On April 20th, brothers from Chi Chapter attended Earth Day Event! Earth Day Event volunteers take part in ongoing efforts to conserve and upgrade the park, including trail maintenance, invasive plant removal, slope re-grading, planting native plants and assisting with efforts to make the park more accessible to people with disabilities.
After everyone arrived, we were all split up into two groups: we were given hedge-cutters to cut weeds and overgrown plants that were blocking the trails and other volunteers were given shovels to remove dirt and debris from the driving lanes. Cutting the plants were fun and we even cut some branches off of trees that were in our faces. At the end of the trail, we were given tangerines and nutrition bars to recuperate. A speaker about sustainability gave us some eco-friendly tips at the end. We ended with the toast song, thanked the LA Works organizers, and went home.
I got to the volunteer center at 2pm and was assigned to a book signing area! Before my shift started, I had a short break, and the event organizers were nice enough to give us a free lunch meal. I got to eat a soft, fluffy ham sandwich, an apple, a cookie, chips, and a beverage of my choice. I met up with Maria and Priya, whom were at the "East meets West" area where they have volunteered for around six years for the Festival of Books. They didn't get any volunteer gifts though since they were volunteering for a privately-owned book merchant and not USC specifically. They went to see if they could get a volunteer shirt, and I got to chat briefly with one of their co-volunteers. Afterwards, I went to my assigned area, and I met Bibi, the event supervisor for that area. She was really cool, and she told me how she knew Tupac's mom and some famous people. I didn't believe her at first, but when I checked the people on my Itouch, she seemed pretty convincing haha. One of the other co-volunteers was Kevin Xu! He's an active from Alpha Kappa and it was cool talking to him about USC and their APhiO chapter. Most of my shift, we didn't do much because we were in charge of helping organize the books signings for when the authors arrived. However, the authors didn't stay for longer than 30 minutes, so we were just chilling and watching the booth most of the time. One of the authors though was from the movie White Chicks!! She was the worker lady from when the girls go shopping! Closer to 6pm, Maria and Priya came to see where I was volunteering and we took the picture and sang the toast song. I thanked Bibi for the fun time we had and left.
MATAGUAY WAS SO FUN THIS YEAR! I'm only speaking for myself, but I had a lot more fun this year than I had last year. I really wish more people from Chi chapter would've gone because it really is such an amazing opportunity to meet IC brothers and learn more about APO. Rides were kind of difficult to arrange because all of us ended finals at different times. A brother from ZO (Edwin Ng) picked me up from UCLA, Stacey rode with Aaron Torio from LM, and Jessica, Kevin, Diana, and Olivia met up and drove to Mataguay together. The ride was trafficky and rocky; we all got there at different times. The first night was introduction and just hanging out, then we went to bed in the Boy Scout cabins, which was totally fine except it was webby. Gross. We started activities at 8:30am the next day by first splitting into groups. My group, Team 11 AKA THE BEST GROUP WE WERE ON FIYAHHHH, started out at the shooting range and I did soo well :). Afterwards, we dug trenches and helped widen this thing where electrical wires were going to go through. At 12:30pm, we went back to the common area and ate lunch (hamburgers & hot dogs), then continued our services painting cabins and platforms. It was really tiring and I got a lot of paint on my shorts. We actually stayed longer than we were supposed to, so we got back semi-late for dinner (steak, chicken, vegetables, pasta, salad). Each group had to prepare a roll call and skit (theme: celebrity neophyte). For group 11, our roll call was, "THISSSS GROUP IS ON FIYAAHHHHHH (fiyah fiyah fiyah fiyah). GROUP 11. SSSSSSS *finger to bootayy*, oww." We were hot. Yeah ;). Jessica and Kevin, who were group leaders, ended up winning, but my group is still the best. I went on a night hike with Stacey, then we went back and played games till 4am and went to sleep. I have a moth story I'm going to post after this. It's really funny (now that it's over). We woke up at 9:30am on Sunday, got ready to leave, ate breakfast, took pictures, hung out, went to Julian Pie Company, and headed back homesies. We also toasted, woot woot. So yes, Mataguay was really fun & now I'm going to post highlights and things to keep in mind for next year. I hope more people go. IT'S WORTH IT. GO. IT IS SO FUN OMGAWD.
TEN-OTIC. Wait, no. Chi-otic, WHADDDDDUPPPP. Just kidding, they're exotic. #ambiguousflag
Oh dang, Diana. You werkkk dat FIERCE.
