February 28, 2012 - Montgomery, Alabama
Camille and her friends Hadley Hutchison and Kathryn and Maddie Thompson are serving as legislative pages for Alabama Senator Tripp Pittman.
Today I went and served as a legislative page with my friends. The drive up was quite pleasant; Mom and I researched the history of the piano (1709) and the violin (early 8th century), which eventually led to listening to modern music stars (think somewhere along the lines of Elton John, Elvis, Celine Dion, and Korean teenie boppers) sing Italian opera. It was quite interesting to learn that classical Italian music (opera) mixed with today's popular music is called canzone Nepoletana. So there was the car ride.
The ride might've been the most interesting part of today.
When we arrived at the Embassy Suites, we found that our hotel room wasn't ready yet, so we ventured down the street to Dreamland Barbeque. I highly reccomend the pork potato. It is extremely tasty. When we got back to the hotel, we found that our room still wasn't ready, so we did some last-minute beauty prep in the public bathroom before catching our trolley to the Capital. I found the trolley extremely interesting in the fact that it smelled wonderfully of orange blossoms.
After the short ride to the Capital, we checked in at the library with my new three-day boss, Mrs. Rosalyn Grace. Please, don't be deceived just because I mentioned the word "library." Trust me, it's more like a closet with books. I met a few other pages, too. I thought they would all be around my age, but to my surprise, the oldest page in our session is 15! And Mrs. Grace said that we were a "young group." She explained the rules, and then we started duty. Kathryn and I manned the door to the Senate Chamber for about 15 minutes. We got most of our jobs there. When I refer to the term "jobs," that could mean a number of things. At one point, I wrote a note to Senator Dial, then directly after that I hurried down the hall to get ice for a secretary. After our fifteen minutes at the door were up, Kathryn and I reported directly back to the Senate Chamber to listen to how bills are passed. Mrs. Grace said that we were most likely going to get all our jobs in the Chamber, but honestly, I only got one. After a few hours of listening, Kathryn decided it was time for a break. We left the Chamber and stretched our legs on a brief walk to the library, where our notebooks and wallets were kept. Kathryn decided on a visit to the snack machine and to spend the rest of the day (an hour at that point) in the break room; I took my notebook back to the Chamber to take notes.
