APDA Nationals 2014

Another year and another debate season has passed, making me feel even older than I normally do when I meet novices. This class of seniors is the first set of seniors who I did not compete with at any given point in time, which is crazy!

Day 1

This year Nationals was held at UPenn. I drove down with Rocky, Allison and Greg on Friday and arrived right after round 1 and just in time for Round 2! Later that night I had a few people over which turned into a dino and Fordham party, which was nice! However, that turned into a very late night...

Day 2

Gareth and I, my roomie for the weekend, showed up for round 3, but were not paired in :( so I decided to take some pictures on campus! 

After judging the rest of the afternoon, it was time for my favorite part of Nationals, the banquet and senior speeches! At the banquet it is tradition for the senior to give farewell speeches before the break. It is also an occasion for everyone to get dressed up and take lots of pictures. 

Everyone gave very sweet speeches, a lot of shout out to significant others. Lots of people in the APDA web I guess!

This year the banquet was held at Hibachi Japanese Steakhouse, which was on a pier right by a bridge and overlooked the water. They also had a DJ and a dance floor, which was a nice change!

It was so nice to hear everyone's speeches. Sadly many of them were cut short due to time constraints of the venue. 

After the banquet, I went on some adventures at the hotel, but didn't have much luck making it to the roof of the hotel :P

Day 3 

Rocky drove me and Allison home back to NY after dropping off a broken, literally, Ashley off at the airport. Sadly Ashley has broken her ankle at Nationals :(However before heading out, we stopped by Tony Luke's for some cheesesteaks, but it was closed due to Easter... FAIL! Nonetheless it was still a nice car ride with good friends. 

I had an amazing weekend seeing everyone, especially all of my out of state and dino (alumni) friends who I do not see that often. Thank you to the UPenn Debate Society and the tab staff for hosting and running Nationals! 

Most importantly thank you to the awesome friends I've made and the debate community for being so amazing, you are the reason I keep coming back. You're stuck with me for the long haul I like to call life! 😉

Big Bronx 2013

This past weekend marked the 43rd New York City Invitational and my... 11th Big Bronx?!?  WOW, how crazy is that?!

I had a great time meeting all of the new novices and seeing all of the JV & varsity students again!

Housing on Friday was a bit of  a headache as a had a slight error and a few students left without housing... After a few frantic phone calls we got it all resolved and Saturday was less hectic.

I judged 2 PF rounds on Saturday and quite a few outrounds on Sunday (Triples, Doubles, Octos & Semis).

Even with the shorter day today, I am still exhausted!  Hopefully I can sleep it off this weekend!

Yale IV 2011

Just got back from a fun weekend at the Yale IV!  It was a good weekend - Silly Yale Tab Staff had me chairing all my panels... LOL.  I saw some good rounds and some not so good rounds.  Good times!

My favorite round has to be - This house believes politicians should be allowed to become lobbyists and vice versa.

The first half was terrible, but the 2nd half - two Vermont teams were really good.  The Government Member had me shedding a tear and his speech really made me love America! :)

The party was at a frat house - very Rutgers-esque and similar to any RU party, was broken up by the cops lol.

Unfortunately, the team was being lame and left early... along with the key to get back onto campus...  So... me being me and slightly out of it, attempted to climb the very large gate to get into Old Campus.  However Paul and Gabe did not think I could do it and flipped out before I could make up and over..

And of course some of my fav people who I had not seen in a while came/did not expect to see were at the IV, including Ellie, JJ, Michael and Andrew!

All in all - great weekend!

Big Bronx Complete!!!

IT'S OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

Housing went pretty well for the most part, people knew what they had to do, who to pick up, etc.  There was a small mishap, but it was easily solved with a girl on standby.  Thank goodness she stayed!

Columbia Parli Tournament

This past Friday/Saturday I was judging at Columbia.

It was definitely a blast from the past with all the high school debaters now joining the college parli debate circuit (APDA).

I saw Abhi who went to my HS AFTER I graduated, Thurm who I had judged throughout his HS career and Andrew, used to coach at Bronx who I finally convinced to join the circuit!

