While I'm waiting to find out what the fuck my homework is, I thought "Hey, I should tell people about my *amazing* past three days, since people won't read it anyways" If you don't want to read everything, just skip right over to Tuesday~

~SUNDAY~

At approximately 2 AM the night before, someone was kind enough to remind me (or, as I see it, tell me for the first time) that I was volunteering at 8AM the next day at a community centre nearby about something I had never heard about. I arrive at the community centre the next morning and it turns out to be "Pulse to the Podium" an event held across community centres all across Vancouver. I "volunteered" to help with an Olympic event for children. We held stations for the children to participate in, some themed around Paralympics, some themed about winter sports, some themed around the mascots and some just to entertain the kids. We were in charge of helping set up, running the events that day and signing the children's "passports." They had gotten a very professional or something or the other face painter, who was kind enough to do complex facepoints for my friend and me for free. Mine being an adorable racoon, hers being a panda. We ran some paralympic stations (which the children never came to because they were scared shitless of our facepaints. A girl ran away from me). At 11:30 the official olympic mascots ( [link] ) came-- except for Mukmuk. They were super cute, like omg. ;_; Miga was just dancing all over the place and Sumi had the cutest hug it was like he just wrapped you with his wings-- and this sounds really creepy BUT THEY WERE SO CUTE. I felt bad for Quatchi because his costume was so big he could barely hold anything-- but he was so fuzzy. Afterwards, we were treated with cake, pizza, chips and green tea. My friend and I walked down Robson (completely forgetting about our facepaints orz) when people started stopping us asking for pictures. I think they thought we were part of a fair or something? It was very entertaining and I had to spend 3 hours that night washing the damn facepaint off and I think I still have some on me.

~MONDAY~

It was an out-trip with my Leadership class. Leadership is a course alternative to PE that you can take where you're basically just working on getting the Duke of Edinburgh Award-- a really... uhm... prestigious perhaps award for young Canadian people. It's a combination of working in your community and keeping physically active. Anyways, today we went sailing. It was possible the coldest day of the month thus far and everyone was freezing-- the idea of going out in wetsuits in that cold at Jericho Beach was insane. We were split into groups of three and we were taught the basic mechanics of our boats and told to go and follow their motor boats. The water was freezing cold and we were going into deep water-- not an exciting prospect for a slight aquaphobic. Obviously they decided to put the shortest and weakest person in the group to be the one controlling the sail. Surprisingly, my group never capsized, but that didn't mean they didn't have to endure my screaming the entire ride. At one point we even got a rope from the motorboat tied to us and we were able to sail at high speed across the water. Afterwards, I went for a swim with my lifejacket. We had to run to catch the bus and the bus transfer, but it was really fun~

~ TODAY (TUESDAY) ~

Today was amazing. Actually, maybe I should have just put today, because today was brilliant. I had the lucky opportunity to go with a few members of my school who have helped tremendously in the community to visit the First Annual Me to We Day at GM Place. It was inspiring. It's basically a "rock concert" to help youth know they can change the world. There were some performances from K-non (Is that how you spell his name?) and Jason Mraz and Sarah McLachlan and several others and inspiring speeches from Doctor Jane Goodall, Mia Farrow, The Degrassi Cast, A Former Child Soldier, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and MANY more. It's like, I almost forgot this was real and happenning RIGHT INFRONT OF MY EYES. It was amazing, there were over 16000 youth there for the concert. Everyone recieved a bag full of magazines, newspapers, catalogues, magnets, a coin pendant and two books. I wish I could just say more, but so much amazingness in one day is hard to handle, I'm still in a sort of daze. This was all for free and I cannot begin to explain how lucky I was to see this. There were so many people I would have never thought I would be in the same room as. This has just inspired me so much, and it makes me become so optimistic. I think I'll talk more about it later, but I'll just let you know for now, it was amazing. Just... amazing. That's all I can say. This event is currently going on in Montreal and Toronto as well, and in 2012 they hope to have this International. I suggest you do whatever you can to make that concert, it was just amazing. c: If anyone lives in Canada but can't make the events, the entire Vancouver event will be broadcasted nationally on CTV on October... 15th I think. I'll try to keep journal entries updated on things other people can do even if they don't live in Canada. c: