Delivering World Relief Christmas Gifts

Rivermont Collegiate's chapter of the National Honor Society partnered with World Relief to get Christmas gifts to refugee families. We set up a place where students and parents could donate gifts (we told them the gender and age of the child and they donated an appropriate gift), which we would then get to the families. I was responsible for the logistics of the whole thing and delivery to a zone containing two recipient families.

Gifts loaded, my dad and I went driving around a nearby city to locate the houses. They were both in apartment complexes in a somewhat run-down part of town. At the first house, it took a little while to find which apartment the gifts were supposed to go to - I didn't have the names of the people and several entrances didn't have apartment IDs. The one we tried first was fortunately correct. The family was Vietnamese (maybe?) and spoke no English. It took a bit of friendly-facing and motions of offering the wrapped package, but they accepted it and we left.

For the second family, we had several gifts, since they had several children. We knocked on the door of the apartment we had written down, and it was answered by an older gentlemen who, upon seeing the wrapped gifts in my hand, said "no" and led us down to another apartment. I think his family occupied two apartments and the other one was used by the children. (He also seemed to be understanding what was going on.) After some language-based confusion, they accepted the set of presents and we left.

I don't know whether either family understood any of what we were saying. I hope they understand the whole cultural thing of Christmas gift giving.

Proficiency Exam

Tomorrow morning, I will be taking the final exam for NETW 170, "Introduction to Network Security." I have not taken the class; I am attempting to test out of it to gain entrance to NETW 274, a more advanced security course that is also a CompTIA Security+ preparation course.

I didn't know I was going to be taking the exam tomorrow; I was expecting to have a little more time. It should be alright; I've been studying the book for a while and most of it is knowledge I've picked up from my own research and experimentation. It has more of an emphasis on the networking equipment than I expected, but an hour or so of rapid reading tomorrow morning should get me through it.

All I need to get credit for the course is an 80% or higher; it is graded on a pass/fail basis. It's multiple choice, so that makes it a little easier.

Another Semester Ends

Yesterday, I took the final exam for SPEC 175, "Intercultural Communication." Only the computer-scored portion is graded so far, but if I somehow got a zero on all the teacher-scored (free response) questions, I would still pass the class with a 93%.

One of the course textbooks for Intercultural Communication says that there are four stages of intercultural competence.

1. Unconscious incompetence (blissful ignorance of cultural differences)
2. Conscious incompetence (troubling ignorance of how to communicate crossculturally)
3. Conscious competence (deliberate, careful, "walk-on-eggshells" consideration)
4. Unconscious competence (smooth, practiced, automatic integration of the other culture)

I would say that, before this course, I was at Stage 2, aware that there are differences between cultures but without any idea of how to navigate them or how they differ. I believe I am now entering Stage 3; I know many of the social dimensions on which cultures vary and I know how to navigate some of them.

Let's Play Go

Today, I played a good game of chess with my Spanish teacher, and he recommended I try to learn Go as well. Go, from my understanding, is a Japanese or other east Asian strategic board game, simpler in rules than chess but immensely more computationally expensive.

I looked up some learning resources online, and came up with the following good tutorials:

• Online Go Server's "Learn to play Go"
• "The Interactive Way to Go"

I picked up the rules fairly quick and I think I have a decent grip on beginner-level strategery after going through The Interactive Way to Go. I managed to obliterate the "easy mode" computer on the Online Go Server, but I haven't taken the time to find a stronger computer or real person yet.

Doing Business

I just placed an order on Amazon for a Dell Inspiron N7110 replacement screen, using my own credit card. Besides the initialization fee, that was the first purchase I ever made directly. I suppose this marks the beginning of my presence in the world of business, as I will soon be repaid for this after installing it in the broken laptop I am fixing for a client.

"The Actor Games" Play Performance

Rivermont's high school theater class has been rehearsing our fall play, The Actor Games. It's a one-act comedy, a parody of the popular book/movie series The Hunger Games. Ten actors, one from each "district", are competing to be the next big star. They must go through a series of "grueling drama activities", constantly facing the danger of elimination and the Fallback Wheel, which doles out their "punishments" like having to be a cook for 50 years.

In our performance, I play the role of the Host, a sort-of narrator, sort-of emcee. (Maybe like a game show host?) Basically, I announce what's about to go on and then announce the results - who got eliminated. I also get to yell a lot, which is also fun.

Tonight was opening night! The performance was pretty good, with only a couple hiccups. There was much laughter from the audience and a good deal of spontaneous applause. It should go even better tomorrow night!

Student Hunger Drive Loading Day

Today marks the end of the 2014 Student Hunger Drive. Loading Day is the day in which all donated items must be boxed, delivered to the food bank, and unloaded onto their palettes. So, it's a pretty big day for the people operating each school's drive, in Rivermont's case my NHS chapter.

Loading Day is an all-day event. We started immediately after morning meeting making the final collection of all the school's donations. My job was to weigh the boxes and write down their weights attributed to the proper grade and house. Meanwhile, the others transferred partial boxes' contents into new boxes, folded them up, and taped them. (The tape was necessary because they had issues with boxes' bottoms falling out last year.)

As the U-Haul truck drove to the various locations we had stashed previous filled boxes, we carried them out and into the back of the truck. I then rode with the development director, along with several other NHS members, to the food bank. There, we box-brigaded the donations onto their palettes. While the food bank weighed those to get our official stats, the food bank staff quizzed us on the history of the Student Hunger Drive, which - thanks to our correct answers - earned us a bonus 100 pounds.

Meanwhile, the Hy-Vee with which we had a bulk purchasing deal delivered over 7000 pounds for us - which we fortunately did not have to transport. The food bank gave us our official numbers: Rivermont Collegiate donated 13384 pounds to the Student Hunger Drive, at least 2000 above last year. On the way back to school, we stopped at Dairy Queen and it was delicious.

I totaled up the class data to determine whether the upper school or middle school donated more. It was the upper school, and out of them, my class. The lower school, however, obliterated us both.