August 26th, 2006: Make A Wish , Alumni, and Gala

• Mall of America with Make a Wish: The Mall of America is ridiculously huge and it’s probably a good thing that we only had an hour to play around because I could have spent my entire allotment for this trip at this mall. The bulk of our day was helping out with Make A Wish’s family reunion. I helped to hand out tickets to the families that they could use to play in the amusement park (which was awesome). This was great because it gave me a chance to have direct contact with the children and their families. I greatly enjoyed having the opportunity get all the participants excited for the day. This proved to be a little bit of a challenge, which I should have expected. Not everyone was glad to be there. Some had already lost their child. Some were very much in the process of losing their child. Clearly, these parents were not bound to be bouncing for joy. They are in the process of grieving. However it gave me hope that they were there, to be there for their Wish child, or for the family members remaining.

Though extremely difficult, I’d love to do this kind of work of making a child’s wish come true.

• Alumni dinner: A mad dash through the MOA, a haircut, (thanks Michelle for joining me), and a frantic trip back to the Lindquist’s for my show costume (thanks Jane for ironing it), we were back at the Brooklyn High School for dinner with alumni from the area. I took the opportunity to sit with alum that had traveled in ’95, hear about her tour, and thank her for all the alumni support. Without the alumni, there would be no return of the UWP program, much less the scholarships that I received. Merci mille fois!
• Last minute Gala: As I said, I had to make a mad dash back to the Lindquist’s for my costume. I had been asked to join the crew for the Gala. We were to perform two pieces at a benefit to honor Emmanuel and to raise money for the Courage center. A GREAT cause. However, we were not the main course….we were more like the stem on the cherry of the ice cream Sunday. I think we were there for about 4 hours to perform about 4 minutes worth of music. It seemed senseless. Thankfully, we made some fun out of it. Again we played Loteria, a fun rhythmic cup game, and spit. Talk about leisure skills! I need to remember these things.