North Augusta Today

Photos: http://spotted.augusta.com/display.html?event=0&gallery=88734

11:49 p.m. June 17
Jennifer Price writes ...

Waking up at 4 a.m. is never ideal, but for all 23 of us Betas we were more than willing to get an early start. Today was the start of our 5 day National Beta Club Convention, and we were all so excited to begin. However, for the first two hours of our trip all any of us did was sleep on the bus.
Despite these two hours, we had at least eight more to go.

Card games, road games, food, and stories from other conventions occupied our time for the remainder of the trip. When we finally got here we were thrilled but shocked to pull up to our bright, pepto bismol, pink hotel full of thousands of other guests. It was so big! But first things had to be done first and we assembled our set for Group Talent, Grease. While we assembled the set we took in our surroundings and started to realize just what we were in for.

Seeing kids from all over the country was really neat, and I was excited to get to meet people from Mississippi, Florida, New Orleans, and North Carolina. After going to Downtown Disney and eating at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant and making a quick pit stop at Ghiradelli's, we went back to our hotel and did "mixers" (games and ice breakers to get acquainted with kids from other states). So now our first day ends, and we're all exhausted from travel and unpacking, but tomorrow starts our second day at our National Beta Convention.

Please be praying for our practice for our Grease Group Talent, Frederick Grimm as he competes in Social Studies, and our Scrapbook group as they enter their months of hard work into the national competition.

8:55 a.m. June 19
Jennifer Price writes ...

Well it's day three of our journey! We're all about to go down to the group talent competition and do our Grease dance.

As I'm writing this my friends are running down the hall to get us good seats at the competition. Yesterday was our practice for talent and everything went well, except for the set. At the end of our second run through our set suddenly collapsed and broke. So we made a quick Wal-Mart run and fixed it all.

So now we're beginning our third day and getting ready for competition and Disney! We're all pretty tired today since we didn't get out of session last night until almost midnight since we listened to 36 candidate speeches and skits.

Voting took forever, but all seven of us delegates got back to our rooms right before curfew.

So please be praying for our competition as we get ready for "Greased Lightning!" and for Disney :)

10:32 a.m. June 19
Suman Marks-Johnson writes ...

Here we are in the convention ballroom! All of the convention sessions take place in large groups like this. There are hundreds of Betas here from all over the place! One group had to ride 18 hours on a school bus. We feel very fortunate to have received enough in donations and collected enough through fundraising to have chartered a bus! Thank you so much to all of our sponsors! We also got to take a group picture in front of the 2009 National Convention Banner. The theme is Lights, Camera, Beta! We are all dressed for talent and/or wearing our convention t-shirts to support the talent competition. Less than an hour 'til we hit the stage! Go NAHS!

11:06 a.m. June 20
Jennifer Price and Frederick Grimm write ...

After our performance we were all extremely excited! Even though there were a lot of other good performances everyone thought that our performance of "Grease" was the best ever! We are all anticipating finding out how we placed against other schools in our closing session later tonight.
After our performance we quickly changed and headed towards Disney world. Everyone had a blast, especially for those who were having their first visit to the park! We rode almost every single ride, took thousands of pictures, and even met with the Disney Princesses.
This morning, we attended an incredible opening session. Among our guest speakers were former president Bill Clinton, a semi-pro baseball player, and even a former Miss America.
We are going back to watch the question and answer session for the finalists for national office, as well as individual talent performances.
Again we would like to thank our amazing sponsors for enabling us to attend this exciting conference and participate in this life changing experience.

2:54 a.m. June 21
Jennifer Price writes ...

So we just got back in town, a little after 2:30 a.m. and we're all exhausted! We're all so thankful for our amazing chaperones, bus driver, and parents who came to pick us up in the middle of the night!
Today was exciting and eventful as we went to our third general session, went shopping at a local outlet mall, and then attended the awards ceremony/fourth general session.
Although we didn't place with Grease or in the scrapbooking competition, we were all still so excited to have gotten this far.
With a first year advisor going into a competition with kids she just met for the first time this year, we far exceeded anyone's expectations. Most of the advisors at state or national level Beta Club have been working with Beta for over 20 or 30 years, and we can proudly say that we beat them all!
We couldn't have done any of this without our wonderful advisor Mrs. Marks Johnson (or Mrs. MJ) who was like a second mom to us all, and taught us to believe in ourselves.
She let us have fun with our group while still reinforcing the learning experience behind this national convention. To Mrs. Bayne, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Smalls, and Mr. B thank you all so much for everything that you did for us on this exciting trip.
And to our sponsors, we truly couldn't have done ANY of this without you! Thank you all so much, and God bless!