blog with ty

So I had my final presentation and from what I have heard everyone said I did a great job. I was nervous going into my practice and very nervous going into my final. I decided that I would write out my whole script and then I would highlight the areas that I wanted to make sure to hit. This worked great for me I was able to remember everything looking at my blog and I ended up with an eleven page script. So I went into my practice presentation with this script and then a video and a picture slide show. I had practiced reading my presentation six times before my practice so I went into it knowing that I knew what I was talking about. I got great feedback from Blashford, Clark Evans and Rachel so I knew that I was going into my final presentation being very well prepared. At first I had a slide show however from all three of the people in my practice presentation they told me that I needed a power point with pictures instead of a scrolling background. This made sense because one time I was talking about something with a picture in the back that had nothing to do with what I was talking about. So I made that change for my final. Another thing I was told in my practice was to set my papers down and not hold them. I tried this at home and it felt so weird and uncomfortable so I decided I would choose to not take that recommendation. I wanted to feel comfortable with what I was talking about and I wanted to make sure I hit every point; I knew that if I didn’t hold the paper I would forget a lot of things. So I hope I don’t get graded to harsh on that. So it came time for my final presentation and I was setting up and Mrs. Clark Evans came in and talked with me and calmed me down so that was helpful because I really had no time to get nervous again since people started pouring in. My mentor gave me the cue and I just started talking. I don’t remember much except for looking at the clock to time myself and not go over. So I finished and everyone clapped and I felt relieved and then it was time for the QA. I repeated the first question that was asked but I forgot to continue to do that, I don’t think it hurt the presentation because the room was silent when a question was asked so. Overall I was happy with my presentation and like I said I had all good feedback.

Saturday was set up for the event. Everyone was supposed to arrive at 1 o’clock. During set up we had to decide where we wanted all of the pieces and what was going to be in the window sill and what was going to be hanging on the wall. Looking back I wish I had moved some pieces to different locations. All of the pieces got looked at its just some got more attention than others, and those that got a lot of attention were a lot of the time ones that were not for sale. So I wish that some of the pieces that were for sale were out front and maybe someone would have bought them. There was one re-occurring problem we had during set up and that was that pieces kept falling off the wall. Only one frame broke and that wasn’t until Sunday, however at least 10 pieces fell all together. The problem was that the hooks we were using needed time to stick to the wall and we were not giving them time. Soon we discovered that was the issue and fixed the problem.

I had the dresses and T-shirts in the front lobby area of Eileen’s and then there were a few pieces on the walls. The rest of the art work was in the dining area for people to view. This was a mistake on my part because I had one piece that got a lot of attention, but it was behind a table. So although it got a lot of attention I think it could have gotten more had it been in a different location and maybe even sold. Set up did not take very long about an hour and a half.

Sunday was the day of the event. Everyone arrived at ten o’clock and by the time we got there, three people had already wanted to buy Maddie’s Piece.  I think that when everyone heard this, people realized that their pieces could sell and this brought their hopes up. I know that one artists decided to put a couple pieces for sale that she had decided were not for sale, so people were changing their minds and this was good to see. By the time a second piece sold everyone was happy for each other and the work they had done.

Both Emily’s and Maya’s dresses got a lot of attention which was good to see. A couple of times I was asked if anyone of the dresses were for sale, so that was a good sign. Looking back I wish that more artists sold more stuff. I’m not an artist myself so maybe I don’t understand but what are they going to do with their pieces when they are done? I have to assume that they will hang them up but I heard some of them don’t hang everything. I guess that they must be sentimental or something because otherwise it make no sense not to sell them, it’s not like they need it for their portfolio anymore. I think that if more pieces were for sale they would have sold, assuming that I re-arranged some of the pieces to make them focal points. Maddie’s hands drawing was the talk of the show from what I heard and she sold it, so that made me happy. I know that two people wanted to buy a crab painting but the artist did not want to sell it which personally I thought was a bummer. The artist is going to recreate the piece and sell that.

