Greetings from Denver!

From Mia Lilienthal:

It's amazing up here and much different than what I expected. The landscape is so beautiful, but so much different from anything I've seen in Connecticut. There are a few buildings, mostly concentrated within the city of Denver, but surrounding the city is, as it seems to me, complete nothingness.

The three-lane highway that takes you in and out of the city also leads to our hotel. On the way, all you see is suburbia and tons of vegetation. There are so many trees, and you can almost feel the affect that it has on the air. The air here feels so fresh and clean, and it only adds to the relaxed feel that Denver and the area surrounding gives off.

To top it all off, the scenery is completed by the backdrop of the Rocky Mountain range. The mountains can be seen from almost anywhere, and they seem so close that you want to reach out and touch them.

As for activites, the program propelled at full force Sunday, just a few hours after we arrived in Colorado. We had an awesome dinner of rice, beef burritos, and guacamole, and following that, Sen. Jamin Raskin, D-Maryland, came to speak with us about his new book, "We the Students."

The book goes into detail about court cases that effect high school students, but his lecture was more than that. He added an interactive part to the seminar in which the room was split in half, and we were given a fake court case to examine. One side of the room supported an the case, while the other side represented the opposition. We got to present our different arguements to a mock Supreme Court. Although my side of the room ultimately lost the case, I learned so much in the process.

We began today by visiting the Colorado Capitol, which was wonderful. My group got to climb the 99 steps to the dome of the building. While we were there, another group was just around the corner at the 16th Street Mall, where a war protest was taking place. My group had just missed the protest, but we had seen the SWAT team and police forces throughout the area earlier that day. Also, helicopters have been in protest training all week, and you see one fly by at least every five minutes.

Later, back at the hotel, we broke up into our groups and participated in mock primary elections in which any of us could run to be the next presidential candidate. I ran and gave my two minute speech, but my friend Elliot won the nomination from our group. He is now going up against two other candidates from other groups to win the mock nomination.

We also attended a lecture given by Andrew Potter. He spoke to us about the election process and how a president wins an election. The most interesting part of his lecture was when he pulled up a map of the United States, showing which candidate was predicted to win which states. So far, according to his map, the election is still up in the air, seeing as some key states are still too split between parties to see which way they will swing.

Tomorrow morning I am attending the Connecticut State Delegate Breakfast, prefaced by a lovely 5:30 a.m. wake-up call.