I am back home and I am missing New Hampshire! I am definitely missing the excitment of the primary. This experience has definitely been one I will never forget. I came into this course knowing practically nothing about presidential campaigns and came out with knowledge that will last a lifetime. I am lucky to have experienced this being so young. It makes my first voting experience memorable. I can go on and on about how much I loved this trip. I made friends from all over the country and their passion inspired me. I am now more than ever motivated to stay in tuned with politics and be more involved and informed during the election process. Senator Clinton winning New Hampshire made this experience even more rewarding. She won every ward in Nashua, which definitely paid off for all the canvassing our group did. Win or Lose, I am glad I experience the first in the nation primary and I hope to participate in it in 2012!

primary day!!!

Adam and I at 5 A.M. ready to start our day!




Hillary shaking the volunteer's hands



The boys and I holding signs at the school


It's primary day!! Adam, Emilio, and I are watching the results via our hotel room with our vending machine snacks. I am going to recap the day as the results are coming in.

Our day started at 4:15 A.M.. We headed into the office to get our assignments for the day. We were all really excited that this was primary day. I was a little nervous since the polls were not in Hillary's favor. Regardless, Adam, Emilio, and I diligently went to everydoor and hung door hangers on the front door of undecided and confirmed voters doors to remind them to vote. The weather was amazing today! It was 67 degrees!! After we finished our list we were told to head over to Fairgrounds Middle School, which was one of the many places where one could vote. We served the visibility volunteers coffee and donuts and awaited Hillary's apperance! Hillary's bus finally arrived and seeing her again was just as exciting as the 3 previous times. She walk around the crowd thanking them all and it just showed how commited she was to this campaign and this election. When she was gone, the crowd quickly disappeared and we continued on hanging the door hangers and canvassing trying to get every supporter out to vote. Our driver Jim, was amazing! Actually all of our volunteer drivers were great! However, Jim was ultimately my favorite. He drove us back and forth from our new hotel in Chelmsford, Mass. so many times and he was just great entertainment. He encouraged us and while we were all tired he kept us motivated. We couldn't have survived the day without him! We returned to headquarters around 6ish and they told us that there was a record number of voters and that they needed to make sure that the targeted residents in ward 6 and ward 4 went out and voted. We were dropped off to ward 6 and we started canvassing. By this time it was dark and the streets were very spread out. We knew this was going to take a very long time especially on foot. At that moment, Jim called and asked us where we were and he came and drove us around the canvassing area. We found that canvassing at this hour, the majority of this area were senior citizens. The responses that we got were that most of the voters had already voted or they were sleeping. We finsihed our maps at 7:55, which was five minutes before the polls closed. At this point, I felt like we did everything we possibly could to ensure every supporter voted. After a long day of canvassing, the 3 of us went back to the hotel to have a little victory party. We were all so exhausted from the 10 days.

It looks like Hillary is in first with 40%! Obama has 37% with about 67% of the votes in!!

Redbull and Swedish Fish

It's the day before the first-in-the-nation primary!!

After a few hours of sleep, we met as a class as usual and headed out to our campaigns. When we arrived at the office we were informed that the headquarters now was to be at the VFW a couple blocks away. Upon arrival we immediately started canvassing. Today Emilio, Adam, and I spilt up and went canvassing together and we had a blast. At this point when everyone is so tired, stressed out, and delirious, the only thing we could do was to go through each house feeding off of each other's last bit of energy. Lets just say between the 3 of us, we made the best out of our 9 hour day of canvassing.

Today we had so many helpful volunteers. Everyone, including our canvassing driver's truly pulled together to make this last day productive. Our canvassing driver's were both really nice. The first one Jack , took us out to an amazing lunch at Michael Timothy's. It felt so good to actually eat real food and sit down at a nice restaurant. It had the best cinnamon raisin bread!

At around 7 we finished our folders and headed back to headquarters. We were happy to hear Doug tell us that we can go back to the hotel to get rest before the big day tomorrow !!!! It was nice to actually get to bed before midnight tonight!

Tomorrow is Primary Day!!

I am exhausted!! We had almost a 15 hour day today and it was intense! Everyday we come into the office we see groups of new people from all over coming in to help out. The Mayor of Los Angelas kicked off the morning along with a few congressmen. Our class journalist Paul shadowed us today and he got an amazing interview with the Mayor in spanish. After the kick off we spilt up in to canvassing groups. We stopped by the rally at the high school along the way and was so excited to see that it was completely packed!