Eileen’s was packed from opening to 1 so it was great to see so many people coming in to eat and view the art. Not everyone that came in knew about the art show obviously but a lot did take the time to view the art. All of the artists combined made approximately $600 form everything that sold or had been ordered. I was so happy for them that they made money, and now it is their choice if they want to donate any. The donation table did not do so hot and I think that was primarily location at the beginning. I think that the show was a success, from what I have heard the artists are all happy and besides the two people that made dresses, the rest sold something, have orders or a prospected buyer so that is great. There were no real problems that arose the biggest was the need to fix things if they fell, other than that everything ran smooth.

The picture of the flier is too big to upload so I will have to try to figure this out tomorrow at school. I will post a picture of the flier and invite as soon as I figure out how.

Since my last post I have had to overcome some obstacles. I hit a roadblock when I realized that there were no build sites in the winter. Habitat has been in the process of obtaining permits that are necessary to build so that is slowing the process. The site says to continue to check back soon but I don’t have enough time for that. I still plan on working on build sites in the future after senior exhibit, but for the time being in needed a new plan. So I meet with my advisor, the loving Ms. Clark Evans and pitched her the new plan. I was going to work with Mrs. Blashford on the art event that was being held on February 13^th. I had conducted interviews with a bunch of the people in the Twin Cities office about running events so this was a perfect fit. Since that meeting I have become the head of the art event and have taken over most of it. My first task was to sort out all of the mass chaos between the artists and what was going on.

I started to talk around with the artists and it seemed to me that none of them had a clue what was going on. I heard many things like “am I in this”, to things like “I thought this was supposed to show off our art not focus on a charity.” These were interesting things to hear because it showed be that there was a clear problem. I quickly figured out that besides Blashford and myself nobody else had a clear image in their head of what was going to happen. So this became my first task, to solve all this chaos. I began by setting up an email list and starting to communicate with all the artists. They may think that I was bombarding them with emails, but I was really trying to sort out what they knew and what they didn’t. Through emails and walking up to the artists I think I calmed them down pretty quickly, I could tell that none of them really knew what was going on, but I knew that would change soon. It came time to create a name for the event and I created Art for E3. Boy if this didn’t cause a stir. My gosh, I don’t think I knew what I got myself into when I made that name. When the artist heard this name it was like a bunch of little of those teeth clacking things that you wind going off at once. I started to become a little stressed at this point but I learned in the interviews in conducted that being stressed is the last thing you want.

So the main problem that everyone had with the name Art for E3 was that the artists thought it was too much emphasis on the charity and they thought what they were doing was for their senior exhibit and being in an art exhibit. I think eventually all of them told me this same thing, so I knew that this name had to go. Clearly if they all are telling me the same thing I have to change something, but then I thought, as the leader running this I have to make decisions of my own. This decision however was already made, the name needed changing. So I emailed everyone out and said that I had talked with Blashford and I was going to change the name, if anyone had suggestions email me. Margeaux emailed me back with the name For the Love of Art along with other suggestions, but I liked this one and so did she. I emailed it out and everyone liked it so that’s the new title. I never realized that choosing a title could take so long, I’m glad that I started when I did. When I conducted interviews over the summer one thing I heard was that, when running events you have to please the people in the events and the people attending, not yourself so much. This was true, I personally liked Art for E3 better because it added the element of the charity more, but if none of the artists did it was better to get a new title then take chances of losing an artist or two…..that’s what happened next.

I got an email on my phone and it was in the purple text so I knew Mrs. Blashford didn’t type it sure enough she was forwarding me an email from one of the artists. As much as I want to name names, I wont because I don’t want to offend anyone. I am not mad at the artists nor do I think they should be embarrassed if they read this, I am actually glad this happened. I read the email and it was essentially saying they were going to not do the art event because there had been too much confusion and they wanted it to be an art event and not focused on a charity (this happened right before the title change). I would like to thank Mrs. Blashford for forwarding me the email before replying because it gave me the ability to make more decisions which was my job if I was going to be running the event. I emailed Mrs. Blashford back, but it was the end of the day and I assumed no response until next week (it was a Friday). So I knew that this was important so I called her house. Yes, it was kind of weird to call a teachers house but in this case it was essential.  We talked about how we should respond to the artists email and then I realized that we needed to address everyone. An email was then sent out explaining in detail what was going to happen at the event and that the name was going to be changed (remember at this time it hadn’t changed to For the Love of Art yet). Thankfully the artists didn’t quit the event and at this point I think everyone was on the same page.

