blog action day 2011: FOOD

Today is Blog Action Day 2011 (you can follow the blogging action by following the hash tag #BAD11 on Twitter), and this year the topic is food, since it is World Food Day.  At first I wasn't for sure what to talk about, I didn't want to just write whatever my brain told my fingers to type out, I wanted this to have a meaning to it.

I started thinking about to things I've done in the last few years that involved food.  I've helped with numerous dinners where we fed at one sit down was over a 150 people.  I had also helped do sandwich Saturday a few months ago when we put together small lunch sacks consisting of a dry bologna and cheese sandwich, a banana, a water and cookie to hand out to the homeless of Wichita.  And then, I finally remembered Kids Against Hunger.

The mission for Kids Against Hunger is pretty self explanatory on their website: "The mission of Kids Against Hunger, a humanitarian food-aid organization, is to significantly reduce the number of hungry children in the USA and to feed the starving children throughout the world."  It doesn't seem like much of a life changing experience to help KAH, but until you've been able to help pack the food you have no idea what the feeling is like.

A few years ago, when I first started attending church on a regular basis with a close family that I had been around for quite a while, our church was hosting a KAH packing day.  The food packets that you pack at KAH mainly have rice and seasonings in it but also holds a lot of proteins and vitamins that a lot of kids don't get.  On a KAH packing day, you get to experience every part of packing.  There's a station where each person gets a specific part of the food pack to put into the package; from there the packs are weighed to a specific weight so the boxes being shipped out are all within the same weight range; after weighing, they're sealed shut and passed on to get tightly packed into boxes and finally get taped up and set into the truck.

Going into that day, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, I had never heard of KAH and from the sounds of some of the people in the congregation it seemed like not very many of us knew what we were doing.

I have to admit though, through the experience I not only learned a lot about the hunger of kids in our own nation, but worldwide, but it changed my perspective of things.  I knew that there were kids my age around the world and even kids as close as in my own state; I hadn't the slightest clue of truly how bad it was.  If out of anything, I came out of that experience appreciating the fact that I knew I would be coming home from school to a snack and then dinner.  That I would wake up and have food for breakfast.  And even going to school with the thought of I would have a lunch.  I had taken all of these for granted.

Food is one of those necessities in life that I think a lot of people underestimate.  We complain about not liking certain vegetables or types of food, but we have the awesome opportunity to have food and we complain about it when there are thousands of people, mostly including children that would be so incredibly happy if they got a portion of food, they don't complain about what they get, they're thankful for what they do get.

Admittedly, I have tried the food packs that KAH make and send out to children around the world a few times.  And I didn't particularly like it, but I had to remind myself, I'm used to the luxury of foods that I enjoy.

For more information on KAH or how to help, just visit their website.
I also urge you to check out Blog Action Day and spread the word, it's still not too late to participate this year!
Also, if you want more stuff on World Food Day, check out YouTube's blog post.

NaNoWriMo 2011

Hey internet type people! I hope your week has been great, or at least better than mine, but we're not here to talk about that.  I want to talk about something that I found  out about a year ago and have been itching the last couple of months to get started on it.

National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo or in short, just NaNo.

If you don't know what NaNo is, it's quite simple to explain. You write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the month of November.  It probably sounds a bit crazy if you've never heard of it before, because I know when I first heard of NaNo I couldn't help but think that everyone was just nuts to do such a thing.

I participated in NaNo last year, though I didn't get very far.  I only ended up with about 4,000 words, but for me considering what I was going through a year ago I think I did a good job.  This year however, I was thinking I was going to have a little bit more time to put in the effort for NaNo but now I'm beginning to second guess that assumption.

Here's some things I"m going to be doing over the next eighteen days.

1. Write the ideas I've come up with for my novel down. Things change through out the course of NaNo, I know this even from what little I accomplished last year. But it's always a good start to have some beginning thoughts down as you get started.
2. Free write.  I never really got around to doing any free writes last year before NaNo started, but I've heard that it helps your mind become open to just write and not really worry about what you're writing.
3. Marking the days where I absolutely can not write off of the calendar.  Not only is Thanksgiving in NaNo month, but so is our show.  I know for a fact there will be at most seven full days I won't be able to write during NaNo.  It's always good to know when you won't be able to write so you can make up those lost word counts on a day where you might have more time to write or you simply just ended up writing more than the daily 1,667 words.
4. Give some thought to character names.  I always, always, ALWAYS get hung up on names when I do writing projects. So, considering I have a strong idea for my plot line I'm going to go ahead and name my main characters so there's one less thing to worry about when NaNo starts.
5. Make lists.  Lists including things I want to happen, settings, special objects, and any other specific things that I might want to include in my novel at some point.  This way, I won't forget about them or if I have troubles of writer's block appearing (which I hope won't happen) I can have some things to work into my novel to help fuel some brain power.
6. Get excited.  I'm already pretty excited for NaNo to start again. But I'm hoping that I'll get so excited over it this year my excitement will continue through the entire process and help me finish my novel this year.

I'm sure you'll be hearing more of my NaNo planning in the coming days; I might even be needing some help on a few things...  If any of you are by chance planning on doing NaNo send me an e-mail (nerdfighter2012@hotmail.com)!

If you'd like more info on NaNo just go to NaNoWriMo.org

Happy planning!

10DYC: eight fears

1. Falling: I didn't realize this until the other night, that I constantly fear falling.  I'm always cautious when I go to a new place and when I don't know what the floor/ground is like. And in general it's always at the front of my mind. I'm scared to fall. I'm scared that I'll get tripped in the halls at school and fall. I don't want to find out what happens to my hip if it does happen. I always fear the worse.

2. Public speaking: I kind of touched on this before, and though I'm outgoing to an extent, I get really nervous when it involves speaking to a large group of people at once, including acting/performing. But this fear, I can control for the most part, I mean, I do theatre, debate and forensics, I kind of have to have some control.

3. I won't be able to share my experiences: one of the things I'm really big on is sharing major experiences with people.  You can always learn something new through relaying experiences that you've gone through and I feel like I can help inspire at least one person out there, and I don't miss out on that opportunity.

4. Never getting over the mentallity of "I can't do that": Part of my brain still stops me and says, "Don't do that, you can't do that" because a lot of things I couldn't do before I had a hip replacement, my brain still thinks that I can't do those things.  It's so incredibly frustrating when I can't put my own socks and shoes on like a normal person because my brain tells my body it can't move that way.

5.  The road ahead: now that I think about it, this is probably the most cliche answer that I could answer.  I'm a bit scared of what life has to offer me down the road.  I fantasize about how I want things to go, but I know for a fact that things will turn out exactly the way I imagine them.

6.  The dark: depending on where I'm at I have different feelings about the darkness.  But there's something about not knowing what's out there that I can't see is what gets me.  I've been keeping an open mind though, so I don't get paranoid too much; that's how I deal with darkness when I go camping.

7.  I won't make amends with the people I've had problems with in the past:  there aren't many people who this would apply to, but there a couple.  I want to make amends with those people at some point so I can move on completely.  Not necessarily forgiving them, because you can't just forgive once, it's something you have to keep working on.

Today is awesome because: I really don't need to go any where, and it's a perfect "stay in pajamas and work from bed" type of day since it's been all rainy and stuff since last night's game.

days until ACT: 34

days until the fall musical: 58 (up until now I've been counting wrong....)

days until I become an adult: 112

days until graduation: 243