I recently worked volunteered at the Latin Film Festival at the Harn Museum of Art. Being a part of Spanish Club at my school, I found this an exciting opportunity to connect with my Hispanic culture. This is an annual event that is put on at the museum for the Hispanic community. A group of students from my school, including myself, went over right after school to help set up before the event began. Each of us were broken up into pairs and those pairs were each assigned to different tasks. the task of my partner and I was to begin assisting in taking the food into the kitchen as it arrived from all the different restaurants around town. Once we got them into the kitchen it was our job to organize how the food would be presented and to make sure that each restaurant was represented equally. We separated the restaurants and prepared for when the other volunteers would come to the kitchen needing to restock the tables with food.
I enjoyed this job since we got to see all the different types of food that were brought and we even got to try some! While we were in the kitchen we got to know some of the college students that were also volunteering. They talked to us about how their experience of college was so far and one of them had grew up in a town where there was another IB high school. Once the event began, we changed into our nice clothes and began to prepare for the orders of food to come in.
There was a high demand of food throughout the event but because of that, the food ran out quickly. After the tables were set, we had an opportunity to see the traditional dancers that were performing and participate in the festivities. I got to talk to some of the influential people of the Hispanic community in Gainesville and they were all very interesting people. As the event closed we cleaned the kitchen and cleared out all the tables to allow more room for the dancing. Listening to the different styles of music and seeing the traditional dances versus the more modern once was enjoyable. It made me feel proud of being Hispanic and opened my eyes to the vast community of Hispanics that lived right in my hometown.
