Desiree Nguyen – Palo Verde City
After a steady stream of delegates trickled into the zoom meeting, another day of the 2nd ever virtual AZ Girls State was ready to commence as we kept our eyes glued to the screen in excitement.
However, before we could fully immerse ourselves in the mythical state of politics, we must first commemorate those who had sacrificed their lives for our country as without them, we would not be here. We all watched and listened closely to one of the directors as she guided us through the process of creating a poppy, a flower composed of 4 red felt petals and black with a small banner honoring our veterans caressed around it. Despite the virtual setting, we all still felt the impact of her words as she explained what the poppy represented.
After our brief ceremony, we all ushered into our next meeting composed of both our city of Palo Verde as well as our sister city, Cholla, in order to represent the county of Supai! I was instantly greeted with a screen of new, yet smiling faces from the delegates of Cholla. As our county advisor led over 30 vibrant citizens in a meeting concerning nominations for county and state positions, many girls jumped at the chance to be involved in our county government and emerge as great leaders! By the end of the meeting, all nominations for both county and state positions were completed. Many of us rocked in our seats behind our screens as we all were brimming with anticipation for the primary and general elections tomorrow, knowing how fierce they will be.
Instead of ending the meeting with a simple farewell and wave, the girls of Supai decided to celebrate our productive county meeting with a loud chant of “SUPAI!”. As we began counting down slowly to 1, many girls unmuted their microphones to come together in one cheerful yell of “SUPAI!”; our voices resonating as one. Stay sleek, Supai!