#project three six five

[the-three-six-five-blog]

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[the-three-six-five-blog]

DAY 188: Gave away a Subway gift card.

I can't really take any credit for this one. Last class, one of my classmates (who I had never met before) came up to me and told me she had heard about Project Three Six Five through twitter. I know this project has gotten some decent media coverage in the past year, but it still surprises me whenever someone I don't know approaches me about the project. (And I am so grateful for it). 

She told me she received the gift card from a booth at the clubs fair on campus, and wanted me to give it out to a stranger. As she wished, I gave it out to a stranger. However, it did take me a couple of attempts because the first girl I offered it to told me to give it to someone who needs it more. This kind of shocked me so I waited a few days before trying again. The second time around, I approached another girl in the subway line, explained what I was doing, and gave her the gift card (which she accepted). Mission complete. 

[the-three-six-five-blog]

DAY 187: Donated money to a friend's run.

This one's pretty self explanatory. My friend does a lot of charity runs in the town she grew up in, so I thought I'd donate $5 to the cause. So why is there a crappy drawing of the shoe? Well, to be honest, I didn't really have anything to take a photo of for this one since it was an online donation. I mean, I could've taken another photo of my laptop screen...but I already have too many of those. So here we are, with a badly drawn shoe (which is supposed to represent the race). 

[the-three-six-five-blog]

DAY 186: Baked cookies with kids.

I was trying to think of an act of kindness that was a bit different than usual, and I thought about the kids I was babysitting at night. I was thinking about doing something a bit "extra" for the kids, just for a change. When I was a kid, I loved making things. Making things was even better when you could eat it. After thinking about this for a bit, the idea came to me: baking cookies. (Almost) every kid loves making cookies. You get to mix the ingredients, bake them, decorate them, AND eat them. That's like heaven to a kid. (And to me, even at age 20. Yeah, I'm still a kid at heart). WIth this idea in mind, I went to a nearby grocery before I was supposed to babysit and bought some cookie mix, icing and food colouring. I also brought over cookie cutters from my house because cookie cutters make cookies taste THAT much better. Fact.  I think this was pretty successful. The kids loved making the cookies. As a plus, I didn't have to go through another makeover performed by a 6-year-old girl (which is what happened last time haha). 

[the-three-six-five-blog]

DAY 184: Left 2-for-1 gym passes in lockers at the gym.

A while back, someone gave me a bunch of 2-for-1 passes. I never ended up using them because I tend to go solo. (I get distracted when I go with others). Since I recently bought a month pass to the gym, I figured I no longer had a use for them since my parents don't go to the gym either (sorry for revealing your secrets, parents). Anyway, it's always nice to save a little money when you least expect it, so I decided to hide some passes in lockers throughout the recreation centre. Might as well put them to good use!

[the-three-six-five-blog]

DAY 180: Hosted an exchange student.

About a month ago, I received an email from my university looking for students who'd be interested in hosting a Japanese exchange student for a day. When I first read the email, I didn't really think too much of it since I was in Toronto. However, a few days ago, my friend was talking about how he was going to volunteer to host a student. He mentioned that they were still looking for people to help out, so I took the opportunity to sign up to host a Japanese student for the day.

My friend and I hosted our students together. My exchange student's name was Ria and is from Tokyo. We started the day by heading to the farmers market and sampled some local foods. Then we headed to Dadeos for lunch (a popular local restaurant). After that, we went to the Whitemud amusement park where we played mini golf and tried out the batting cages. (I sat out on the latter because I can't hit a baseball for the life of me). We also visited a second farmers market and got a tour of the inside of an icecream food truck. To finish off the day, we went back to my house and had a bbq with my parents (because they were interested in seeing what a "Canadian house" looked like). All in all, a day well spent!

[the-three-six-five-blog]

DAY 179: Reverse Pickpocketed.

I watched a few videos online about reverse pickpocketing and I really wanted to try it out. Reverse pickpocketing is like pickpocketing, but instead of stealing something from someone when they're not looking, you give them something. 

I tried this out at the Toronto International Airport and I was super nervous. Yeah, silly me, I chose a place with super-high security. I'm glad I didn't get caught because it sure would've been hard trying to explain this one to the airport security. 

Anyway, I purchased a gift card at the airport Starbucks and wrote a note (explaining this) to go along with it. As everyone from my flight headed to the luggage claim, I circled the belt to find someone to "reverse pickpocket". This was extremely nerve-racking. Sweaty palms, shaking hands...yeah that was me. Anyway, I eventually found a good 'victim' who had a bag that was wide open. It was tricky because she was with 2 other people, so I had to drop it in her bag when the 3 of them weren't looking. After standing next to this lady for quite some time, I finally built up the confidence to drop off the gift card in her bag and casually walked away. Success!

[the-three-six-five-blog]

DAY 178: Wrote a note for a street performer. At the beginning of July, the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival took place. It's an annual event, and as the name says, a bunch of street performers come to perform to the public at Churchill Square. Every year, I attend the festival full of amazing acts. Although these performers have lots of people come to them after their performance to give them money, that seems to be the extent of the "thank you". I thought I'd try something different for a change a wrote a card with some money inside. The card had a little message I wrote, thanking the street performer for being who they are and doing what they love (because I think that's sort of rare these days). After the individual's performance, I dropped the card into the performer's hat and walked away.