Avant Garde Journal 9

 At 6:00 pm at Ringling College of Art and Design, a special event was took place and I was part of it. Every year around the middle of March, the school has a different theme for the Avant Garde. The Avant Garde is a private event that people who give money and donate to school for scholarships, come to celebrate, place a bid in the silent auctions, dance and give the Avant Garde Scholarship to a lucky Ringling Student. Every year is a big turn out and everyone that comes to it, always has a great time. What also is a thrill for the guests is to see what the president of the school does for his opening entrance. It's always a surprise to everyone. This year's theme is "Once Upon A Time" and everyone from the Ambassadors to the guests came in costumes of different fairy tale characters and characters from movies like Shrek.  The party planners used the outside environment for decorating the party. They brought a live white horse with Disney's Rapunzel riding him. In the trees, they hung up fairy tale characters like the Cheshire Cat, Tinkerbell, Peter Pan. The guest got to enjoy the fresh air outside under the tent. The volunteer students of Ringling were outside sketching the models and guests in their fairy tale costumes. Everything but the auction items were outside under the tent.

 Where I come in this is that I'm a student Ambassador for the school, for the second time. Ambassadors are the only Ringling Students that are allowed to this very private event. The school makes sure that no other ringling students sneak their way into the party to get to the bar. The school will plan trips to Disney or something like that, as a way to keep most of the students busy for the day. My Ambassador job for the night was three tasks. From 6:00 pm to 8:15 pm, I was a seater. A seater stays up front of the tent or near the entrance, and show people to their table. From 9:00 pm to 10:30 pm, me and most of the Ambassadors were needed for the Auction Item Closers/ Runner. During this time all the Ambassadors went around to the auction tables and drew the final line on the sheet to make sure that everything is final. Then we collect the items and bring them to another table where the guests come and collect what they won. The final thing was cleaning up everything. Six busy hours!!!

 Another thing that was nice about this event, is that you get people who want to know more about you, as a Ringling student. They always seem so interested in hearing how you found the school, how you like it and more questions like that. Our Ambassador leader Rachel, tells us that it's good to talk to the guests at the party, because maybe they will give a scholarship for us.

 This was a fun night and I'm glad that I'm an Ambassador this year and was able to attend this event. This year's themes is better than last years, which was Pajama Night. The reason why I see more of the guest having a fun time with this theme is because you can choose from a large range of fairy tales to dress up as.

Walk to Indian Beach and old houses Journal 8

 On March 16, 2011, the weather was so nice and sunny that I took the opportunity to take a walk and see the old houses and old mansions near Indian Beach. From walking across the school and down the street towards the beach, it was interesting noticing the changes in how each house is designed and painted. Some looked like they were newly built, and others you can see the paint color of the house starting to fade. Most of the houses I passed had a "Beware of dog" sign, and as soon as you walk pass the house, you can hear the dogs barking. It doesn't surprise me that there was so many dogs signs on the houses and on their fences, because of two reasons. The first one being that mostly everyone in Sarasota has a dog, and the second reason is to scare off people that might try to rob their house, and hearing the loud parking noise with scare them and make their owner aware of the intruder.

 At Indian beach, the water was close to the shore and the steps. Sometimes when it is low tide, you can walk far out in the water, and find some interesting stuff like shells, sea sponges and if your luck you can find some fish teeth (just be careful where you walk). On the sand my friend Jenny and I were walking around and we found some interesting things washed up. Besides finding the usually full or half broken shells, we found some sea sponges that were still wet and soft. We found this interesting looking sea plants that we couldn't figure out if it was sea weed or something else. But the real discovery that we found was this skeliton of a fish. My guess as to how it died is that it was washed up on shore and the sun exsposure killed it and then the birds came and had their meal and left the bone hind.

 After spending some time on the beach, I noticed that around the area, mostly close to the beach (open ocean/water view) that there are some new mansions and some historic mansions. It was easy to tell from the old and new mansions, by not just by reading the sign on the stone wall with a iron bar gate door. But looking at the architecture and paint, some of the paint has faded over time and it gives it that rich, ancient and historic look to it. What I can see that most of the mansions have in common is that they have collums, large arched windows and they surround their front and back yard with plants and tall trees. Also the style of the mansion has a Spanish theme in the architecture design. One mansion was painted white and around the windows was light red/ orange outline and on top of that was a light blue/green outline, when I first saw that, the first thing that came to my mind was that someone Spanish lives in that house or has lived in it in the past. I think it would be nice if one day I could take a tour of the inside of the old mansion's and see how different they look on the inside and compare to how we have changed in the way and style of living.