Week 10

Wow! It is so incredibly hard to believe that in less than a month, I will be in the car back home! Tomorrow morning, my parents arrive for 5 days of touring, roaming, eating, and just being reunited.  It has been 10 weeks since I left home and what an adventure.
On Monday, I started the day in class.  In religion class, we had 4 people present on their engaging politics project.  It was interesting to hear what other organizations people are working with and what these organizations are doing for the community of Denver.  After class, I met up with Amy Arnold again in Washington Park before she left town.  We walked around a little bit and got a chance to talk a little again which was really nice.  After that, Brittni, Marcela and I went to AFSC, the organization I am politically engaged with, to head out to a vigil/rally in Aurora to protest the new ICE policies and their new set of raids and silly other stuff they are doing.  There were about 50 people at the rally at the peak point and it was interesting to talk to people and hear their stories and hear about why they are there.  After the rally, we came back to the apartments, and I spent the night watching TV (although there was nothing on) and just hanging out with Nicole.
On Tuesday, I went back to work.  I worked on raffle (surprise!) and also began to write some newsletter stuff for the summer newsletter.  Over lunch, Ben and I wrote the volunteer newsletter and then I  priced some more golf balls before finishing out the day writing thank you notes for raffle.  I finished my long list of thank you's which was super nice, and then came home.  I spent the night just chilling which was nice to not have anything to do.
On Wednesday, I woke up excited for the Raffle Drawing today.  Needless to say, I was a little disappointed after all the build up.  In the morning, I met Daniel from Raffle Admin which was a little interesting, but went well.  He is a nice guy and not at all what I expected from the emails we had exchanged.  Daniel and Erin and Laura went to a PR meeting and I stayed at the office.  I got my work done at 1130, in time for our lunch meeting, but the early PR meeting went long, so I just hung out a little bit and worked on various things.  When the three others came back with lunch, we had a lunch meeting which was interrupted with the CEO came in and started talking taxes.  He thinks he knows all about accounting, but really he doesn't so it was interesting to listen to that conversation.  As soon as we were done, the auditors showed up to meet with Daniel and audit the tickets and such.  Seemed fairly painless. I went back to my office and cut up email addresses for the survey drawing I would do later in the day.  Around 2:45, Laura and I got the barrel drum, and loaded her car and headed over to the Cope branch.  I started interviewing a few kids about their dream house, what they'd do with 25,000 dollars, etc.  At 3:20, I headed to the gym to film the drawing.  Once we got started, it took about 3 minutes to give away $40,000.   It was crazy.  WE had a few people there watching, but none won.  After the drawing, I interviewed a few more kiddos, before we headed back to the support center.  We had to shred all the non winning tickets, and then call the winners.  Let me tell you, shredding over 15,000 takes about 15 minutes, and fills our huge "to shred" bin.  After that, Laura, Daniel, Erin and i started calling the winners.  To hear their excitement was awesome.  We collected some stories from them and chatted a bit, Erin cried when she called the winners, and then we were done.  Erin and i then pulled survey winners, I email them, and finally left work on a bus shortly before 6 pm.  I did not make it home in time for class, so when I got home about 7:10, I wrote a couple of papers, sent some emails, and watched a movie.  I was exhausted after the long day.
Today, Thursday, was quite different.  I had nothing on my plate at work.  Erin was gone all day at a couple of meetings, a funeral, and a youth of the year dinner.  Laura had no work she needed help with.  It left me with very little to do.  I wrote a story for the summer newsletter, sent some more surveys, and then just spent the afternoon chilling.  I felt bad not doing any work, so started asking around to see if anyone needed help, which no one did.  It made for a very long day, but i got to leave at 415 rather than 445 since i worked late yesterday.  Tonight I have some homework to get done and need to clean the apartments, but other than that, I am just chilling in preparation for my parents coming tomorrow, which I am SUPER excited for.
We have a packed schedule of things to do, but we have some free time, and it will be fun to catch up with them and just spend time with them.
Were going to visit the Molly Brown house, go to red rocks, go to the tea factory, do pearl street, 16th street, the Coors factory, the Hammond chocolate factory, the winery, and the buffalo bill museum.  Five days of my parents all to myself :) I cannot wait :)

That is all for this week!  Check back next week to read about all that my parents and I Did!