Well, Richard and I had a very unique and difficult nationals experience. The plan was to leave San Jose on United at 6:30am Sunday morning, arrive in DC 5pm Eastern Time, and arrive in Alabama at 6:30pm. Our flight from San Jose got delayed due to the pilot having too many hours logged. We had to fly to Dallas to drop him off and pick up another pilot. When we arrived in DC, we had of course missed our flight. They immediately gave us tickets for 7:30 Monday morning (and hotel accommodations). Extemp started at 10 Monday morning, and debate orientation was Monday night. Our first debate wasnt' until Tuesday morning so it wasn't going to be a problem. Robert Ong and Marc Davis were also with us. Marc Davis was going to Nationals for the sole purpose of competing in extemp. For some reason, Marc was given a ticket that left two hours later then our flight did. That would cause him to miss extemp. Our first goal was to acquire a ticket for Marc, whether the same flight or a sooner flight. Unfortunately, every customer service line was 2 hours long. After we waited through the first line, we discovered United had purchased U.S. Airways tickets and they claimed they could no longer process our ticket. U.S. Airways was located on the far end of the airport: terminal Z. When we got there, we learned that United had not actually completed our ticket transaction and they actually purchased Marc a ticket to New York (Birmingham's code was easy to mix up with Binghamton, NY). They told us we would have our seats reserved on the 7:30 flight, but we should go back to United to have our tickets restored. We stopped to get food (we hadn't had food in 10 hours) while Marc waited in line at United's Customer Service again attempting to get some sort of flight before extemp started in Alabama. We only had to get a ticket before 7:30am so we chilled a little. The result of Marc's endeavors was a ticket to Charlotte that left 5 minutes later. He had to sleep in the airport in NC and then catch an 8am flight to AL. We slept a few hours in the hotel and then came back for our am flight. We got flagged through security because of our "airlines". This mean we had to spend 20 minutes in glass cages and then we were hand searched and our bags were chemically tested. When we got to our terminal, we found out that United had overbooked the U.S. Airways plane to Al and we were the odd men out. The U.S. Airways rep told us we were United's responsibility, but he helped us plan out some sort of strategy to get to AL sometime during Monday. After looking at all the possible flights, he told us we only had two options. Both options went to Atlanta were we would have to drive to AL. Even then, the planes were nearly booked and were on Delta, not united Airlines. We took a deep breath and exited security with no promises of returning without a ticket. We got in a 3 hour line for a lost ticket United Airlines counter. We made plans to request a rental car and drive the 750 miles 13 hour trip from DC to AL. Unfortunately, we were not aware of a rental care company that would rent cares to 18 year olds. When we finally got to the counter, United informed us we had tickets on a United flight Monday night at 7pm. We were not even aware the flight existed so we were very happy to discover this. We just had to find a way to spend 10 hours in an airport before our flight left. Before we left, we confirmed with 10 different people that our bags would be on the plane. When we finally got to AL, we discovered United had loaded the wrong bags on the plan. Our bags had my card box (all the misc evidence I had and was 40% needed), and all of our clothes of course. We were happy to arrive before nationals had officially began. I borrowed Jake Siewart's suit and Richard was forced to go to Nationals in his shorts. Ten minutes before the round started, Rich was able to get a suit and change. Our debates went really well and our affirmative case was amazing. One of the teams pretty much gave up when they heard our case, and tried to run their affirmative as a counter plan (pretty much a sure loss with debate theory etc). When we got to round 6, we learned we were 1 of the 95 teams that got a bye. A bye either meant we were in first, or last, depending on how the tab was being run at that tournament. We didnt' break, and when we got our ballots, we learned it definitely was not first place. We somehow managed to get 5 community first time judges who had never seen a debate before. For our affirmatives, all of the judges voted on arguments that were not made by the negative team (personal bias or arguments they thought of). Judge 1= I didnt' understand a lot but the two girls on the negative team seemed nice. Judge 2= You guys beat all the arguments brought up, but it came down to this: if I went to another country, I wouldn't expect them to treat us with due process (therefore we shouldnt' give innocent people due process). The rest of the ballots were the same. To be honest, its very difficult to figure any of this out. I know God's in control. You could also say that, we could have learned some lessons without everything possible going wrong. We could have learned how to lose, or to not be in the top ten as we had hoped, without getting dead last. I don't want to seem like I'm blaming God for this, but I definitely feel as though this was intentional. Debate is so inconsistent, losing 5 out of 5 ballots to judges who clearly should have voted for you is almost more unlikely as winning all 5. It just seems as though the judging results were meant to prove God wanted our attention. We did miss our church's trip to Mexico, and I can't help but wonder if we should have gone with them instead of nationals. That is not to say I am upset about Nationals; it was ironically easy to let go. My identity was not wrapped into my results at Nationals. I know I've gained the skills that I wanted through debate. After nationals went off the way it did, I actually became excited to start a career, do something more important. I know that this was an important experience that will shape my life. Dont' feel bad, I did have an amazing time with friends from my club. I even made a few other friends along the way. The people at Nationals were amazing, and many prayed for us while we were luggage-less. | 