Another big task that needed sorting out was how the event was going to benefit the E3 charity. Just because I changed the name didn’t mean that E3 wasn’t going to be involved. E3 got involved in the first place because when Mrs. Blashford set the ideas of the event up near the beginning of the whole senior exhibit process she knew Paige was trying to raise money. I didn’t choose E3, if it was my choice I would have money go toward Habitat for Humanity, but this had been set up earlier so I felt I couldn’t just scrap that charity and choose another organization. Ok back on track, the artists had been confused if there was going to be an auction or just an exhibit. In order to raise money for a charity, we had to make money somehow, but an auction was not the right way to do it. Along with the title this caused a great deal of controversy among the artists. They wanted an art exhibit not a live auction which took the focus more on the charity. So I scrapped the auction and let Mrs. Blashford know that there had to be another way to make money. I knew that the artists wanted the show to be on their artwork and not focused on the charity so I knew that making them sell at least one piece of artwork would not solve the problem. What if they didn’t want to sell anything, and they just wanted to show off their art. So I decided their would be donations and they could sell any artwork IF they wanted to. If they sold something for $100 and they wanted to keep $90 they could and just donate $10. This made it so the event was on their artwork and donations would go toward the E3. I will find out this coming Friday who is selling pieces.

The location had already been set at Eileen’s downtown and that was perfect because it is popular, nice and free for us (thank you Mrs. Blashford). Next was advertising. I learned in my interviews I conducted over the summer that Habitat for Humanity really has started to advertise more on Facebook and the internet in general and not so much in paper. So I made a Facebook group to advertise. Of course that’s not all I knew that we needed fliers, and then what I didn’t know was whether to have personal invites or not. Mrs. Blashford thought that it was a good idea; I wasn’t sold on the idea so I turned to my mentor. Through this whole SE process I don’t think I have gone to my mentor as much as other people, I wanted to take on everything by myself and I usually don’t ask for too much help doing stuff. In this case we had a tie so I had to. I talked with her and she thought that a personal invitation to some people would be nice. So this meant I needed to make the invite. I have always been good at photoshop and other programs so I had no problem creating the invite. The fliers would be put out around school and other places and the invited will be set out at Eileen’s prior to the event and the artists can also mail them to family members or anyone they want to come. The invite was nice because it had a description of all the artists, myself, two examples of artwork, about senior exhibit, and then a description of E3. I’m glad we have invites I think they will help get more people to come because people that get one will feel like they were more personally invited. Remember everyone is invited to come!

Making the invites and the flier had some road bumps on the way. I needed a short blerb that said the artists name and the goal of their senior exhibit. Like anything in life some people get it done fast others late. So that was a problem because I needed to get them to Mrs. Blashford for printing. In the end everything was complete by the end of the week and the flier looks great (thanks Tony). Ill post a picture of the flier below, I asked Tony Washington to make the flier since he had some more experience in graphic design and his project was on graffiti.

So this coming week I will know how many pieces are for sale and the printing will be done and the fliers should be sent out as well as the invites. I will update soon!

Between my learning activity and my application I have been able to go to some local build sites. At the local build sites I helped tape, paint, and to repairs in the kitchen. After I went to the ceremony to give the house away the build site began to slow down, and winter was approaching. I plan on getting a group together form school to go work on a build site, the problem was that HFH was in the process of getting the permits to start the next build site. Now that HFH has the permits there are exams and students have to study, so going to the build sites would not work out. With Christmas coming many of the dates now are non work days so i will have to wait until after Christmas break. I am thinking of getting a group together to go spread door hangers for the HFH re-sale building.

In February I am helping with the art event, so I am getting started on that.

After circling my strengths and boxing my weakness these were the results. My strengths were Taking instructions, Observing, and Being Athletic. My weakness were detail working, Counseling and Sensing and Feeling. From looking at these i can tell that my topic HFH has a good about of sensing and feeling involved. The work that i am doing is not so much actually talking to the families, more building and soon fundraising. My strengths do not give any incite as to what would help with my application. I am surly going to try to work on the sensing and feeling, however i am thinking so far that for my application i will have a fundraiser and then go to a build site with students. I have not meet with my mentor yet, i communicated with them and this week was not a good week for us to meet. We have planned to meet next week.