Canvassing was so much fun today! Adam and I worked together and had a great time speaking with the voters. I felt that since the debate was over and the primary being so close. People are deciding exactly who they are voting for and sticking to it. After we were all done canvassing we headed back to the office to get ready for some visibility in front of an Edwards event. The visibility was overwheling.



2 more days till the primary!!!!!

Today is another day The class is meeting at 8 and we are going to be sent off into our campaigns! Today is another rally and I am hoping we will get to have the opportunity to attend it. We'll see!

Welcome to Massachusetts!!

It's a little late but I thought I would write about today's crazy day!!

Our morning started out peaceful, I slept in a little bit thanks to my alarm not going off but I still made it to breakfast on time. Today we met with Dante Scala, the author of Stormy Weather. This is one of our books on our required reading list. His seminar was very interesting. I learned a lot and he reinforced everything we read. As we were sitting in our seminar we heard the fire alarm go off. It did not seem so important at the time, until Dr. McLauchlan's husband Ramsey informed us that there was indeed a fire. We did not know at the time how serious this fire actually was until later on in the day. We left to our offices, as we usually do. We were not allowed back into the hotel. All of our stuff was in our rooms including our laptops, ipods, and all of our clothes.

We decided that we should just all go to our offices and continue on with our campaigning. About an hour later, Dr. Mclauchlan called me and told us that we were able to come retrieve our things at the hotel for a short period of time. By this time, We were on a huge campaign bus with about 20 people from Cape Cod canvassing in Hudson. The driver drove us back to the hotel and we started to pack. The three rooms on our hallway were the only three rooms of the group allowed to retrieve there things. I was really lucky, I felt horrible for my classmates who could not get to their things. We joked about only the Democrats got their things and the Republicans did not. The hotel was shut down so we had to go to a Radisson hotel in Massachusetts. The 20 of us packed into the van and we headed over to the our new hotel!

By this time it was near 3:15 P.M and we were delirious! We had the worst dinner at Hong and Kong and discussed the craziness of our day.

Later, is when the night became really exciting, we drove in to Manchester with a attorney from Washington to watch the Clinton debate watch party. The party was held at a place called the Chateau. The event was small but it was nice to be surrounded by Hillary supporters. Halfway through the event we started to notice the secret service and staff roping off a corner of the room where the event was taking place. We asked and found out that Hillary was going to be stopping by after the debate!! I was so excited! We were going to see Hillary twice in 2 days! We moved closer to the ropes to score a good standing stop and awaited her arrival. She finally arrived and and when she spoke she was speaking straight from the heart. Press was not allowed at the event and I think this made a huge difference. She seemed relaxed and just encouraged us to get out the vote. Tonight we also recieved the opportunity to get a photo with Bill! After the event, we walked back to the Manchester Radisson where we were parked and along the way we ran into Chris Matthews from Hardball at a tavern! All in all this day turned out to be great!

Hillary...twice in one day!

Today was the best day by far!! Waking up at 5 A.M. to get ready for Hillary was definitely worth it. It was -1 degree and we were doing visibility to show our love for Hillary. Our excitement was building!! When Hillary finally arrived, everything that we worked for was justified. Since we were front row we had the opportunity to shake all 3 of their hands! I can not even describe how it felt to have Hillary shake your hand and look you straight in the eye and sincerely say thank you for everything! It was an amazing feeling! It was also amazing to see Bill and Chelsea Clinton so close! The rally was amazing. It was such a great experience to be there in person and see her speak. Senator Clinton answered each question thoroughly and sincerely. Everyone was so inspired after the rally and we were eager to return back to the office to continue working for this amazing woman. We were sent out canvassing and about 20 minutes in we received a call telling us to return back to the office for an event. When we returned everyone was frantically running around make 150 signs for Hillary! We immediately got to work. I loved coloring signs. A half and hour later, the whole office piled into vans and headed over to a town called Milford. We were doing counter vix in from of the Dome which was hosting the 100 club dinner. The visibility was amazing , once word got to the Obama crew, it was not long before they showed up with signs! However, we still dominated. Debbie, Adam, and I found out that we had the opportunity to attend the 100 club dinner! I was so excited! We hurried back to the hotel to get ready and took a cab to the event! The dinner and the environment was exciting! When we arrived we found out that some of the Obama supporters took our table. They were so rude and ended up not getting up. I never thought that adults could be so rude. We eventually found seats at another table. Raymond Buckley, the Chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party hosted the event. It was cool to watch him because we met him a couple days before. Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, and Barack Obama spoke. Kucinich was passion and I actually was blown away by his speech. All the candidates did really well. Seeing Hillary speak in person again really solidified every reason why I am supporting her.

A picture of us from this mornings event was on Yahoo New today!!!