through glasses of rose, the slips and the clothes. (1)

As a consequence of the cuts being made to school funds by a certain terminator/governor who's name i shall not mention, a group of students (whom i am proud to call my friends) organized an amazing event overnight. They planned a "sit in" which will probably prove to be more effective than the walk-outs we had last year (total disaster, maybe another day i'll dedicate a blog specifically to that). The point of the sit in was to inform students about how the fund cuts will affect our community -since several teachers from our school recieved pink slips from the state- and ourselves personally. Everyone was informed about the sit-in today and was encouraged to wear pink clothes as a symbol of the pink slips that teachers have recieved. We proceeded to go to the gym and listen to many of our peers and a special guest speaker talk about the process, effects and ways we can make a difference to help keep our teachers. We also made a huge, and i mean HUGE chain made of paper links, each of which had either the name of a teacher we appreciate greatly or a reason for why funds should not be cut from the schools. The chain will be sent somewhere (i apologize for my amnesia, but i can't remember where) and will be connected with those of other schools to symbolize how they are putting our educations in chains and we can not allow it.

Another one of the activities in which we participated was letter-writing. Everyone was encouraged to write letters to the governor so he could have a visual of how many people his decisions are affecting and how much we actually care, (enough to take the time to write letters by hand). *tip for future "strikes/sit-outs": written letters will probably not be read, but will have a greater impact on the person/people than e-mails since they can be seen as an actual physical quantity (they will most likely be weighed, rather than read or counted)* Since i am in Link Crew, a leadership group in the school, i was running around helping out with the activities. At a point in one of the presentations (we had several throughout the day) we set up many empty chairs on the gym floor so the students could see a representation of how many teachers may be missing from our schools next year.

By lunchtime everyone had been dismissed and only Link Crew and Leadership was left in the gym to clean up and talk about how things went. While some people were cleaning, others discussing and others simply taking a break, i happened to find my friend Josh sitting in one of the "empty" chairs and congratulated him on his awesome speech he gave. " Great job with your speech Josh, i didn't know you could speak so well!!" He thanked me and then as i sat down to be at his level he asked me to the prom. I was amazed that this didn't literally knock me off my chair since i felt like it would inside me. I was completely taken by surprise and all i could manage to do was smile and ask if he really meant it, "to the prom? with you? me?" i couldn't breathe. There we were, two pink dots sitting in a sea of blue chairs, both nervous, both a nervous wreck, both wanting to know the answer to this very important question.

I think a little context may be needed to better understand this situation, but since i'm running a bit short on time i'll explain the rest in my next blog. (to be continued...)