I woke up today and began to pack my bag to head up to Sandstone MN, where the Habitat 500 would begin. Before registration 200,000 dollars had been made from the bikers and other sponsors. The goal this year was to make 300,000. The bike ride is a ride with 137 bikers and it is a total of 500 miles along the roads of MN. People from all over the US come to this event to help raise money and build a house on the 5th day.

We arrived in Sandstone around 5 o’clock. All throughout the ride the bikers and volunteers stayed in high school gyms instead of getting hotels and spending money that could be used to go toward houses. So we arrived at the Sandstone High School gym. Once we entered the building some people had already began to set up their beds for the night. I just slept on Therma rests, however some people brought like their whole comforter and had blow up mattresses that would stand 2 feet off the ground. My uncle and I helped put up signs around the building telling the bikers where to go.

As the night rolled on the gym began to fill up with more and more air mattresses and chatter. There were two places for people to sleep inside and outside. Not many people pitched a tent the first night because there were some storms in the area. I didn’t know that MN got a lot of tornadoes, but that night there was a tornado that touched down not to far away with hail the size of baseballs. YIKES! Anyway…where was I…o and so dinner was from 6-7 that night and the food was very good. I had heard before that the food was always good for dinner and breakfast. Most of the time local Church groups would cook the food for no expense, which is great. So after dinner was the opening ceremony. This was where the safety instructions were told, they had nightly news and weather, road reports, and then on the first night a family that had received a house before was there to speak. It was an inspirational story to listen to and I think was told to get everyone in the mood to raise money and bike! I got video of this so when I get home on Tuesday I will post the video.

One thing that I was worried about was people snoring. I cant stand to sleep in a room where somebody snores really loud. I had made it through about half of the night, since lights went out at 10:00 and the gym got silent. So it was lets see…about 1:20 in the morning and I woke up because the old man next to me was snoring so loud. WOW this cant be happening to me I thought. I was saying nooooooooooooooooooooooo. I kept turning over on my therma rest to secretly try to make a noise to wake him up and stop the snoring. That failed.  Thankfully after thirty long, terrible, noisy, non sleeping, head aching, pain staking, what am I going to do minutes the guy stopped snoring and I fell back asleep.

I woke up around 6 am and there are three different types of people at this time in the Gym. Those that are already in their biking gear and have already deflated their mattress and then there are those that are just waking up like me, and then there are those with the blankets over their head trying to sleep until soon they realize people are at breakfast and they are now running late. breakfast was supposed to open at 7 however people ate a little earlier and then hit the road earlier. After I ate my uncle and I helped load everyones suitcases into the big moving truck that would travel to each high school everyday. So that was a task in itself, let me just say before I forget when I was eating dinner the previous night and breakfast in the morning I was talking to other riders and staff, so I heard stories and asked them some of my questions, I just didn’t write down their response because it was inconvenient to carry around everything with me and Ican remember what they said and I could also talk to more people. If I had asked people if I could interview them, most I think were buisy and would have said maybe you can see me later on in the ride or at a rest stop (which I wouldnt be here) so I just asked questions and kinda interviewed them without them knowing. Anyway, I learned alot about habitat form talking with these people.

So after all of the riders left my uncle and I hopped into a support vehicle and we rode to rest stop number 2. Sunday was a 50 mile day for the bikers so there were only 2 rest stops 1 and 2. Every rider had to stop at 2 to check in so the staff knows that nobody is lost. As we drove down the road we passed a lot of the bikers and honked our horn at them, the bikers would then give a thumbs up if they are AYYY OOOO K and a down if they need assistance, we got all ups! Once we arrived at rest stop  my uncle and I helped set up and get ready for the bikers to arrive. With in an hour a bunch of the bikers were there and eatin our food an everything. I was thinking there probably isn’t nothing better then some of this nice food when you are biking. I mean I had blue cheese crumbles out for these bikers, now ain’t that nice. I talked to a lot of the bikers as they came in to rest up and asked some more questions. The bikers began to leave and then my aunt came to pick me up and we headed back to the Twin Cities.

