3 A. M. Writer- 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚕

Latin Convention Chronicles Part 1

Languages come extremely easily to me for some reason. I think it's because of my lack of willingness to do math because of my brain. That way I tend to focus on grammar, vocab, and conjugation better than a formula or diagram.

I bring this up because I'd like to talk about some of the best times I've had in my life. Latin conventions are amazing and I love going to them even now. I've taken over 4 years in Latin and I can speak Spanish as well. I'm thinking of starting Japanese or Gaelic but I haven't decided yet. Latin conventions occur every year, first at the city/area level, then to state, then on to nationals. (I haven't heard of a worldwide convention but that's probably because that would be hard to judge.)

Bus rides are hard on their own, but imagine a bunch of crazy middle schoolers and high school students packed into one bus for two to six hours at a time. Yeah, I'm serious. It was insane. Like I said in the previous chapter, I was never afraid of upperclassmen like some of my friends or even my brother. I always found them cool and funny, and they never bullied or were mean to me because I was younger. In fact, I'm friends with some of them to this day that I met ages ago. I say all this, though I look back and realize that I never really saw them all that much, even at these conventions. I really just thought I did.

When it was my turn to be the senpai, I figured that I'd be the cool upperclassman that I'd looked up to for years. (My friends disagreed with me on that subject and tried to avoid contact with the younger students.) It helped that I knew one or two middle schoolers from church or the years before. I got a few phone numbers, played a few games with them, and told silly stories with them in the homeroom areas. We would always have a blast and I'd eventually find that they were pretty chill when they weren't wanting to sneak out for unnecessary alone time with one other student. (O yes, let's be very vague about what they wanted to do...)

Now I never had yet been called senpai, though that would come eventually, and I had a strange desire to be "that upperclassmen". (If you're getting Nishinoya vibes right now, that's exactly what I was doing.) I said this kind of thing already, but I need y'all to understand that this is what drove me to do a lot of the things I did at conventions like this. Conventions usually consisted of academic tests, sporting events, and art/talent competitions. There was always something for everyone, even the jocks and nerds who had accidentally signed up for Latin because they read Percy Jackson once and got inspired.

I always took around two to three tests, specifically the ones I was already good at and didn't have to work too hard to win at. (I wasn't lazy, I was just always busy so I never had much time to study.) Then the talent shows were surprisingly good, which I'll explain later, and the art was astounding. I'll just say that I was surprised that Texas could pull out such talented people out of small, underfunded schools as well as they did. We had several traditions, such as T-shirts, the classic game of hide and seek/sardines, and the occasional bad-idea all nighters.

The teachers were always something special. They were either really nice or insane. I had one who must've been a quiet kid when he was in school because he was so quirky. (nothing against being quiet, I'm just talking about the stereotypes) Then the chaperones were almost always mean unless we got lucky. They never supervised us. I mean absolutely never. We would be shipped to these random schools all over the state, which were usually nicer than our run down, trash can of a high school, and we would wander around when we had free time.

If someone were to ask me if I have ever done anything illegal, I would say that my lawyer said not to answer the question. I caused property damage to these schools more than once, though it was occasionally an accident. Plus there were a few instances of unaware trespassing, but I never seem to get caught, luckly. Why am I admitting this? You never heard anything. Don't snitch or else...This isn't even the worst- shut up AJ I swear you talk too much like the song by COIN...