Fringe Family Day

Whew. I just finished my volunteer shift at Fringe Family Day, a big festival for kids in a park right next to the city. I was supposed to be working the info desk, handing out free posters, stamping hands, giving directions, forcing sunscreen or rather "sun cream" on people- but after an hour of that I was asked to help out with a workshop that one of the buskers was doing. There were a couple of these arts and crafts workshops going on and the one I ended up helping with was a sidewalk mural. The woman in charge, Olga, is I guess a professional sidewalk artist and she had painted a snake down the park path in the morning, and divided it up into all these little squares for the kids to color in throughout the day. My job was to stand my the chalk and explain to the kids what to do, especially how important it was to rub the colors into the pavement so that it wasn't just dust that would blow away. We had these little sponges to rub in the chalk, with Olga insisted on called "rubbers" and she would shout from time to time, "make sure you're using your rubbers", which I thought was kinda funny. More of my job was to make sure people registered for a time slot to come and color, and then later in the day, to turn people away when there were no more slots left. Fortunately, I only saw one kid cry.

To back track a bit, last night was St Patrick's Day and I actually went out to bars with friends almost like I'm a real normal person. Before we went out we even played drinking games at the hostel and I had my first Guinness ever- not because I wanted to, but because I hadn't bought any alcohol and someone was offering it to me for free. Peer pressure is bad. But I didn't get drunk the whole night (parents and grandparents!). I'm much too afraid of getting sick again. I still had fun, mostly just from walking around the city with other people. It was a nice change. The only bad part was that I somehow managed to lose my cell phone, most likely at the hostel. I'm still hoping it will turn up.

That's about it for now. Tomorrow I have no plans at all. No volunteering, no shows to see, nothing. I think I might be going to the beach!

Love,
Emma