#NCBA12

For all you "twitter-ers" (or is it tweeters?) out there, you have probably seen the hash tag #NCBA12 or #CIC12 floating around. That is where I will be this week! NCBA stands for National Cattleman's Beef Association and CIC is Cattle Industry Convention. It rotates to various locations every year and this year it's in Nashville, TN...the perfect place for a convention in my mind! People travel from all over the U.S. to come to this conference. This morning I met a gentleman from New Mexico and my roommate is from Florida. The Kansas State University Collegiate CattleWomen will be bringing a group of about 30 girls along with many other universities that will follow suite.
So what am I doing here? For the past two years, I have attended the convention as an attendee. This year, I have the opportunity to see how the entire convention is orchestrated as an NCBA intern! I am here with 15 other interns and we are all either undergrad or graduate students at different universities across the country, literally! We stretch from Florida to Washington.  We all have at least one thing in common, our passion for the beef industry. Yesterday while meeting the interns, I was amazed at how many things I had in common with each of them - we either knew the same people, had similar backgrounds, majors, etc! I am so excited about the many people I will meet and connections that will be made this week!
If you are in Nashville at the convention, you can find me in a black shirt (along with the other thousand people that will have black shirts on!). There are expected to be around 7,000 cattleman in attendance, just a few!

Since Nashville is only 5 hours away, I was able to drive. Tennessee is a beautiful state!

The view from our hotel room window...gorgeous!  This is actually all inside a building but the roof is glass so if feels like you are walking outside. The hotel is huge.

The hotel is so big it has it's very own Vera Bradley store :)

One of the fountains in the hotel at night.

Last night we had rib eye steak for dinner at a little restaurant across the way, the waiters/waitresses were very talented and performed throughout the night. Really cool atmosphere and great food!

Pecan pie...incredible.

The calm before the storm this morning. By noon today this place will probably be packed and crazy! 

Southern Tradition

I am discovering that there are things in the south that are distinctly different than Kansas; not better or worse, just different! One of these things is football. The town comes to a halt when there is a game. School is cancelled and tailgating begins at least 24 hours before the game. Southerners are also pretty serious when it comes to food, there's no messing around! Most of them forego the traditional hamburgers and hotdogs and grill ribs and steak! To say the least, I was impressed by their tailgating "skills"; they get the job done!
A Mississippi State tradition is the ringing of the cowbell. I have been told that a long time ago a cow got out at the dairy during a football game and ran onto the field wearing a cowbell. Now people ring cowbells. I don't know if this is the true story or not bit it sounds pretty valid to me and I think it's cool. On Thursday morning the grad students in my office got together to decorate our cowbells for the game. It was quite entertaining and we had a blast! As you can see on my bell below, I had to include the cattle industry and KSU so I put "eat beef" on both sides of my bell. During my time at KSU, the Collegiate Cattlewomens club sold "eat beef" shirts and license plates. It was only appropriate! The "Flying M" brand you see on there is the brand they use at the Beef Unit.
Another great thing about Mississippi State football- student season tickets are only $35 for all the home games. That's right, 6 home games for a total of $35. And the game was sold out Thursday night!
Hope you enjoy the pictures!