This fall I served as the volunteer chairperson for the Misawa Officer Spouses Club's Far East Bazaar. The bazaar is MOSC's big annual fund raiser, as well as the primary shopping event for the base. This year we had 32 vendors from all over Asia come and sell everything from furniture to pottery, rugs, cutlery, kimonos, jewelry, photography and other Asian crafts.
For weeks the committee has been meeting to plan and work out the logistics. I have a new appreciation for how much work goes into events like this. In addition to setting up the hangar where the event took place, we had to work out how to handle the money, security, cleaning crews, transportation for the vendors to and from their hotels, food for all of us throughout the weekend, as well as finding and organizing all of the volunteers who would make the event possible.
That last job fell to me and my co-chair Annette. Originally when I was asked to be on the committee and take charge of finding volunteers I didn't think it would be too difficult. Little did I realize that we needed upwards of 250 volunteers to make this thing run smoothly, and it fell to me to advertise, organize, and answer the questions of all of these people and make sure they were in the right place at the right time. It became a full time job as I spent hours every day writing and answering emails and phone calls, and organizing all of their personal info into a massive spreadsheet. The people who had this position before me were very unorganized so I kind of had to rewrite the book when it came to pulling this off. It felt good to hear people say at the end of the weekend that I did a great job and they were very impressed with the system we came up with. Hopefully all of my notes will help the next person's job be much easier than mine was.
Thankfully, all of the hard work paid off. We had plenty of volunteers for each of the shifts throughout the weekend, and there were no major fires to put out. It was a long and rough weekend because I came down with a nasty cold right beforehand, but we still managed to have a lot of fun. James even came down to help out for a while, and we picked out a few nice pieces for our home during the time we had to shop.
James and I decided to invest in a Korean bar. It's dark cherry wood carved with cherry blossoms, bamboo and other Asian plants. The top folds out into a bar/counter surface and is inlaid with grey marble. The doors swing open to reveal a lot of storage for glasses, bottles, etc. We don't drink much but it's a beautiful piece and will make it fun to entertain in the future! James also insisted on buying one of the decorative Samurai swords they had, and I bought some fun Christmas presents that some of you may be getting in the mail in December!!
For weeks the committee has been meeting to plan and work out the logistics. I have a new appreciation for how much work goes into events like this. In addition to setting up the hangar where the event took place, we had to work out how to handle the money, security, cleaning crews, transportation for the vendors to and from their hotels, food for all of us throughout the weekend, as well as finding and organizing all of the volunteers who would make the event possible.
That last job fell to me and my co-chair Annette. Originally when I was asked to be on the committee and take charge of finding volunteers I didn't think it would be too difficult. Little did I realize that we needed upwards of 250 volunteers to make this thing run smoothly, and it fell to me to advertise, organize, and answer the questions of all of these people and make sure they were in the right place at the right time. It became a full time job as I spent hours every day writing and answering emails and phone calls, and organizing all of their personal info into a massive spreadsheet. The people who had this position before me were very unorganized so I kind of had to rewrite the book when it came to pulling this off. It felt good to hear people say at the end of the weekend that I did a great job and they were very impressed with the system we came up with. Hopefully all of my notes will help the next person's job be much easier than mine was.
Thankfully, all of the hard work paid off. We had plenty of volunteers for each of the shifts throughout the weekend, and there were no major fires to put out. It was a long and rough weekend because I came down with a nasty cold right beforehand, but we still managed to have a lot of fun. James even came down to help out for a while, and we picked out a few nice pieces for our home during the time we had to shop.
James and I decided to invest in a Korean bar. It's dark cherry wood carved with cherry blossoms, bamboo and other Asian plants. The top folds out into a bar/counter surface and is inlaid with grey marble. The doors swing open to reveal a lot of storage for glasses, bottles, etc. We don't drink much but it's a beautiful piece and will make it fun to entertain in the future! James also insisted on buying one of the decorative Samurai swords they had, and I bought some fun Christmas presents that some of you may be getting in the mail in December!!
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