I must say the roads in MN are very bumpy, I am not happy that we have the roads we do in VA. The salt that gets put down in the winter just kills these roads. I think my cheeks were numb from bouncing up and down going down the road. My aunt and I ate at a local resturant in the neighborhood, and watched the World Cup. I wanted Netherlands to win but I wont talk about that in this blog. So tomorrow is Monday and I will be headed to Mall Of America, i’ll post a little about that at the end of the Day on Monday. Thanks for the comments to those that have, i’ll try to respond when I get back on Tuesday, so dont think that I wont respond. Bye.

Today was just a day to hang around and go visit the museums around. I went to the Walker Art Center and to the sculpture garden. I also went to the Science museum which is actually in St. Paul not Minneapolis. I didn’t do anything involving Habitat today so this post will be short. About Saturday….

I wont be able to post Saturday night, because my uncle and I are headed to Sandstone where we will spend the night in a school gym with a lot of other Habitat volunteers and bike riders. Sunday is the kick off for the Habitat 500. This is a 500 mile bike ride that starts Sunday and goes for 1 week with many pit stops. I am going to try and ask questions to different people Saturday. Sunday morning I will wake up around 5:30 or 6 and then eat Breakfast before the bikers begin at around 7:00 am. From there im not too sure what i will be doing. So thats the plan see you Sunday.

I woke up earlier today and got ready to go to the Twin Cities Habitat office that was only a few blocks from our house. There I conducted one full interview and then spoke with two other people working there. The first person that I interviewed was Heather Erickson (last name may be spelled wrong). Heather is the head of the youth program for Minn. Most of the questions that she answered best were geared around youth and college and high school opportunities. She was great to talk to since i am in high school and what I am looking to do is involving high school students. As I asked one question about the square feet of the houses and questions involving the sizes of the houses another Habitat employee walked by who was mainly in charge of the layouts of houses. He told me that most houses range from 1190-1340 sq ft. The main way that the size is determined is by how many people are going to be living in the house. 98% of the time habitat houses are built for a single parent and their kids. However one time a house was built for a single individual.

The final person that I talked to was a younger lady who is in charge of the social networking for the Habitat office. So her job was to keep everybody informed about events and EVERYTHING that is going on through Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. It makes sense that a younger person would be in charge of this job, because many of the adults these days have no clue how to operate Facebook ( my dad) I asked her what was the most complicated factor about her job and she said the most complicated factor is to make sure that she mentions everything that is going on and to make sure the message she sends is clear and not over patting Habitat on the back; to make sure that everything that Habitat is made out to be on Facebook it actually is.

So those were my interviews for the day. My uncle and I then went biking on the new Highway for bikes that runs throughout the whole city. I’ll post a picture from the web below, I also took some from my camera so I can post that when I get home. After biking we picked my aunt up from work and I got a mini driving tour of the city and walked into the Apple Store in Uptown. Later tonight we are planning on staying in and eating dinner, then just chilling. Tomorrow nothing happens for my SE so I will just be visiting museums. Ill post a little bit about my day tomorrow night nothing to long. Saturday is when my SE kicks back up again.

This goes over the highway and the train and serves as a bike highway with many exit ramps!

I was supposed to have an interview today with Heather Erickson, however because of the car troubles that she was having, we re-scheduled the interview to tomorrow. My aunt had to work today so in the morning my Uncle and I rented a double Kayak and we went kayaking on three different lakes, Lake Calhoun, Lake of the Isles and then Cedar Lake. There were so many people on the lake because it was not a very hot day, yet the sun was still out and no rain.

Above is a map of the lakes that we kayaked in. After we went kayaking we drove to pick my Aunt up from work, who is a Psychologist. We then drove to this building that is like a large World Market to the 10th size of World Market. There we ate lunch and watched the World Cup game of Spain vs. Germany. The cool thing was that in this building there were people from both Spain and Germany. So when Spain won there were people running around the building with a Spain flag. After lunch we headed back home because my aunt had to go back to work. I read East of Eden for a while and then uncle Richard showed me some of the folders and pamphlets and ad boards from different habitat trips that he had been on. He has traveled all over the world for habitat going to northern Ireland twice to other places such as Honduras and other places in Asia. The stories that he told were very interesting. Later that night after my uncle left to go to a previous engagement my aunt and I just ate dinner and watched some t.v. before going to bed.