I also met the new Fordham novices, they seem like a good crowd now.  I think Fordham is heading toward the right track - old school, fun Fordham again!  Which makes me super happy!!! I wont go into too much detail, but those who spoke to me know my take on the team...

Between Round 2 & 3, Lily kicked off the first "Women's Initative" mixer event, which was great!  It was nice for all the girls to be in a room together to talk about girl power, but idk it was weird that it was segregated - not a big fan of that... kind of defeats the purpose to some extent...  But good in theory.

I had the pleasure of staying with Clara Friday night - so of course I had an awesome night.  I <3 that girl!!!

The team rented out a frat house for the party which was pretty sweet to say the least.  I paried a bit w/ Eric, who I thought hated me... I guess he doesnt! :)  And it was just good to finally see him in a different light - other than that debater from Scarsdale - lol.

On Saturday I stayed til semis and FINALLY got to judge and see Coulter (part of Harvard Lion King) debate!  He was fabulous!  Sadly I had to drop Clara/Mark to them though :(

Happy to say that Andrew/Sam won the Novice division and Coulter/Loomis won the entire tournament!

Congrats! :)

NY State Tournament

The past 2 days, I judged at the new NY State tournament at Brooklyn Tech.  The tournament itself was kind of ehh, but the hanging out part was fun.  I got to see and hang out with a lot of friends who I havent seen in a while--Caitlin, Andy, Andrew, Matt, Mira, Taarini, Lev, Tom and of course Jon, just to name a few

I stayed with Caitlin last night, which was a lot of fun.  Caitlin, Andy and I went out for dinner at Umi Nom, this cute Asian restaurant last night.  Afterward Caitlin and I wandered around Fort Green for dessert, and ended up getting this salty/sweet caramel sundae thing.

Today was a lot more fun, but dull at the same time.  I judged up til semis and didn't squirrel!!! :)

Took me 2 hours to get home though... I"m so done for the night lol

Black Knight Invitational

West Point got me a PUPPY!!!!!!!

Only team to follow through and deliver! <3

Weekend in Scarsdale

This past weekend I judged at Scarsdale for their annual HS debate tournament.  I had a great time with Andy and Andrew, especially Friday night!  I also got to see a lot of the awesome Bronx Science team which I LOVE!  You would not believe how many times I got asked "Are you judging at Harvard?" and getting sad faces when I said no.  I feel so loved! :)

Back from Botswana!!!

The trip to Botswana was tons of fun!

Here are a few of the major highlights:

• Getting in on in the bathroom... by 2 girls
• Rob, Ian and every other boy getting hit on by Frank
• Game Drive & Cultural Tour
• Becoming a Tourist Attraction
• YAKKA PARTY!!! 
• Seeing LIVE animals - Giraffes, Warthogs aka Pumba
• Almost starting a fight between Chris (Ireland) and La Verne (US)
• Witnessing the aftermath of a bus blowing up
• Getting American on stage dancing to "Down" 
• Peter accidentally eating a bug
• And of course all the boys!

Big Bronx

Big Bronx was this past weekend - Round Robin on Thursday and the actual tournament Friday to Sunday. 

Thursday

The round robin went well, I judged the 1st round of the Congress RR, first ever for us!  It was pretty cool.  I was pretty freaked out about judging for the first time, but I got the hang of it by the end, and had similar rankings to the guy running the round (who was surprisingly my age).

Afterwards, we went to Japonica for dinner, which was a lot of fun!  I got to sit with Lev, my new college policy friends, and Jon's friend Mike from Vassar.  Lots of sushi!!! Yum!!! :)

Friday

I was in charge of the housing portion of reg, I got to see a lot of old friends and Bx Sci alum.  I only had to judge 1 flight today, due to housing stuff.  Which ended up going pretty smoothly!

Saturday

Apparently, everyone thought I was pretty calm yesterday and that I did a goo job!  Jon basically told me I could come in whenever I wanted today, so I skipped round 4, and came to judge round 5-7.  Surprisingly, I only judge flight B's.

I got out of going in tomorrow!!!  So I will sleep in!

Overall it was a good weekend - I got to see some of my favorite people - Melanie, Rohan, Angela, Lev, Jordan, and got to meet and hang out w/ the Bx Sci debate team!  <3

They are so awesome! :)

NYU

This weekend was NYU.

