We went back and got there around 12 or so. I don’t completely remember. We did more envelope stuffing. Miche ordered sandwiches for us, which were amazing. We had finished more than anticipated the day before, so we finished at around 3pm. We were not exactly the most focused people in the world in the last hour since we were finishing up. All I did that day was wipe dry-glue-seal envelopes with gross used water with glue in it from the day before of sealing envelopes. Once we thought we had forgotten to put RSVPs in some of the invitations that had already been sealed. So we opened up about 10 to find the envelope was just flatter than the rest from being under the stack of envelopes for so long. After we finished sealing, we added the labels and were good to go. There were less invites to be made than expected so we did less than we thought we did. There were only about 800 people invited and about 1,010 invites. so we did about 850 0f them, then packed up and left. I wanted to see how many people would reply. It was cool that we got to see that magazine columnists from prestigious and well known companies were invited. The assembly line moved so much faster than when each of us were doing all the steps individually.

We left from school at 12:00 and unfortunately had to leave Mirko Ilic’s graphic design presentation to inspire our PSAs. I heard some of it and I saw was amazing. Violet and Ruby had to change in to skirts. Our destination was the Waldorf Astoria, an extremely fancy hotel. We took a Taxi there and split the fare four ways. We arrived in the lobby and it all felt familiar. We went upstairs using the specified elevator as directed. We got upstairs and were turned around by quite a few large mirrored suit doors with chandeliers in the hallway. Though, when a delivery man passed with a cart of packages, I asked where the Go Red packing was going on. We got into the room where a multitude of large boxes lined the side of a wall and a row of tables were set up in the middle of the room. I looked around for Amanda thinking she was a blond woman in her early 40’s. When she did come up to us and introduce herself, I was so surprised to find that she was a peppy young brunette who looked as if she was just out of graduate school. She was very accomplished and hard-working based on when Dr. Lynne Holden had told me. SHe instructed Violet to cut open the boxes with the box cutter and told the rest of us to unfold bags/ There were 1,000 of them and we stacked them up about 5-6 bags high, 10- 15 bags out from the wall and about 20-30 bags across the wall. It took us about 45 minutes to an hour to unpack, unfold and organize all the bags. We then started to put items in the goodie bags, down the assembly line. Though after about 6 trips of going down the line, around people, placing items in bags, I got the idea that 2 of us should put the 1st item, Nautica post-its, into the bags and place them on the table, people could then take the bags with post-its and go down the lists of things for each bag:
-Nautica Post-Its
-Dr. Copland Skin product
-Go Red pen
-Go Red stress ball
-Go Red Dress pin
-informational pamphlets
-Estee Lauder Lipstick
-Estee Lauder vibrating mascara

It took us about 2 and a half hours to do about 900 of the bags. We then stopped for a break and Amanda ordered pizza for us. Violet and Ruby left for a basketball tournament, and Parker and I stayed to work until 3:45 and finished all the bags. We ended up with about an extra 50 bags. There were about 6 other college students there. I was surprised that they were the ones messing up the bags and talking most of the time, I feel like the four of us were the most productive except amanda who was constantly in motion, unpacking, organizing, sorting, stacking, labeling, positioning, and wrapping. I was in awe. I want to be as headstrong and productive as she is at such a young age. I felt like at the age of 30 she would be leader of the free world! I could feel her confidence in her strong and powerful, assuring handshake. So I was extremely excited when she invited us to a gala the next day in the ballroom of the Waldorf. Unfortunately the next day was a snow day. Anyhow we went home that day not knowing about the next day. Though I was surprised we finished over 1,000 bags!!

This was my 4th visit!

This was a very long visit, but it was extremely informative. Parker, Ruby and I met in front of the school, yesterday, then got in the subway. They trains were all messed up so we took the A to 59th then transferred to a train I don’t remember. We took 3 trains total to get to Harlem Hospital. We arrived and waiting for us on another floor were a series of about 5 booths max. We walked around and my mother took a picture of us.

