HOBY Olympics is a really great team building time for ambassadors, and always one of the highlights of Kansas HOBY. We had a beautiful night last night on the Quad on the K-State campus for Olympics. Ambassadors came together as groups and participated in a variety of games, cheering each other on the whole time.

We moved into Phase 2 of leadership this morning -- group leadership. After a team building and problem solving activity (which one group finished in only 10 minutes!), we had a panel discussion on media. The ambassadors had so many great questions for each of the panelists. Our panelists: 

Kent Cornish, the Kansas Association of Broadcasters President
Beth Howell Day, Wamego Smoke Signal Newspaper Editor
Officer Matthew Droge, Public Information Officer for Riley County Police Department
Corey Reeves, Operations Director of Manhattan Broadcasting Station

After the panel was the Career Luncheon, sponsored by Westar Energy. Professionals from a variety of fields (accounting, law, medicine, photography, banking, business, architecture, agriculture, economics, law enforcement, higher education, pharmaceuticals, biology, etc.).

After the luncheon, the ambassadors hosted a carnival for community children, sponsored by Meritrust. It was high energy, lots of fun for everyone, and gave the ambassadors a chance to welcome children and cheer them on as they played various carnival games. They're now participating in more service projects for the rest of the afternoon!

Today, Kansas HOBY 2015 kicked off to a great start despite the rainstorm that started right at the beginning of registration time! The rain didn't stop our excited junior staff members from rushing to greet arriving ambassadors and carry all of their luggage. For those of you who are familiar with HOBY cheers, we were literally "singing in the rain."

The rain eventually let up, though, and we had some time for groups to get to know each other before starting Opening Ceremony, where we heard from our Keynote Speaker, Dr. Emily Lehning, the Assistant Vice President for Student Life and Director of New Student Services at Kansas State University.

Our ambassadors were also introduced to Phase 1 of leadership, the idea of personal leadership. Within this phase, they all completed a personality profile and learned more about the color of their personality, which helps define their strengths as a leader and team member.

We just wrapped up our first panel discussion on education, with a focus on the various options available to students post-high school.

Tonight, we'll start preparing for our service project tomorrow! It was a successful day at Kansas HOBY!