It was interesting...  I was debating with Tim this weekend.  Being somewhat fed up with the team decided that we would have tons of fun and why not drink.  So after round 1 we had some drinks, perhaps a shot.. or 3.. this lead to me being drunk for round 2.  I was drunk but fine up to my PMR, which went something like

Me: Madam Speaker, I'm not feeling too well, I think I need to sit down....

Needless to say, by the end of the speech, my head was in my hand, and it was bad.  However I was fine for round 3 after sitting for a bit, Tim on the other hand... got worse.

I had managed to corrupt some of the novii, yes I was the bad influence for once! lol

After rounds on Friday night, Jayme, BoMa, and I headed to McFadden's for Ashley's 22nd birthday celebration.  It was a lot of fun, people were really surprised I had come - lol. We ended up staying really late and not getting back until 4 AM, when I found out that Gareth had gotten food poisoning and had to go to the hospital :(

2.5 hours later, I was off to the Metro North to catch the train on our way to NYU for day 2, which was less fun/eventful.

All in all, it was a really fun weekend! :)

UMCP Tournament / Spring Preview

UMCP

I was just in MD for the past two days for the UMCP tournament.

I traveled for oh 17 hours-8.5 hrs each way, and was there for less than a day, maybe 16 hrs top? I left Fordham at 4, right after class, traveling with a duffel bag, brownies and a plant in hand. I got to Penn Station for the 5:30 bus to DC, but got there around 5, as they said we should. Turns out the bus was 1/2 hour late, so we didn't leave until a little after 6 PM... The bus was filled, and they had to turn people away. I didn't get to DC until close to midnight, and not to UMCP until 12:30 if not later, my cell phone had died. From DC, I had to take the metro from their chinatown to the College Park metro station, and a shuttle bus to the Student Center from there. However I did meet a nice girl on the bus! :) She walked me to the Metro station and even offered to let me stay w/ her if i coudlnt get in touch w/ anyone. While taking the shuttle bus, i met a cute "wilderness paramedic," Alex, who gave me his # :)

The tournament had been done for a while by the time I got there, and everyone was at Johnny Mathias' place for the party. Marisol had told me that Ali would come get me, however, it did not seem like it. Turns out Matt Katz had come to get me, which was awesome! Eventually I had got there, however most of the Fordham team (minus Greg and Emillie) had left already :( I stayed for a bit, but would have preferred to have been w/ the rest of the team. Soon after the party had gotten broken up by the cops... Luckily cops at UMCP only break up parties and possibly fine you but thats about it.

I finally got back to housing and saw MATT SPOTTS!!! I haven't seen him in forever, as he is studying to be a Jesuit in Detroit, MI. He's teh only reason I made the trip down.

The next morning I judged like 2 rounds, and that was it. I got to see Victorio, so that was cool.

So when I finally got to the tournament, I learned that I would not be able ride back w/ the team and needed to find an alternate way home. I asked Sarah and Liz Zahler from NYU, how they were getting home, to see if I could take the train home with them. Apparently they had driven up. So after the team had left, I had thanked Liz for giving me a ride, and she said "yeah... about that...., we need to talk about that."

I was a bit bummed that the whole team was going to Sarah's after the tournament, but w/e there wasn't anything I could do about it.

Freaking out as we're walking to the car, I get a lecture from liz. Basically she was upset, cuz she felt that she was cohersed into giving me a ride back to NYC, I should've not been baking on them, and that if I needed a ride I should've asked sooner.... First, I didn't find out til I got my phone on (I had to stand in the corner of the metro station like a sketchy person to charge it) and I wasn't going to ask at the party - that would've been awkward. Second, I was not relying on them for a ride, I initialy asked them thinking they were taking the bus and wanted to take the bus home w/ them, and said I would've taken the bus home if necessary.

The car ride was not as bad or awkward as I had anticiapted thankfully! We were making good time, until we got stuck in Lincoln Tunnel traffic for 2 HOURS!!!

Eventaully I got home at 12:30 yet again, another 6.5 hrs travelling. Some how the team had gotten back an hour before me, while leaving the same time as us, and going to Sarah's for dinner?!? At least I got to see Matt Spotts.

