I've finally started my internship with Chester: The Giant City last week. We had our first day on the job last Tuesday, and for the most part it was pretty productive. These past couple of months, I've been volunteering with the Giants, and it has been mostly just me doing temp work around the office until now. Now that the internship has officially started, there are more students (25 to be exact) that are all helping around the HQ. On Tuesday, all of the students were broken up into small groups, and me, along with 3 others were placed in the PR/Journalism group. For the rest of the semester, the rest of the team and I will be interviewing people, taking pictures, doing promotional work for the the company, and contacting other community groups around Chester, all in order to prepare for our main event, the Queen's Jubilee on June 4th. For these past couple of weeks, we've had several groups come in the HQ including a group home for the mentally disabled, a group for teens who have been kicked out from their homes, and are essentially homeless, and even different school groups have come in to help build and paint some of the giants for the festival. As Kristine, my boss, put it, "it is a way for these groups of people to have a creative outlet, and have interaction with the rest of the Chester community that they wouldn't have otherwise." Also during these 5 weeks of my internship, I will be putting together a documentary about the company and it's volunteer work that will be uploaded onto either their main website or YouTube. It will definitely be a trail-by-fire experience though, considering that this will be the first documentary I will have ever created. Either way, I'm still pretty excited seeing that this is a perfect way to develop my lacking filmmaking skills.
All told, these past couple days of work have definitely been interesting. The usual schedule is that we all get to the HQ around 9:30, and then try to plan out what we want to accomplish for that day or week. So far, we've mostly done promotional work around the City Center, like handing out fliers to local businesses, and parading a giant of Queen Elizabeth around town. From this past week alone, I've come to realize how hard it is to be one of those people who passes out fliers on the street, or to be one of those door-to-door sales people. Not only is it fairly awkward to go into random businesses, and ask them for stuff, but it just gets annoying having to repeat the same shtick to about 20 different businesses a day. However, despite all of the awkwardness, we seemed to have a positive amount of interest. Even on the days when we paraded the giant through the city, there was usually a large group of people who would come take pictures, or ask us about the event.
The end of last week in particular was pretty great. We took one of the Queen giants out on the opening of Racing Day, one of Chester's biggest events. The first three days of the event are themed, and everyone and their mothers come to the races, dressed in their nicest suit or dress attire. The opening racing days are also the only days where you will see mass amounts of elderly folk drunk at 1 in the afternoon (No joke, as I was coming back from lunch, I ran into a group of elderly women who could barely walk on the cobblestone streets as they attempted to walk down to the races, it was pretty hilarious). Overall, the event went very well. We had a lot of people stop by to ask questions, and take plenty of photos.
Tomorrow is going to be one of our biggest promo days yet. The real Queen (yes, you read that correctly, Queen Elizabeth II) is going to be coming to Chester Zoo to open the Jubilee gates to a new section of the Zoo. Our company was invited by the Queen, and her Chief Clerk to bring 5 of our Giants to the zoo, and to be there for the grand opening. I can't even begin to describe how psyched I am for it. The event and the experience are going to be incredible, but I am not excited for having to wake up at 6 AM to be at the zoo for 7:00. It's currently 10:55, and I'm pretty sure this is the earliest I've gone to bed in the past several months.
One thing that I've noticed while over here is the huge divide between the people who adore the Queen, and those who think that she isn't that important. A lot of the British students I've talked to have had pretty strong feelings on both sides. A few are completely enthralled by the Royal Family, while the others think that the Queen is just some old lady who is simply there for decoration, and doesn't hold any authority in this day and age. It has also been pretty funny to see these two groups argue over the subject.
Anyway, it's off to bed for me. I'll be sure to keep you all posted about the event! I can't believe that it's only 3 more weeks until the main event. So much to do, and so little time. It will be interesting to see how these next couple of weeks turn out.
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