Participants: Liberty Peralta, Matthew Ishitani, Nick Smith, Jameson Liu, Holly Stephens, Charisse Estrera, Christina Ludewig, Keone Taaca, Royden Pang

A month after watching Jimmy Eat World live at World's Cafe in Honolulu, HI, I got to visit the capital of their home state, Phoenix, Arizona. (Their hometown of Mesa is nearby.)

I was glad that the plane ride wasn't as long as the Washington, D.C. ones, since Phoenix is closer to the West Coast. I really liked it there because there was the virtual abscence of humidity.

We also shared lots of laughs. The jokes primarily came from John and David, two former students of my high school; the former currently advises the media class and is a photographer for a local TV news station, the latter used to be an adviser for the school newspaper / TV news program but is now studying at UH. They kept quoting from "Kings of Comedy." It was hilarious as they talked about the "dry heat."

I also got to meet actor DJ Qualls, who was in town for a free screening of "The New Guy." He was really friendly, despite the long line of teenagers and newspaper advisers asking for pictures and autographs. Qualls even said that I have "the coolest name in the world"!

This is by far the best mainland trip I have been to. We'll see if I'll like this year's convention at Portland, Oregon...