Spring Preview
Today was Spring Preview. It was sort of a bust, as it was in the Ramskellar this year, and not many people made it down there as a result.

I saw Sean Frey, who I met in a car when Jan Michael drove me to Fordham from Big Bronx last year (Oct 2007). I gave Sean and his mom a tour and chilled w/ them for a while and called it a day.

Rutgers Tournament

Congrats to Peter & Sarah, Meg & Caitlin, Robert & Emillie!!!

This weekend was the Rutgers Tournament, we had a decent contingent go - Greg & I, Meg & Caitlin, Peter & Sarah, and Robert & Emillie debated, while Gareth was judging. It was a pretty good weekend, we had 2 teams (Meg & Caitlin, Peter & Sarah) break to quarters in varsity, 1 in novice team (Robert & Emillie) to semi's, I got to see Steph, and had some luck this weekend! And, I even got a bed, and managed to pack light for once! (I figured out it was the bag itself that had been weighing me down)

Friday
The day started out the same as usual, I went to work study, then packed, saw Jenny, and headed out to the Ram Van. We took the Ram Van down to LC, then the 1 to Penn Station. While waiting for the train (we had a decent amount of time) I got a KRISPY CREAM DONUT and strawberry lemonade - yum! Finally it was time to board the train, we took the 2:01 PM Express Trenton Bound train to New Brunswick. The ride was very fast, and only took about 1/2 hr, who knew we were so close? When we got to the stop we werent sure it was ours, and ran off the train like maniacs. Luckily they waited for us all to get off, or else we would have been riding the train for anotehr 40 mins to the next stop - Princeton.

We finally arrived to GA, we were super early (3PM) and was the first team there, there wasn't even anyone from Rutgers there yet. Eventually Dave (who I've met 9453445654 times before) and Kyle got to GA.

We just chilled for a while. There was an interesting field of debaters present - Princeton (Dan and Zayn were both here instead of Chicago?), NYU, some Hopkins kids (Vivek & Childers), Leah from AU, Sam Hynes from W&M was judging, one team from Yale, F&M, TCNJ, etc. It was a small tournament, as there were only 30 teams. It was oringally supposed to be 32, but some teams had dropped causing them to cancel Round 4, since Princeton had both sent approximately 8 teams each, making it hard to pair rounds. This was good, cuz we got to sleep in though! :)

After Round 2, Steph had met up and got dinner w/ us, we went to the "Fat Cat" which had some crazy sandwiches. Imagine a sandwich with any and all possible fried food... After that Steph came to watch one of my rounds. We then got housing, and headed out to the party.

The party was interesting to say the least. We got there relatively early, we were ready to head over there before the host was even home. When we got there there wasn't really anyone there yet. But there was some alcohol, however the team was being super annoying and controlling. The NOVICE, FIRST YEAR debaters who were FRESHMEN, were telling me - a JUNIOR VARSITY debater that I shouldn't drink the jungle juice. I was outraged, and annoyed, but I didn't want to get into a disagreement so I had Kyle make me a mixed drink instead :) The novii went down for drinks and the same thing occurred.

After a while Steph and I just chilled independently, after a while Emillie came up to me and said the team was leaving, it wasn't even 12:30 yet... LAME! So I stayed later w/ Steph. Soon after Eric, the Rutgers president convinced me to have a shot... or 2 by the end of the night. Needless to say I was a bit tipsy by the end of the night.

After the team had left, Steph and I hung out w/ the TCNJ kids. That was interesting... Long story short, one of the boys (who shall remain namess) was trying to hook up w/ me... (don't worry it's me, and well all know I'm not that type of girl)


Saturday
Apparently the party had gotten raided not too long after I had left, and people were maised and arrested. And I bumped into the TCNJ boy, and he was supernice the next day, meaning I wasnt just some girl he wanted a drunken hookup with :)

Breaks were announced, and we had 2 teams in the varsity break, and one in the novice break. In the words of Matt Spotts, YEAH FORDHAM WHOO!!!!!!

After Quarters, we all took the train home, and hit up White Castle.

Princeton Tournament & APDA Elections

This past weekend was Princeton and APDA Elections.