SPREAD YOUR WINGS AND PREPARE TO FLY, FOR YOU HAVE BECOME A BUTTERFLY. #dianaisready #mariahcarey #butterfly
A normal picture :D. Go Olivia and her group, arf arf!
Group picture! HAPPY MATAGUAY FACES ON!
Kevin Wang. Justin Bieber. Strong resemblance, obviously.
THE WINNERS OF MATAGUAAAAYY!!!!! PUT YO CROWN ON, GUYS. WE RULE DIS SCOUT RESERVATION.
WHY YOU SHOULD GO TO MATAGUAY:
- Chapters in attendance: Rho Pi, AD, OSig, ADT, X, PP, LM, Gamma Beta (SJSU), AK, Rho Gamma, ZO, Phi Delta (Cal Poly Pomona). LOOKATDAT. EVEN SECTION 4 MADE IT BECAUSE IT'S THAT AWESOME.
- Small group bonding with ICs that you don't get the opportunity for at large IC events such as this
- It's only $20 for housing, friendz, and food (which includes steak and chicken sho delicious)
- NATURE. You don't really get signal up here, so no technology getting in the way of fostering friendships ukno?
- THERE'S MORE I SWEAR. ASK ME FOR STORIES OR SOMETHING.
IF YOU GO NEXT YEAR, DON'T FORGET TO:
- Wear closed-toed shoes.
- Bring water for service.
- Bring games if you want.
- Be prepared for bugs (moths, wahh).
- You can only maximize your fun at Mataguay if you stay OPEN & SOCIAL outside of your own chapter. Don't be exclusive and only stick with the people you know, or else Mataguay will be pretty lame. I'm speaking from experience!
We met up at Deneve Turnaround at 6:30am. While calling everyone before the event I learned that Joseph Nguyen was able to drive and Alejandra was taking a zip car which helped out the driving situation. We made it to the event at around 7am and started unloading water, cups and tables from a truck. We set up tables with water cups ready for when runners came through. We were at mile 22 so it took a while before we anyone. Across the street there were some tents with people giving out samples of organic food and juices. The first runner we saw was a women and she ended up winning the marathon. A couple of hours after she and other lead runners passed, there were masses of people. Some of us were standing in the street handing out water to those that passed by. Others were refilling cups as we took them off to make sure we had a good supply. It seemed like all of us knew a couple of people in the marathon that day. At around 2pm it was mostly just walkers and it seemed like the marathon was almost over. We toasted and went back to UCLA.
On March 9, 2013, a group from Chi volunteered at Marathon Kids Final Mile, which happened to be at the exact same time and place as Run or Dye. The marathon benefitted a healthy lifestyle among children. During the event, they we were part of cheering squad (they woud cheer when the kids would run their final mile). They cheered their hearts out and lost their voices while inspiring the children to try their hardest. It was a great experience and they had tons of fun.
We met up at Ackerman terminal and took the Big Blue Bus #12 to the Culver City Expo station. Our bus left at 7:50 and Sky almost missed it, but luckily the bus driver was kind enough to wait an extra few seconds for me to yell at Sky to get on. We got to the Expo station and took a light rail to the Coliseum. Only Ivy had a tap card but the rest of us had to buy one, which was something I did not expect because I had never taken this before. We got to the Coliseum a little after 9 and saw a ton of people in white t-shirts in a huge line, so we figured we were in the right place. At first they gave us orange shirts but then everyone started asking us questions because we looked like staff even though we had no idea what we were doing. We switched them out for white staff shirts and started passing out bags of dye to people standing around. Then we saw a large cloud of orange dust in the distance and decided to check it out. Turns out they were spraying runners at the beginning of the race with orange dye and we started helping them out. We were going though a lot of dye to and in order to conserve the dye, I started reusing some that I picked up off the floor in between waves of runners. Eventually they brought us some purple dye so we went from being caked in orange to caked in orange with bits of purple. Runners that finished tried to get to our dye but we had to shoo them away to make sure that we had enough to color the runners that had not gone yet. Eventually everyone finished but we still had some dye, so the 4 of us took it upon ourselves to make sure everyone was covered in orange. I walked around with the bag of dye slung over my shoulder like an orange Santa Claus and we started spraying people with orange dye (we had empty plastic ketchup bottles) and photobombing (really colorbombing) people taking pictures. Some people even wanted to take pictures with us because we were like an orange crew. At about 12 the event was over and most of the runners had left. We stayed and helped clean up: put away flags, pick up trash, take down banners (during which I somehow sliced my finger). I started talking with some of the staff and learned that they were a traveling group from Utah putting on this event all over the country which was pretty cool. JJ showed up after he finished the LA Marathon Kids Final Mile Service and he took public transit back with us. In between the light rail and bus we went into a Good Will shop to use their bathroom and then to a store to buy some food because we were all really hungry. We waited for the bus for what seemed like forever and eventually got back to UCLA at around 3:15, all exhausted and covered from head to toe in orange dye. It goes without mentioning that we turned a lot of heads on the ride home.
