Did I Land the Plane Safely? Are the Passengers Alright?

Sorry, I think I may have blacked out the last two weeks. Really, where did the time go? It's been a bit busy for me here with some special events going on and not a lot of regular time spent at my school or in the office. Actually I have been spending more time at the office, but I've been working hard and haven't had time to update the blog on company time. What's that all about? Anyway, I hope to get back into the swing of things here, and I also have not forgotten about the carnival pictures. As I was telling one of my 247 Harkins cousins in an e- mail recently, I have a bunch of deadbeat friends and haven't been able to get the pictures from them. They would probably tell you it's just that they've been busy too. Agree to disagree.

The main thing occupying my time recently was a flea market/carnival we had as a fundraiser last Saturday and Sunday. We just completed building a new teacher training center which is located next to an existing public school that we work with, and it was at this dual location that we put on the event. At the school we had rooms full of clothing, furniture, and other donated items that were sold to the local community. At our new center, we had the carnival which consited of food, games and music. We had hot dogs, pizza, cotton candy, popcorn, soft drinks, face painting, ball toss, ring toss, twister, prizes, and of course the blaring bachata and reggaeton music. As you can imagine, this took an enormous amount of planning and coordination, with it all coming together last week. My role during the event was supervising the food area and I must say that I did a damn fine job of it if I do say so my damn self.

All in all, I think it was a success but it took a lot of effort to pull off. We raised a little bit of money and it was nice to see the community come together and have a good time while doing it. This may become an annual event, but I think the organization is going to have to decided whether or not the benefits justify the work put in. I think it would have been more successful with a beer tent, but I was told that alcohol sales don't fit well with children, education, etc. Whatever.

Regardless, here's some photos:

Some members of my crack sqaud of hot dog preparers

Soft drink team



I spent a lot of time working the grill...

...that is, when I couldn't convince attractive young ladies to do it for me



More helpers

Super volunteerJen Collett handled the money with an iron fist

Good times were had by all