The tournament was a lot of fun. We got to travel with the lovely Stanford boys. Rich Boltizar was nice enough to pick us (Gareth, Jayme and myself) Friday morning in his minivan. We chilled for a little while, in my room, then headed to Newark Airport to pick up Anish and the rest of the Stanford Team. When we got there, it turned out that one of the kids had poison oak... which was contagious.

We then dropped the boys off at the hotel, and Rich then dropped us off at the tournament. We got there super early, around 3-ish? in fact we were the first people there! Crazy huh?

This weekend I debated w/ Gareth, who was surprisingly quite calm this weekend. The tournament was loose linked (Dan Rauch had come up with the links)

As round 1 was about to be released, my new expansion school UAlbany came!!! Crystal, who I had been emailing, and I sorta gave each other that "are you her..." look and sure enough we were right! The UAlbany kids were super nice, and very willing to learn. I took them around to meet everyone, which they seemed to enjoy.

Round 1
We hit Jake (Campbell) and his partner Evelyn, with Dan Rauch as our judge
THW ban the bomb (we would ban cluster emissions)
This round was a lot of fun, Jake and I had talked a lot over the week, and it was nice to finally debate him. UAlbany watched our round, and really liked it - I even got to teach them how to flow before the round.

In round 2, we hit a MIT/Brown(Josh Lo's hybrid from NYU) hybrid
Over turn the courts decision in the 2000 election between Gore and Bush
This round was pretty awful as it was so unclear and just boring

In Round 3, we hit Jordan (from NYU) and his partner w/ Jason Herron as our judge
Beauty - allow graffitti in designated public places
This round was fun, Jordan and his partner were really good, and it was awesome having Jason as our judge. This was his 2nd time judging me at the tournament (he had judged me and frank my freshman year)

Round 4
We hit MIT Novices w/ "Marty" as our judge (apparently he was TD of the Princeton Tournmaent last year)
THB that we should save the schools - abolish no child left behind
Meh, that's all I'll say about the round

Round 5
We hit Jim and Tyger (who apparently likes to be called Tuff) from WP w/ Treavor Gleason as our judge
Get rid of indefinite detention
This round was really fun, I got to debate with some of my really good friends on the circuit. I had never hit a WP team, so that was cool. The case was stereotypical WP, but it was a good round, but I guess Treavor didn't think so - he was falling asleep in the round.

In between rounds, I got to see and hang out w/ everyone. This is one of the few tournaments that everyone goes to, because APDA weekends were this weekend.

Elections
Elections went on til 5AM!!! How? No idea, we startd at 1:30 ish, however VP Operations was unopposed, and no Member speeches/questions were given/asked (which annoyed me since I had been freaking out about my speech all night and had spent a lot of time on it).

The first election was for president between Adam, Sam and Cyrus. Cyrus was very ill with Mono, it was hard core as he was in the hospital and on mandatory bed rest. Goldstein had surprisngly won... Sam had won the house, however Goldstein had all of the proxy votes, thus outnumbering the in house votes, winning presidency.

Next was VP Ops, in which Alex Taubes was unopposed, remained unopposed and won the position.

VP Finance was up next, it was a race between Sam who had dropped down, Zayn, Rich, and Ali. This was an interesting race. Sam won this position.

Next was the Member race, it was me against Will, Pam, Leah, 25, Rich, Ali, and Cyrus. All of the candidates had agreed not to give speeches, so not wanting to be "that girl" had to comply, which I think hurt my chances.

Unfortunately I did not win. :( However my team was there to support me, dinos included, which really meant a lot to me (unlike the WP boys... cough cough). Not to mention that I had WP's full support. Ben said if I had a shirt he would wear it, and Lupo said he would only go to elections to vote for me! :) Unfortunately Adam was being mean and wouldn't let them vote. They had paid on Friday, they just did not email him in time, so they couldnt vote; meanwhile other teams who had emailed him by Thursday and paid on Friday could vote.... not fair.

The next day everyone was exhausted to say the least. I got to hang out w/ Jason Herron, and he claimed that he was really mean, which is a complete LIE. I also got to hang out w/ my favorite boys on the cirucit. They were mean to me on Friday for some weird reason, but it was all resolved when we chilled.

