anyway, after I did about half of my homework, we went to one more headquarters, then to dinner.

Tuesday was a Hillary Clinton day. We went to her speech in the morning, and a town hall meeting in the afternoon. I waved around a sign I'd made that said, "We drove 500 miles to see you, so CALL ON ME!". I hoped the sign would persuade Hillary to call on us for a question, but it didn't. We did get her to autograph the sign though! Plus, we got a couple of pictures with her!

Overall, it was a really great trip and I learned a lot. New Hampshire is also really beautiful, so I hope I can go back someday."

By Marra...and JS!!!!!