We then headed into the room, where a podium stood on the left side in front of a stage. There were two introverted booths on the stage sitting opposite each other. In the middle hung a screen with the projected image of the flyer that we had gotten a week or two earlier by email. We met a woman named Dr.Furgus. She was quite nice and very polite and spoke with eloquence and intensity. She wore a red turtleneck dress and lip gloss, her hair strait, with a single wave in them middle. She seemed like she was skeptical of our abilities to remain professional, since we were all wearing jeans. The last symposium had been severely casual. I had worn a black skirt and red sweater. Violet wore jeans and Uggs with a bright pink shirt. It was the closest thing to red that she owned. I didn’t bother to wear red, because no one was wearing red at the last event. But we were surrounded by doctors in white coats and nurses in scrubs, students in jeans and others in dresses. There was no dress standard. Though all of the speakers were moderately formal.

. We were told to sit in the front seat. We then walked around the booths out front, gathering T-shirts, pamphlets, pen and refrigerator magnets from various sponsors. The morning half was interesting but all we did was listen and pass out index cards for people to write down questions. Lunch was okay, quality wise. They served pizza at the last visit. But it would have been extremely contradictory to serve pizza after talking about health and what’s good for your heart. Though they did serve Snapple and sandwiches. We went back and listened for about 30minutes more. Then we went to a workshop about health. There were two ladies leading the workshop. One was hearing a cord sweater and slacks, the other in a red suit with white stockings and sneakers.

The lady in the slacks had a slide show and a table of junk food and had us guess the calories, showing us how much HFCS has gone up in the last 20 yrs and how obesity is the result of it. She showed us these graphs of Obesity and HFCS. There was a slide of good fat vs. bad fat. She then passed around plates showing us the portions people should be eating and we got handouts on the portions and calories and amounts of sugar in all of the foods and compared all these different kinds of cereals and juices and sodas. When we left at 3, she was starting to ask a woman what her favorite candy was out of a series of M&M’s, Twizzlers, sour patch etc. This was a very informative and decently engaging workshop and was much more interesting than the first Go Red visit. Amanda, our head contact, was not there, she had another event to attend, but the next, larger event she will be attending. I’m very excited and am looking forward to finally meeting her.

Here are some of the thousands of new things (in note form-they are part of the 11 pages of written notes we took) I learned about Heart Disease:

Cardiovascular Disease (Heart Disease)

-Any disease of the heart (cardio)

-And blood vessels (vascular)

CVD Facts

-40% deaths

-Expensive medical care

-27% of men, 44% of women will die within a year

-Leading cause of death for African Americans in US

-100,000 lives

-Can be prevented

-Expensive

Other things about CVD (Heart Disease)

-Racial and minorities receive lower quality health care.

-Less likely to receive needed medical care.

-Barriers include insurance and race

-Physicians are almost 75% white.

-Number one Healthy Heart Tip: Stay spiritually active, must be in touch with some sort of spiritual side.

This was my 3rd visit. 2nd for Positive Exposure.

Today, Violet, Parker, Ruby T. and I shared a Taxi to go to Positive Exposure. We left school and went to the Deli to get snacks, then got in a taxi and we were on our way. I didn’t know exactly what we were doing but Violet had said something about stuffing envelopes. When we got there, we were bombarded with Rick’s dog, Buster. We sat down at a table and Miche, Violet’s mom, greeted us with our assignment. We were given a large metal file bin of Thank You letters, cards, invitations, certificates, and other letters. Miche also gave us labels, pens, sharpies, labels and two bags to put the envelopes that did not have cards and vice versa. It took us a while to do all the letters, we did about 150 cards. When we first started we each did one and put it in the pile. It was going to slow that we formed a production line instead. I took out the mail, and sorted the mismatched from the matched cards and envelopes, then put the cards with their matching envelopes into a pile, then Parker, Ruby and Violet wrote on the date and return address on the plastic sleeves. Afterwards we took a break and played with Buster. Rick actually was not at the apartment, but we met someone named Trishka who helped us to understand the directions and was there along with Miche to answer our questions. After taking a short break, we folded some boxes and wrapped them in plastic tape to take them out for recycling.

I didn’t learn as much in this visit as the first with Positive Exposure, but it was fun. I did learn that working in a Production Line is so much easier than each person doing the whole process. Similar to the Slaughterhouse, though not nearly as dangerous and gross. Before I was sorting the mail, each of us would have to pick through it to find a card with it’s envelope mate. I don’t have a picture for this post but I do for the next one!