The group met up in front of Bcafe and all headed to Lot 4 where we boarded our bus to go to the elementary school in China town. Upon arrival, we helped load sacked lunches onto the buses for the volunteers and the students to eat on the field trip. The 10 of us separated into 4 buses and went to the Columbia Memorial Space Center. Since there were more volunteers than there were tutees, we were asked to help out if there were any tutors that needed an extra hand with his or her kid. However since that seemed unlikely with the amount of more experienced tutors that went on the trip, we asked for another option. We were then told to help make the field trip exciting for the tutees by learning about the exhibits and being interested in the exhibits at the museum. This we did by trying out all or most of the simulation based exhibits and going around reading the history of the space center. Since there was a lot of traffic, the bus did not come for an hour which prolonged our service for that amount of time. We got back much later than expected but since we were able to make the more appealing to the tutees, the AATP coordinators seemed happy to have us and commented that they loved Alpha Phi Omega. We sang the toast song and headed back to UCLA.
Gardening Service with Alpha Kappa (USC) | 3.02.2013
Chair: Winnie Banh, Alpha Epsilon
This week, our brothers volunteered with brothers from both USC and UCI to help maintain the garden at a local middle school. Jessica, Emily, JJ, and I met up at 7:55am at Westwood & Strathmore to take the Culver City 6 bus to Daniel Webster Middle School. The bus ride was fairly short and so was the walk (total transportation time = 30 minutes!). Since we arrived pretty early, we made a pit stop at McD's for dadadat hashbrown & Sausage & Egg McMuffin and tangy OJ that was not up to bar with Jamba Juice (obv. reasons, I guess). At 8:45am, we headed to Daniel Webster Middle School (it was in sight from McD's). We arrived around 8:53am, and it turns out that none of the ICs were there yet (props to us for being on time :D). I called Chelsea to let her know about my arrival & shortly after, Alpha Kappa arrived (hooray~). We all signed in, then got put to hard labor. We were working on the garden at Daniel Webster Middle School, and booooy, was there work to be done! We spent the entire 3 hours doing miscellaneous things from weeding (LOTS LOTS LOTS OF IT!!!!), turning over the soil (we're all gonna be sore tomorrow), and planting tomatoes, flowers, and other such wonders. Thirty minutes into it, Rho Rho showed up (shout out to Eric Chou, Kathy, and ... the other person from PP). It was seriously a really tough 3 hours and hard earned service hours (or IC credits). At the end of the event, we toasted. The downsides of the event (but semi-upside) was the beautiful, hot weather. Can you imagine turning over soil in the hot sun or getting rid of weeds scrunched over in the hot sun? Well don't because you'll stress yourself out from the imaginary exhaustion you'd feel. Besides that, though, the event went really well. Personally, I got to meet a handful of new IC brothas and see a few old IC brothas' faces. It was fun bonding over our free labor :). If we were to do this event again, the chair should remind attendees to briiiing waterrrr!!! WATER WATER WATER. Water.
BROTHERS:
Winnie Banh
JJ Chiang
Emily Tchang
Jessica Chen
OMG KYOOOOOT. The group from today with a few holding their prized scallions in their hands!
This is where we worked today! Hopefully in a few weeks, the plants that JJ, Jessica, and Emily planted will be full grown and beautiful with the help of Mr. Sunshine's sunshining rays.
Emily workin' that ho(e) to turn over the soil. Work it, girl. Work it!
Jessica is kicking all her weight onto that shovel to make it go down so she could dig dem weeds out! Eric from AK stands by and poses for my iPhone.
JJ harvesting aloe vera leaves for his own well-being... Just kidding, he's just snipping it because it started to grow uncontrollably and was getting in the way!