More of UAlbany came on Saturday, the rest of them were super nice.

Funny story: This was a conversation between me and Sarah Hom, yes I was lucky enough to see Sarah, when she had saw my team.

Sarah: "you have some really good looking boys on your team, you should date one of them"
Me (shocked): "WHAT?!? who?"
Sarah points at the UAlbany Team - LOL

As soon as breaks were annonced, I bounced outta there w/ JH, Boma, Sean and Rudy, and picked up Shinjini (one of Stanford's novices). And later picked up Liz Holmes and Treavor Gleason. I just wantd to get outta there ASAP.

That essentially wraps up the whole tournament.

Black Knight Invitational

This past weekend was West Point's tournament the Black Night Invitational (BKI)!

Day 1
It started off with me leading a group on the Metro North to the Garrison, proceeded by Micah picking us up and driving like a crazy person!

We finally got to the hotel, or should i say motel, we were staying at the West Point Motel. The motel, reg, everything was a bit sketchy. The boys were conducting reg from the confines of one of the rooms... it was a bit weird to say the least. Once we were done we checked out the rooms, which smelled kind of funny, and were kind of gross. Eventually the rest of the crew had come, apparently Andrew somehow ended up in Jersey... while West Point is north....? Oh Andrew.

Then we went to "post" and I got to see everyone! :) It was good to see the whole WP ensemble, as you don't see them all together very often. You'll never guess who one of my judges was... ROSS! What are the chances of that? He was originally supposed to judge us in Round 1, but that got messed up, and here he was in Round 3 judging us.

We had a few rounds, dinner, and then went back to housing.

Day 2

Around 6:50 AM we get a wake up phone call. Me thinking it was one of our teammates calling Jayme and I cuz we were late, run across the room 1/2 asleep to answer the phone. Turns out it was Jim thinking he was being funny, not cool Jim. After a short breakfast we headed back to post.

After round 5, we went on a tour of the campus led by Kyle and Joe, which was tons of fun, as I knew them both. The tour was good, but definitely not as extensive as the one I had been on last year or the one w/ Jim a few weeks ago. Soon enough we were at the banquet. We had the pleasure of having Tyger Tuff Lyons sit with us at our table! I love that kid, hes awesome!

Before breaks were read, I handed Kyle (equity officer of the tournament) my EOF violation.

It stated:

There were three sketchy guys at the West Point Motel, they invited me into their room which was dark, creepy, and sketchy...

It was 3 West Point cadets...

conducting reg

They loved it, well Mrs. Meyer did at least! ;)

After breaks were read, we rushed back to GA to get out of there, but had missed the train and had to wait for Micah to drive us. Eventually he got us and drove us to the station, and we were on our way home.

On the way home we had to transfer at the Harlem station. While we were there, you'll never guess who we saw... CONNOR! What are the chances of that? Apparently he was coming back from seeing his friend, and was getting on the train back to Fordham w/ us.

GW II Tournament

This weekend was GWII, I rode down with Jayme, Lil Greg, Caitlin and Sarah. It was a fun ride, minus Jayme being a tad hung over and wanting to kill me for eating Reese Pieces - LOL. Apparently the other car - Andrew, Greg, Gareth, Robert and Emillie, didn't have such a good ride...

Friday

There was so much traffic on the highway that we got to GW just in time for Round 1. Lev was at the tournament, which was awesome, as I havent seen him since... convocations last summer?

Apparently Emillie was going to try to hook up w/ Michael Baer if he was to her standards... this could not be good...

I pro-am'ed with Jayme this weekend, which was a lot of fun! :)

Round 1
We had a pretty awesome chill judge, it was a dino named Ari, who really liked Boy Meets world and Jayme ;) That was a very fun round.

After Round 2, guess who showed up... MICHAEL! Apparently he did not meet up to Emillie's standards, she oddly enough did not think he was attractive... at all.

Then it was time for dinner, we went to this pretty good sandwich place, while Jayme had dinner w/ her friend Keggie - lol.

Round 3 rolled around and Jayme was nowhere in sight, not to mention my cell had died. We waited around for a while, but had to start the round. I was beginning to worry that I was going to have to iron man, make that I was worried. Eventually we just started the round, at least I was LO-ing. Finally, in the middle/end of my speech she finally came.

