By Maria Leon – Palo Verde City Reporter
Palo Verde City accomplished so much on the first day of Arizona Girls State. The City started off with a bang by welcoming all the girls when they first arrived, walking each other to their rooms and having our own get to know each other circle before any official meetings started.
This allowed us to become close with one another and it was shown during a series of interviews held after the first day of Girls State was completed.
The girls who were interviewed were: Jane McAplin, Amaya Henderson, Taylor Downey, and Sarah Haak. Each of the girls were asked the same questions and they all had similar but unique answers. The questions asked were:
1) What was your favorite part about your first day of Arizona Girls State?
2) What can be done better for the first day of Arizona Girls State next year?
3) How do you like your city so far?
Starting with Jane McAplin her answer to the first question was, “meeting my roommate Maria”. Not to be biased but that was an excellent answer given by Jane!
Her answer to the second question was, “They should give us more time to interact with each other and get to know each other. I feel like when we got here there was a little amount of time to interact with each other and we went straight into stuff. I think there should be more time to do ice breakers and get to know each other better”.
Her answer to the last question was, “I love it! Everyone seems pretty chill and nice here”.
The next person interviewed was Amaya Henderson. Her response to the first question was, “My favorite part was when all of my roommates and people on the floor we all met up and played name games and it was good finding out what everyone wanted to do with their future. It was nice being surrounded by a group filled with beautiful intelligent ladies!”.
Her answer to the second question was, “Definitely organization, dinner was supposed to be at 6 and some girls did not eat until 7 so definitely just organization and how things can be run more smoothly. WATER! Water situation, they didn’t tell us where we could fill our water bottles up and I was thirsty so basically just more information for the girls”.
Amaya’s response to the final question was, “I love my city, like I love flowing with the energy. It’s so nice we all get along so well there is no arguing, there is no hidden animosity, it is just a good city. I love the girls I’m with, I love their energy and personalities. I was nervous when I was first coming in like I told my mom “mama I hope i’m not with no weird people”, I was so nervous but I like it”.
The next person that was interviewed was Taylor Downey. Her response to the question asked was, “Meeting every girl here in my city, experiencing dorm life, and seeing how we run as a government, city, county, stuff like that”.
For the second question she responded with, “Having less meetings, planning out the meals better, having it more organized because it did take forever for us to get the meal and we had to eat really fast or eat while standing because our food would get cold. Not having many meetings on the first day because it was a lot. I was exhausted and was not able to get to bed until 10:30 and woke up at 5:30 just to drive here was a lot”.
For her final question Taylor responded with, “I love it, I love each and every girl here. They all have amazing personalities, we all fit this group so well. I love it”.
Last but not least Sarah Haak was interviewed and her answer to the first question was, “My favorite part was meeting my roommate and all the girls and getting familiar with them which set the vibe for the whole day. Everyone on the floor was really fun, really amazing and it’s nice knowing that I have a good group to go through this with”.
For the second question Sarah responded with, “The first day was a little rough and I think it was poorly timed and I think times for things should change. The important parts like us eating should change as well, when there are so many girls eating at the same time. I think they could organize certain parts of that better”.
For the final question she ended the interview with, “So far the city is really cool. It is still very confusing on the jobs and what each job does. Also on how everything works together but the people in the city are really cool and the atmosphere is really cool”.
All of the girls had one common thing. They all lifted up each other in their responses. This shows that even with our “First Day Jitters” the Palo Verde City is united together.