Gosh but I'm loving my very long break from work. We took my grandfather to New Zealand (he's 93 and he's never before needed a passport) and he stayed with us for a month when we got back. Since he left I'm finding myself with a lot more time on my hands, and so I can do a lot more volunteering. I'm loving Communities @ Work, where I've helped a little on the "Mini Michelangelos" program (adorable kids being taught how to put some adorable paintings together all on their own), the "Singalong" program (adorable older folks chillaxing to folk music and occasionally singing along to it), the "Care and Share" program (the Yellow Van picks up great-but-retired food from shops all over town and gives it to people who are having trouble putting the money together for food right now)... Also Lifeline run a little food outlet for fundraising and I've picked up a few shifts there, and another agency is trying to make some isolated seniors more confident in catching the bus and I'll do 'training' for that tomorrow (presumably, we'll get on a bus)... but this is the NAC vollie blog, so here goes:
I might have neglected to log my last vollie day so I'll leave the gap in the numbers here until I remember what happened: clearly, not much.
Yesterday's shift though was quite special. I opened with a group of one lovely couple who, it turned out, were passing the time at NAC on their way to a medical appointment that they were nervous about. :(
The vista at the Arboretum turned out to be a great way for them to get through a bad morning.
My second tour was a large group of ten or more (to start with, although I do tend to lose some when we get out on the deck and I start talking about soil types...). We were having so much fun I came clean to wearing somebody else's name badge, and then somebody said that they were going to write to NAC to thank their great tour guide "Tiffany", whose badge I was wearing because she has probably left town.
My third group were two couples from Perth. They didn't intend to take a tour until I bullied them into it, but it worked out. We bonded over our shared bemusement regarding the proposed Opera House: both the design, and the suggestion that there's a market for that much opera in Perth.
A new highlight at NAC is the English Oak tree planted right near the playground by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge last week. More mundane, but probably more popular: NAC is currently surfacing the car park. Good times, good times....
