Update – Volunteering

So I’m finally getting into the swing of this whole “Volunteering” thing.

This Saturday, I went down to the Norton Simon Museum (got in for free!) to help out 826LA with a writing workshop they put on for kids; this one was about “symbols” and how they can tell / help us develop stories:  it consisted of a short lecture by the Museum staff about how the symbols found on Indian Art work was used to tell a lot of stories about the Culture and religion. The children then roamed around the museum, looking for / listing all the commonly-used symbols found on Indian artifacts that they liked. Finally, they sat down to write a story based on either the symbols they found, or ones that they made on their own. The hardest part about this project was getting the kids to think of a story; they only had a half-hour to write one but lot of them seemed to think they had to come up with something good to share.

I figured the best way to get them to overcome this was to write a (rather crappy) story of my own. So here’s the story I wrote:

Once upon a time there was an elephant. He had 8 legs!
Way more legs than all the other elephants!
He felt pretty bad about it until he was discovered by Hollywood and became a movie star. 
The End. 

Surprisingly, it worked.

One of the kids eventually asked me how I thought that one up. I told her all great stories start with “once upon a time,” so I just started from there.

(I wanna try and see if I can come up with my own worshop for them - doesn't seem too complicated!) 

They also held a Fundraising event - Spelling Bee for Cheaters! - out of their west coast Branch (in Santa Monica) where they raised a lot of money & invited a lot of celebrities!  But I didn't go to that so I can't really tell you anything about it! 

Afterwards, I hung around and checked out the Hiroshige Art exhibit they had up - it was pretty cool to see the hundreds of intricate woodblock paintings he drew. 

After that, I drove down to Garden Grove with my friend, Susan, (one of the people I practice dancing with) to “Keep Alive the Spirit of ‘45” - a Celebration of the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII put on by the American Veterans (AMVETS) Dept. of California……but really, we just went to see the Bill Elliot Swing Orchestra (from Boston) play.

The event itself was a lot of fun – the band was great & a lot of people were dressed up in Vintage 1940’s clothing - and Susan & I got to show off a lot of the moves we’ve been practicing. Several people (mostly U.S. Veterans) came up to compliment us on how good we were. 

……that was a nice boost to the ol’ ego.

My weekend - the awkward

Now for the Awkward part of the weekend – Surprise!

Since I posted a couple weeks ago about wanting to get into volunteering, Raul forwarded me a link from 826LA where they said that they needed Volunteers for the L.A. Times Festival of Books. I figured, since I was going anyway, this would be a great way to get started on that, right?

WRONG.

When I got there, everyone seemed friendly enough….until they mentioned words like “training” and “orientation.”

Turns out you can’t just “sign up” to be a volunteer – you have to go through an orientation & training process where they make sure that you’re qualified to be a volunteer! (aka “not insanely violent / a child molester, etc.”)

They were nice enough about it, though – but I could tell they were a little….upset(?) by this whole predicament.

So yeah.....that was a bit awkward.



They “let me leave early,” though, which was nice of them….I think.

The Volunteer Coordinator emailed me the next day saying that they appreciated my help and just wanted to “tell me a little more about the volunteer process." (ha, ha…hah) I emailed her back and asked if they could fit me in to one of their Orientations next Saturday.

So….another bump in the road, but at least I’m getting started!