Finally it was PARTY TIME!!!!

Dan had gotten us a frat house, however the party was only ok. Rustin had come, so I got to chill w/ him for a while! :) Leave it to me to attract the 1 sketchy campus judge at the party... (the party was just APDA debaters). He kept trying to get me to drink some weird looking shot that looked like puke, then tried to get me to leave w/ him! "It's getting kind of loud, want to go somewhere?"

The story does get better... so after a while, I see Andrew frantically run outside followed by Gareth and Robert, apparently Emillie had left with JOHNNY MATHIAS... and was hooking up w/ him.... It was so ironic, as Emillie had said Michael Baer, who was ranked #1 on the Hott List and wanted by every girl and even straight guys on campus, was not up to par, and yet Johnny was... (No offense to Johnny, he's awesome!) After a while the team left, but I stayed. However Dan who was supposed to walk me back was going to Robbie's to party more... and I was not going to walk back alone to Dan's, especially since it was so far and i was not 100% sure where the location was. Luckily Adam, who had judged me in round 3, was nice enough to walk me back.


When we finally got back, Dan's roommate had all of his friends over in the living room area, so Adam and I just chilled in his room for a while. It was kind of weird as we didn'tknow who's bed we were sitting on... After a while, the rest of the team had finally showed up. Adam, left and we still awkwardly continued to chill in the bedroom.

Finally they left, and the roomie turned out be pretty cool.

Saturday

Kind of dull, none of our teams broke, however Michael did promise a visit to Fordham since he broke our lunch date ;)

We headed to dinner at Sarah's house. Her mom made us lasagna :)

Boston University Tournament

Day 1
This weekend we went to Boston University (BU) for debate. It was lots of fun! I got to see a lot of my friends!

During round 3, as I'm giving my LOC, I see a boy through the window. It's NATAN!!! (I went to HS w/ him and had been texting back and forth with him all day trying to meet up with him). We then talked and headed to GA to chill for a while, where we caught up. Apparently Natan is now training to be a nurse, and is trying out for the National Cycling team! GO NATAN! Unfortunately shortly after he had to leave to go to a gig for this guy

After rounds and housing on Friday night, the team and I took the BU shuttle to get some chinese food, and got back to the hotel looking dorm around 2 AM.

Day 2
We had rounds 4, 5 today. I accidentally got drunk in round 5.... Robert had given me some vodka in my orange juice before round 5 this morning. Then I went to round 5, however about a minute into my LO, I begin to feel the alcohol, and ask if I can sit down. After I get the approval, I proceed with my speech, only to eventually put my head down. I managed to finish and give a 7:30 min speech :). During the MG's speech I even gave a POI, then immediately plummeted into my seat. Finally it was time for my LOR, surprisingly I had sobered up by then and was fine.

The tournament ended suprisingly well, but we were stuck in Boston for 9 HOURS, not by choice... Kim and Matt G went to the symphony, while the remaing 7 of us were forced to wait around Boston for them. While we were waiting for them we went to the Prudential building, then got dinner. However even with all that time we still had nothing to do. After dinner we had planned to go to a movie, but there wa nothign good playing, and we got there at a weird time, there were shows that started around 8 and 10, but it was 9 PM... So we went to Paniera, but that closed, at 10, and Matt G told us that they would not be done until 11. 10 rolled around, and we had nothing to do, as ther was not enough time to watch amovie, so we went to Will/Ryan/Ab's place. We waited, 11 PM passed, no Matt G, 11:30, nothing. Finally around 11:45 they showed up.

As we left for home, Kim told us that they would need to take a break, ok, thats understandable. 20 mins max right? WRONG, 50 mins at a McDonald's pit stop... not cool. We didn't get back until close 4 AM! (I was actually pretty annoyed... for once - lol)

At least I got to see Natan this weekend! :)

A video of BU Housing:

Scarsdale Tournament

Today was the Scarsdale tournament. I missed the 7:12 Metro North to White Plains, I was running and just missed the train. I heard and saw it. I guess I'm still just as slow as I was with the cast - lol.

