ACME Fundraiser Recap

That truly was a wonderful experience-having a nametag strung around my neck that says founder and development director, and for the first time having people come up to me, rather than me approaching them. The event definitely had things that went wrong. First off, I forgot one of the gift cards, one of the silent auction items (the autographed Tricia Tunstall book to be exact) hadn't arrived yet, traffic was really bad pushing our event later and later, and we had MAJOR technical problems, which I'm still not sure what happened. But the food was delicious, we had wonderful volunteers, probably 40ish in attendance, the speakers eventually worked, the students played beautifully, and we met our goal of 20 silent auction items! We learned for next time to set bids higher (25 dollar GC were going for 5), but we still raised $2000! And more importantly created a lot of new advocates, volunteers, and hopefully fundraising committee members. The speakers were excellent. We had Eric Booth begin, who was at a silent monastery, but spoke about how perfect Mpls is for a project like El Sistema and how he was incredibly skeptical until he saw it firsthand in Venezuela. I am SO excited that a year from today I will have also experienced it!! Then we had Levi Comstock who spoke about individual students' transformations through the program, the academic improvement, and the community impact the program has had on the Conservatory Lab CHarter School. Finally, we closed it off with Jonathan Govias, who spoke about where all the different programs are, the synergy of the movement, and how wonderful El Sistema was. We had lots of questions, gave our pitch, and the last to leave were the high school students asking how they could volunteer more and the asst principals. It is so wonderful to have such a huge support from the school!!! After thank you notes I will be done working for a little while anyway and off to explore Europe!
 If you would like to contribute to the wonderful cause go to www.acme-music.com!
A week from today I will be having my last day in Mpls. How scary! I bought an SLR for the trip and am incredibly excited per practicare l'italiano and meet up with dear old friends and my brother!!! Not sure when the next time I will post will be (probably June) so take care! Peace Sara

30 days..here we go

So I have 30 days to live in this beautiful city. I started the first one by learning Irish music and can now play a jig and a reel. I was sad I didn't discover this earlier, but then realized I'm moving to Boston where these things MUST exist with all the Irishmen there. I also realized how much I am going to miss my buds at salsa. Ditto zumba/kickboxing! I have no doubt there is salsa there, but I am seriously part of the Bar Abilene salsa community now. I was debating going salsa dancing in Austin when I'm there this week but won't know anyone and realized that's why I enjoy it so much, but we'll see...I keep almost adjusting to life in one place only to move on to another so it's my own fault.

I did have a wonderful birthday here in the TC though. Celebrated with friends, won a Zumba shirt, and ate some good Irish food and did a tiny bit of Ceili dancing. Excited to travel in May don't get me wrong, but really enjoying Mpls!

So now I'll make a list of things I'm excited for:

1) Public transportation every ten mins and 24/7
2) Living by the ocean!
3) Involvement with Irish music/dance (yes I can do this here)
4) Speaking Italian/joining an Italian community
5) Haymarket
6) Quincy Market

I have a feeling this will grow!