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Page 5
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Day 5
Today is Thursday! Two more days to go so I'm going to try and make the most of them! My room mate and I woke up at 6:30 today. Today is the day when every one in camp is supposed to dress gorgeous. Or business-formal, I mean. We didn't really have time to eat breakfast because the bus came at 7:50 and we were done “getting gorgeous at” 7:45. So we took a banana and a muffin to go. The huge bus took us to downtown L.A to the court house. First we got a speech from special agent ******* **********, and special agent ******* *******. They weren't very interesting and we were VERY tired from SUPER lack of sleep, so we kind of slept through it. However we were woken up by a real coroner. She gave us a presentation about Forensic pathology! She taught us about:
She was more exciting than the special agents because she was prepared with a power point presentation and pictures! We then split up into groups of 3 or 4 and had lunch with a REAL JUDGE! This was definitely one of my favorite parts of the Summer Law Institute so far! Spending quality time with a L.A judge asking any questions was amazing. The Law Institute provided us with sandwiches that we shared with the judge, and she invited the 4 of us to eat lunch in her personal judge’s chambers on the 3rd floor of the court house with a beautiful view of down town L.A. The judge we had lunch with was Monica B. and she let us explore her court room before it was time for trial. We took pictures with her sitting on the bench and the Court Reporter showed us about the stenograph and how it differs from a typewriter. She was nice enough to write my name in "stenograph language" It looked nothing like “Brittany” in English though! At 1:30 the Bailiff opened the courtroom doors to the public and we got to sit in the court room while an actual trial took place (with real lawyers, and witnesses and everything!) I have to admit I was a little scared when the criminal man came out into the court with handcuffs and a yucky green jail outfit. Yikes! I was glad to not be sitting near him! Anyway, I couldn't believe what a fantastic opportunity! We had gotten to eat lunch with a judge and see an actual trial. Shortly after, we walked to the Japanese American National Museum 30 minutes away. For 2 hours we learned about the Japanese Internment and saw real clothes, suitcases and items they lost in the camps. I think what the Americans did to the Japanese is horrible, and was shocked to see how they were treated in the camps. However, I was glad to hear that each of them was repaid $20,000 dollars for their troubles. I don’t think I would volunteer to live through what they did for only that amount. My freedom is too important. The Summer Law Institute arranged for us to meet a real Japanese internment survivor and he spoke to us for an hour about his traumatic experience. On the way back to our dorms in the bus, there was SO much traffic (which would be expected since we were in L.A.!) that my friends, Laura, Susan, Karina and I slept all the way back. We RAN to eat dinner because we only got 30 minutes to eat before we had to meet down in the law classrooms. We practiced the mock trial all the way running through for the first time and everyone got to see how their role actually fit into the trial. It went quite well. We were all satisfied with all of the many hours of preparation we had done to make the Mock Trials go well. However, we ended at around 12 midnight so we didn't get to sleep until 1:30ish as usual. Tomorrow is the big trial, a lot of studying to do tonight! I’m so excited! <3 Brittany
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