After missing the train, and realizing the next train would get me to the Scarsdale station at 8:09 (I had to be there at 8), I texted Jon to see if I should take cab since the school wasn't too far away. He said yes, so I flagged down a gypsy cab. Only having the address of the school, the first thing I asked was if they driver had a GPS or not. The 2nd cab I flagged said he had one and showed it to me, so I got in... only to realize that he did not have the power cord, and the GPS was not working.

After a while it was pretty clear the driver was lost. He did stop at just one but 3 different gas stations in hopes of trying to buy the power cord, which the gas stations did not have. Eventually over an hour later, we got to the high school... at 8:30.

I ran in thinking I was super late, but it turned out I only had a flight B round. We actually finished the round fairly early as there was nobody in the room before us. For those of you who don't know, the Scarsdale tournament format consists of 2 flights for every round. Flight A is novice rounds judged by varsity competitors, while flight B is varsity rounds judged by people like me, judges or coaches.

At the judges lounge, I bumped into Salil, and met some alumni from Hen Hud (Emily, who I had definitely judged before at Big Bronx, and Nicole) and Eric Perelman who thought we had debated together in 2005 - lol. Soon after you'll never believe who came by.... Brian Kwik and Jon Gordon, who everyone was super suprised to see.

I judged round 4, round 5 and octas. In Octas I judged Ben from Newburgh Free Academy, who I've judged quite a few times, against a girl from Timothy Christian, on a panel with George King and Sabrina Concepcion. It turned out to be a 2-1 for Ben. I had convinced Sabrina to come chill w/ us in the judges lounge w/ everyone. Sabrina, Salil, and I were not juging quarters so we decided to chill and NOT watch rounds. We watched awards to find out if we were judging semis, in which we werent. Having sit around for all this and not judging we began to get restless. After some negotiation we were allowed to leave. I got a ride back with Sabrina.

I'm happy I decided to go, I made some money and new friends! :)

NYU Tournament

Today is NYU, should be fun. Not sure what I'm doing afterwards. It think Jayme and I are going to head to Jim's party.

**Edit**

NYU was fun, got to see some friends! I was not put in for round 1 because JH said I was late. So he decided to put me in as the back-up judge, which meant sitting around. Since a back-up judge wasn't needed I was sitting in GA and was bored out of my mind; at least I made some new friends! :)

I then judged round 2 - CS: should the US unilaterally lift the embargo on cuba?
round 3 - should we close guantanama bay?

After rounds were over for the night, Jayme and I went to meet Jim at a club him and his friends had rented out. Unfortunately the boys forgot to check that they would be able to get in if they were under 21... so we headed back to the flat they had rented out. the place was pent house apt, which was pretty sweet. We stayed for a little while but then had to get back before the ram vans stopped running. The ride back took forever, we had to take a cab to the train, then train to LC to get the Ram Van. I'm so happy i didn't have to do that alone!

Fordham Tournament - It's over!!!

Before I say anything, I believe some congratulations are in order!

CONGRATS TO:
ROHAN/DHRU ON WINNING NOVICE FINALS
BEN/LAUREN ON WINNING THE TOURNAMENT
BIG LUPO/SAM ON BREAKING TO OCTAS
MICAH/TIGER ON BEING 3RD NOVICE TEAM
CAITLIN ON BEING 3RD SPEAKER
DAVID ON BEING 10TH SPEAKER

We gave out some pretty sweet swords ;)

The tournament went pretty well, nobody had to sleep on the streets and I made a lot of new friends, or I spoke to and am more friendly with people!

Sharon, from one of my expansion schools Medgar Evers College (CUNY), came to watch some rounds. She was really cool. I had her watch Liz Zahler/Sam Hynes' rounds. She really liked the rounds, and so did her supervisor, which is a Fordham Alum.

We ended up not doing team dinner after the tournament :-\ Instead we went to White Castle, which was not the same but we still had a good time good. It was basically Meg, myself, Boma and the novii. Everyone was eating White Castle throughout the tournament so I was craving some White Castle and a chocolate milkshake!

They were checking bags in Walsh, so we couldn't get in, so we were going to go to Alpha House to watch a movie. The novii were being really indecisive, and since nothing else was going to happen there, Meg and I decided to go back to O'Hare. And that's my night!