It's Not Easy Being Green (and Red!)

Well the big holiday party is over!! I think it went well overall. It was fun in the exhausting kind of way. The official last day of the after-school program this year was Tuesday, so we had Wednesday and Thursday to get ready without the kids before the party on Friday. Those days were spent decorating, planning, moving toys and decorations, going on countless errands, and basically running around the building like crazy. I worked over eight hours those three days without much break. I felt like I was losing my mind at some moments. I would run upstairs to do something but then couldn't remember what! It always felt like there was too much to do, but it all worked out in the end. Luckily I did not go into work until noon on Friday because I was there until almost 9:00 at night.

Ok, I will try to describe how the party worked. First of all, we did have almost 300 kids show up. They were let into the building after they were assigned a group number. Around 15 kids were in each group. They started off in the gym where they had to register. While they were waiting for their group to get called, they had activities to do such as face painting, musical chairs, etc. Once their group was called they were led upstairs. They had eight rooms to go to with an activity in each one where they spent about ten minutes. They went from Hanukkah, to Ramadan, to Tet, to New Years (where they got a snack), to Las Posadas, to Kwanzaa, to Christmas, and finally to the hats and gloves room where everyone got a pair of gloves and a hat (until we ran out). I was in the Christmas room obviously, so I did not get to see much of the rest of the party. I organized the Tet room and I think it went well. I got some volunteers from the Vietnamese Student Association at U of L to come in and help. They were really sweet. I observed the first group of kids going to each room before they finally reached Christmas. And for the next three hours I did not get a break. Once they reached the Christmas room, all the kids were supposed to sit down and wait for their turn to see Santa (we had coloring sheets for them). Santa was this old man who has volunteered for the past fifteen years. One by one the kids would sit on his lap and get a picture, and then I would come out with a toy for them. If you can tell from the pictures, we had dividers set up in the room so the kids could not see all the toys behind them, but many of them tried to. So for three hours I was constantly running around the stacks of toys we had trying to pick out a toy for a nine year old girl, then a two year old boy, then a eleven year old boy, then a 13 year old girl, and so on. I had a couple of volunteers helping me out back there, as well as some in the front of the room who mainly helped with crowd control. Since I knew a lot of the kids, I really wanted to get them something they would like. But I found out this was impossible!! I am sure most of the kids were happy with their gifts, but this is not what I got to see. Mostly I saw the kids coming back and complaining that they did not like their gift and they wanted to exchange it (which was difficult while I was trying to get presents for the other group of kids in there). Or the second I would hand them something they would say "I don't want this." We had kids 1-14 there and the older kids were the problem. In my humble opinion, the holiday party should be for kids 10 and under, or maybe 12 and under. They were all less than $10 gifts, so of course it was hard to please the teenagers! We had about 15 personal CD players that were $10, but the problem is, once they found out we had them, everyone wanted one! For example, 13 year old Juma who loves to play basketball was so excited when I handed him a basketball. But five minutes later he came back in and said he wanted a CD player instead like James. So that was hard for me. I wanted everyone to be happy with their gifts but I'm not really an elf, so it was impossible! And by the end we ran out of gifts for older children. So it was quite a stressful job. I just have to remember how many kids were happy that night and try to forget the ones who complained. I did my best! If only everyone could be like 11 year old Nyanyok who was thrilled to receive a prom date barbie doll! But as I said, overall it went very well...but it would have been a lot easier if we could have gotten rid of the 13 and 14 year olds! The whole party is aimed for younger children.

Wow what a long entry. Congratulations if you made it this far. Anyways, after it was all over I went out to eat with some of my co-workers for a late dinner. I was so busy I didn't realize how hungry I was until we go to the restaurant. All day I only ate cereal, a bagel, a Reeses, and a few Doritos. It was nice to finally relax and enjoy a meal with the great people I work with! So far today I have done absolutely nothing but relax and boy did I need it!