Disabilities Awareness Committee Fundraiser

It’s been a busy week here at Phoenix Sister Cities. We have been preparing for several different fundraisers including the Disabilities Awareness Committee’s “Evening of Art & Wine” on April 14th and the “Sicilian Wine & Cheese Tasting” on April 21st. The Art & Wine event this Saturday is going to be a really neat event because there is going to be a big display of the artwork from the International Competition for Artists with Disabilities that took place last November. The theme of the competition was “The Power Lies Within.” A total of ninety submissions were submitted by artists with disabilities, nineteen years old and over. Fifty-eight pieces were received from Arizona residents and thirty-two entries from Phoenix’s sister cities, including eleven from Chengdu, China; seven from Hermosillo, Mexico; three from Taipei, Taiwan; two from Ramat-Gan, Israel; and nine from Grenoble, France. The coolest part about the event this weekend is that the artwork is going to be raffled and the proceeds from the art drawing will benefit the Phoenix Sister Cities International Artists and Writers Competitions for people with disabilities. I will be attending the event and help to set up and take down all of the artwork. At this point, I have only seen pictures of all of the artwork since I have had to incorporate some of the pictures into the newsletter, so I am excited to be able to see all of the amazing artwork in person.

State of the City

On Wednesday, as part of my internship, I attended the mayor’s State of the City Address. It was an awesome experience and not quite what I expected. My supervisors and I left City Hall around 11:15 am and walked to the Phoenix Convention Center located a few blocks away. When we got to the North Ballroom, there were numerous dining tables set up leading up to the stage. What I did not realize was that it was a luncheon. I had been expecting everyone to be sitting in some sort of auditorium, somewhat similar to the State of the Union. Anyways, a delicious three course meal was served leading up to the mayor’s speech and I spent time meeting and chatting with city workers from various city departments. The mayor delivered a great speech and touched on a lot of points that people were looking to hear about. It was exciting to hear the mayor emphasize his desire to pursue and increase business with cities in Mexico. Mayor Stanton has done a great job in the short amount of time he has been in office at being involved with Phoenix Sister Cities and showing interest in our international partners, which includes Hermosillo, Mexico. There were many at the Hermosillo Committee meeting that I had attended the night before that were definitely looking forward to what the mayor had to say, particularly about the city’s dealings with Mexico, so that is why I made it a point to listen for that. It was a great experience and I look forward to being able to attend more State of the City Addresses.

Home for Easter

On Saturday night I flew to my hometown (El Paso, TX) to visit my family and friends and to celebrate Easter. It ended up being a great trip but it was very, very short. As a matter of fact, I was back in Phoenix  early Monday morning. I was born and raised in El Paso but moved to Colorado in the summer of 2000, so it is always great to get back there and reminisce with my family. After church on Sunday we went through what seemed like hundreds of old photos and talked about some of our favorite memories. I can't even tell you how many goofy pictures I found of my dad. By Monday morning I felt like I had been in El Paso forever, but at the same time I felt like I had just gotten there (with the latter being closer to the truth). The craziest part of my trip was when I boarded my Southwest flight back to Phoenix on Monday morning and there were like 7 people on the entire flight. Up to that point, I'm pretty sure that I had never been on a flight that wasn't entirely full. It was awesome and there was so much room for activities.

Resume Writing Workshop (Career Service Post)

Yesterday (April 3rd), I attended a resume writing workshop in Suite 110 of the Downtown Post Office. It was a very interesting experience and I can honestly say that I learned a lot in the hour that the workshop took place (3-4 pm). When I first arrived, I was instructed to take numerous different resume and cover letter samples and resume tip sheets in order to help prepare us and guide us in our future attempts at constructing a legitimate resume. What followed was a 45 minute powerpoint presentation and lecture about how to successfully construct a resume that is considered acceptable to most employers. The main concept that I took away from the workshop is that there is no one right way to write a resume. However, some general guideline do apply. The main part of the workshop described the sections that should be included in a resume and how those sections will vary depending on the job you are applying for. "Consistency" was significantly stressed throughout the session as it is very important that a resume maintain a consistent format, font, spacng, margins, etc. Throughout the lecture, the presenter asked several questions in order to facilitate discussion and to help people understand other people's experiences in developing a resume. 



As previously mentioned, I definitely learned a lot in such a short amount of time. I did not realize how important developing a resume actually is. Immediately following the workshop I went home and looked over my current resume. I was astonished at how many of the things the workshop said to avoid in resumes were present in mine. For example, the workshop advised to avoid any type of Microsoft Word resume template and sure enough, I had been using a template for years. All in all, it was a very beneficial workshop and I look forward to completely rewriting my resume to incorporate all of the tips and strategies to aid me in my future job search. 

Birthday dog

Today is my dog's birthday. She's two years old and she's pretty much the coolest dog of all time. Her name is Chesla and I named her after a buddy of mine that I played football with in college. She's a mix between a dachshund and a Labrador retriever so the best way to describe her is a black lab with a long body that forgot to grow. I've planned a bunch of activities for her to do today and she's going to have a blast! Oh, and I got her a birthday cake. Please don't judge me for loving my dog so much.

PSC Award Entries

This week at PSC there were a lot of different things going on and almost not enough time to do them all. On Monday, I was told to develop two separate title pages for award entries for the Sister City International Awards. One was for Youth & Development and the other was for the overall sister cities program. I was a little uncertain of what these cover pages were supposed to look like because all I was told to do was to incorporate numerous pictures, a title and the PSC logo on each cover sheet. So, I did as I was told and had them ready within the hour after the task was presented to me and my supervisors really liked them. Upon presenting the title pages to them, they explained to me that the entries were due by 5 pm EST, which put the deadline at 2 pm PST (I still think it is really weird that Arizona doesn't do daylight savings). Right when they said that I looked over at the clock and noticed that it was approximately 1:47 pm. Additionally, I noticed that they were still not finished editing both award entries, which were strictly emphasized to remain at 5 pages. As a matter of fact, both entries stood at around 8 pages. The next 13 minutes were ridiculously frantic as there was a distinct sense of uncertainty hovering over the room. At 1:57 pm my supervisors had somehow managed to to reach the designated goal and began the process of emailing both submissions. When it was all said and done, a sense of relief began to fill the office and the color began to fill back up in everybody's face. I'm still not even sure why they waited until the last minute to approach me with this task, let alone complete the award entries, but nevertheless the entries were completed and sent off. The Sister City International Awards must be a really big deal.

By the way, the time stamp on the outgoing email showed 1:59 pm EST.

Brothers

My brother came to visit me last weekend and it was the first time I had seen him in over a year. As a matter of fact, he is the first person to visit me since I moved to Phoenix, so needless to say, it meant a lot to me. It was really nice to be able to spend some quality time with him. He is a little over three years younger than me, which puts him in his junior year of college at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. We are a lot alike in numerous aspects that include how we are hard workers in whatever we are challenged with, we both love sports and we both love Tim Tebow. I think our liking of Tebow stems from the fact that we both share his faith and his passion for the game of football. For the few days that he was here we played golf, hung out poolside and watched some movies as we caught up on all of the new things in each other’s lives and reminisced on our childhood. Needless to say, it was a great couple of days.