This almuerzo buffet fundraiser has probably caused me the most stress that I have had during my entire whopping 2 months of exchange. But, it ended up be a fantastic event and we raised A LOT of money for our upcoming trip!
What this fundraiser was for is to come up with money for my first upcoming trip. All of us exchange students are spending many days of the trip at a school to fix it up as well as bring a lot of donated goods and money for their benefit. Because this fundraiser ended up being very successful, we have all sorts of things besides out time to bring to this school.
Since the announcement of the fundraiser, no one had a great idea of what exactly was going with everything. We knew we had to make a dish from our country and sell 5 tickets! Great!
I was able to sell my 5 tickets to my host family and other Rotarians. As for my dish, I always knew I wanted to make macaroni and cheese, but I was never sure what I was going to do to make macaroni and cheese. I ended up finding out a few days before the almuerzo that I wasn't able to make macaroni and cheese because somebody else was. So I decided I would make green bean casserole- one of my favorites! I went to the store with my host parents very last minute, hoping to find everything I needed. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find everything, and I didn't know the measurement conversions. So, I ended up making macaroni and cheese anyway. It was just easier for me and my host family. I think it accurately exemplifies Americans with 2 of us making macaroni and cheese. We like our mac and cheese!
The next morning, I made the macaroni and cheese. Thankfully, my host mom had already boiled the macaroni for me, so I didn't have to worry about that. I had decided before that I wanted to make stove-top mac and cheese, just because I knew the other mac and cheese was going to be baked. And I just wanted some stove-top mac and cheese... Not really knowing what I was doing at all, I was able to throw together some tasty macaroni and cheese. I used all the right ingredients and added as needed. The way I did it wasn't the right or easy way at all- but it worked! It was also a very large amount of food, which also made it more difficult.
Another thing I had forgotten about that morning was that I also had to make decorations. Using the things I was able to find in my room, I quickly threw together some decorations. Even though I didn't think they were very good, they actually turned out pretty cute and looked good at the almuerzo! I made a USA sign that was hung on the wall over the table of food.
It was such a stressful morning trying to put everything together, but it all worked out just fine! We were soon on our way to the almuerzo, even though I was a little late. There was plenty of time all of us exchange students had to hang out and put things together.
For the actual event, we had some fun costumes to wear. I went all out in a little chef's hat and apron while I was serving food. At first, we were serving reasonably sized portions. People would always demand for more if they didn't think we gave them enough, so that made things a little more difficult. As more and more people were flooding in, we were quickly running out of food. The event definitely did not go as planned, but it was going and we were raising money! Everyone was very stressed through the whole time. Especially towards the end, when we were very short on food. We were serving very small portions of everything, but we had to make due with what we had. What had seemed to us like a well-thought plan and effective way of serving, turned out not to be as perfect as we had thought.
I also found out later there were some problems with ticketing. Between people who already had tickets, people who did or didn't already pay before coming. It was a lot to keep track of. We were also able to learn a lot from that from that as well for future events.
After the almuerzo had finally finished after 3 hours, it was time for us to eat! The only thing was... there was barely anything left for us to eat. I was able to eat a little bit of food, and it was so great to finally be able to eat. After all of the stress we had put ourselves through with the whole event, it was great.
My host parents had stayed there with me the entire time, so as soon as we were done, they were eager to leave. I helped clean up some, and of course had to retrieve my things and say goodbye to everybody, and I got out of there.
Overall, it was an incredibly successful fundraiser, bringing in about s/ 6,000 ($2,000 USD)There were so many things with the while event that were very unorganized and not communicated well between us exchange students- which is what made this quite stressful. But, we were able to learn a lot for future events. We are going to be able to do so much with the money we raised, which is amazing! We were able to achieve our ultimate goal.
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