The Lion King Blood Drive

Come credio di avervi gia` accennato la settimana scorsa abbiamo avuto la blood drive, ovvere una giornata a scuola in cui era possibile donare il sangue. Essendo in leadership ero tra le persone che hanno organizzato tutto e ho passato il giorno delle donazioni ad aiutare, dando cibo ai donatori, prendendomi cura di chi sveniva ecc. In piu` ho creato il design dellle t-shirt che tutto lo staff ha indossato, applaudetemi.

Mr Q. ci ha dato il compito di scrivere un essay sulla giornata, quindi in caso che vi interessi lo posto qui :)

The first thing I did for the blood drive was designing the shirts. We talked in class about the theme and I voted for the needles because I thought that nobody would have bought a shirt with Disney characters, but when Stefanie proposed to use the logo of the Lion King’s Broadway musical I liked it, so at home I sketched a design. I think it turned out pretty good, I am just a little disappointed because it took such a long time to decide the theme and then we almost didn’t order the shirts because not enough people bought them. It’s weird because a lot of donors asked me where they could buy them, we could have gained some money selling them.

I also wished we did something of what we planned, like use a safari theme or do something about the Lion King, or we could have at least played the movie’s songs during the drive.

The week before I helped the preparation making two posters. On wednesday, the day of the Blood Drive, I didn’t come to school at 6 with the first shift because I was absent the day before and I didn’t know we were supposed to be there that early. When I arrived to school I went to the gym to help, but then I had to go to my first and second period. During third hour I went back to the gym and helped how I could, giving food to donors waiting to go back to class and fixing some falling posters, but there were already a lot of people and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

When third period ended I had to go to my fourth period, but at lunch I went back to the gym and I stayed there for the rest of the day. I started checking people in the double red line, then I got assigned to the escorts. I went checking donors, asking if they were okay and if they needed water or something to eat and talking to the ones waiting in line trying to be positive and smile.

While some people were going to get lunch I stayed for a while at the desk signing out people that were going back to class. It was hard because a lot of names were misspelled (some of them really badly!) and they were not in order, so every time I was checking the list two or three times while more people had to wait.

After a while the situation got better, there were less people and I was just talking with them making sure they were okay. I had some trouble with kids that didn’t want to go back to class, one in particular was pretending to feel bad while I heard him two minutes before saying to his friend that he wanted to sit all day. He was laughing, talking and looked perfectly fine but it took a lot of time to make him leave, and even when I thought he went away I saw him again laughing with friends at the double red line. The problem is that we didn’t look like we had authorithy and kids that were just loosing time didn’t get in trouble.

After a while I was escorting students again and I found some people I know donating blood, so I was talking with tem during the donations trying to make them feel better and going around trying to help nervous people. The nurses were really nice, most of them were talking and joking with donors, I was positively impressed.

I kept talking with people and giving them food until two, when we started cleaning and taking off posters and chairs, than at 2:30 I left because my bus is the first one to leave.

Overall it was a nice experience, I’m glad that we got so much blood and I’m impressed to see how many brave students there are in this school. I couldn’t donate because I’m foreign, but even if I had the possibility I don’t know if I would have done it, I am really afraid of blood and needles and I would have panicked. I’m sure that I would have passed out, and I was surprised to see few people having a negative reaction, I had to convince a lot of them to sit for some minutes because some didn’t even wanted to rest. I really like this kind of school activity and I wish that we had them in Italy too.