I was excited to see what Positive Exposure was like. I learned a LOT when I was there. Violet, Parker and I went to Pizza Box after school on Monday. We were meeting Ruby near Washington Square Park. She had a dentist appointment but she was late meeting us, so we waited outside for her. We waited about 15 minutes and Parker was going bizerk off of a sugar rush, Violet and I begging her for just one more gummy bear.

We got to the studio, Rick was really nice and he had a really playful dog named Buster. He was so fun. Miche, Violet’s mom, mostly talked to us about the organizations and we watched videos of Rick in Tanzania. Rick worked with people wit Albinism and helped them feel beautiful and accepted. There were some terrible things going on in Africa and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, seeing and reading about.

Here’s what I learned:

1. “Albino” is technically not correct. It’s also a bit rude, like calling an African American the n-word.
2. There is this new superstition going around in Africa that the limb of a person with albinism in a doctoral potion can help cure people. This is not true.
3. There are people who have gone to people’s houses in Africa in the middle of the night and cut off a baby’s limbs who have albinism. They tell the mother not to cry, or scream or yet or else they will kill the rest of her children as well. After the limbs are taken, they leave quietly, leaving the rest of the body of the baby on the ground in front of the house to rot.
4. Rick goes down to Tanzania and educates people about Albinism and tries to prevent things like the above from happening.
5. A lot of people with Albinism have skin cancer because; the mother would put him/her out in the sun in belief that the kid would “darken up.” Of course this didn’t work and the kid develops skin cancer, which are the darkened splotches found on the faces of those who have skin cancer.
6. What causes the light skin, is a loss of pigmentation in the skin and partially in the yes which is why some people with albinism are partially blind.
7. People with albinism have very sensitive skin. If they get even the smallest of a cut, they could bleed excessively.

We are supposed to do another visit for Positive Exposure. I don’t know when but I think we will be stuffing envelopes.

Love, Cheyenne

Hey everyone! My first visit was for the American Heart Association’s Branch: Go Red For Women. My mom got a car service to pick Violet up in Manhattan, and then move on to the Bronx. Parker was unable to become because she had an appointment that day.

I wasn’t nervous. But I had a stomachache. I knew I had to go so I got in the car feeling like I had to throw up. I don’t know why. The same thing had happened the night before in the car. It might have been motion sickness. We met Violet and drove to the Bronx. When we got there, Violet and I waited in the lobby of the Hospital. Dr. Lynne Holden, one of our contacts, gave us stacks of sign-up cars. Along with a couple dozen little red dress pins that one would get free when signing up for their emails. We were given the task of distributing them. It was a very small event that was mostly focused on Lynne’s organization, Mentoring in Medicine. Amana, our Go Red contact, could not make it to the event because she was sick. I think she was supposed to make a speech, but sense she didn’t come; there wasn’t much going on about Heat Disease. There was one game in the beginning. Someone would come up from the audience, and a cause of heat disease like diabetes or gender was held above their heads. The person had to ask the audience yes or no questions about the cause. If they got it, they won 20 dollars. Only 3 people went up. None of them got it. They were all minority students so some of them barely had a high school education. This was why it was a Mentoring in Medicine gathering. By the middle of the event, Violet and I were bored because most of the event was speeches. It was weird because there were a few people who sang. One guy sang something like “Old Man River” or something. I wanted to laugh because he had this regular voice when he spoke, but when he sang his voice was deeper than Barry White’s.  I didn’t learn much, except that Heart Disease can be caused by age, gender, and race and from having diabetes. So Nick Jonas would be at a different chance of getting heart disease than a 40 year-old black woman without diabetes. Different causes have different risks. And heart disease is the number one killer of women in America. We called a cab service instead of a car service to go back and my stomach had dropped to hell. But I think the next visit on February 5^th will go better because it’s more interactive and interesting. I have gone to a lot of them before and they aren’t as boring as the speeches. I’m also looking forward to meeting Amanda. I also want to make sure I can take pictures or a video to post!

Love, Cheyenne