Life of Lydia

Dear readers, this was our first full day away from home.

In the morning we sat around quite a bit. (Sorry no photo)

We went to Shoppers to purchase provisions.

We ate T.V. dinners for lunch, then we went to the University of Maryland Campus to sign into History Day. I got a lanyard. More on the pins later. This didn’t take very long, so we went back to our hotel, and kept sitting around.

My mother purchased a National History Day mug.

We ate supper from a little cafe in Mom’s Organic Market.

At the hotel, I kept telling my mother that I wanted to use my limbs. Because of this we got to the opening ceremony two and a half hours early so that we could walk. Here I pose with a sundile. After we had been there a while, people started trickling in.

A big thing at National History Day is trading buttons. Each state gives its kids a bunch of buttons that represent that state. Then the kids go around and trade their buttons with kids from other states. Some kids make it their goal to get all 50 states, so they walk up to a whole bunch of people and ask to trade buttons. I got a lot of buttons just by being around and people walking up to me. The photo above is a paparazzi shot my mother took of a cluster of traders.

An example of the Missouri trading button.

My lanyard which is filled with buttons. Most of the kids I traded with were running all over the place trying to collect all 50 states. I could pretty much just stand in one spot and wait for people to come ask me to trade.

There were a lot of people at the ceremony. It was really hard to hear what the speakers were saying. A bunch of kids were walking around trying to trade pins during the ceremony. It felt like the point of the event was more to mingle, not to listen to people talk into a microphone. There was a sing along as part of the event, but most people (including myself) didn’t sing. I did take a video of the song and posted it on YouTube. To watch it click on this LINK. The video also gives a feel for what the event was like.