With the excitement of the concert and the STAR tutoring session this afternoon, I totally forgot it’s time to turn the clock back an hour: end of daylight savings time. If there’s a single day that I have to vote as the most depressing day of the year (not considering other factors) I would say this is it. Even though I gain an hour today but the sun will set around 5pm today and will progressively set earlier and earlier till mid winter before it goes back the other way. I prefer long summer days where the sun sets at 8.30pm or later.

Well I went for my first STAR tutoring session today. When I signed up, I didn’t think that it would start so soon and adding this to my calendar is sort of overwhelming at this moment in time…oh well… Anyway I have to do one-on-one tutoring for about 2 hours every other Saturday. On STAR days, tutors have to be there before noon, have lunch with their tutee(s), we had chicken fingers, cheese pizza, french fries, and cookies, and then go on to the one-on-one tutoring.

My tutee, Barbara, is an eleven year old 6th grader. She’s very independent and pretty much did all the work without much help from me. She was working on her Math homework and she has to determine, via mental mathematic, whether a certain number e.g. 2332 is divisible by 2,3,5,9 and 10. It’s been a long time since I had to crank up that part of my brain!

Both Third Day and the David Crowder Band are Christian bands. I’ve heard a few of their songs and was looking forward to this concert. I didn’t really know what their styles would be like. The music was loud. The earth literally trembled under my feet. I have to say I like David Crowder Band a little better because I could follow the lyrics where as for Third Day, I couldn’t really hear the words of the songs. But Third Day’s half of the show had more spectacular light shows.

Since the videos that I took at Musikfest turned out pretty good, I was all prepared to catch some videos on my digital camera. And I did, I caught 4 short video segments, two of each band. I came home and downloaded the videos to the macbook and was horrified that the sound quality was really bad, very much like a bad pirated VCD I guess the volume and sound system of the place overwhelmed my lowly digital camera. This video was the only acceptable one among the four. Third Day sang “Born in Bethlehem”, a new song from their recently released Christmas album. Enjoy!

World Vision counter

This evening, Marvin and I, were World Vision volunteers at the Third Day with the David Crowder Band concert at Lehigh. As volunteers, we had to get there early (4.30pm), go through a brief orientation, don an apron and a name tag, and hold on to some WV’s child sponsorship materials.

Before the concert started, we handed out small cards to concert goers to fill in and drop into the orange bucket. Once the concert started, we could settle down to watch the concert (for free).

During intermission, a lucky draw took place (from the orange bucket) and one very fortunate person went home with a Third Day pack (3CDs and 2 DVDs). At this time, I had to hold up a child sponsorship packet and walked (more like climb up the bleachers) along the aisle. If anyone is interested, I explained to them what this is all about and help them fill up the forms. Sponsoring a Hope Child (children living in AIDS/HIV ravaged countries) costs $35 a month and sponsoring a Children of Gulu (war children of northern Uganda) costs $20 a month.

After the intermission, settled down again for remainder of the concert. Just before the show ended, we had to wait in the concourse area and once again holding up the child sponsorship packet. I managed to sign up one Hope Child sponsor and one Children of Gulu sponsor.

Then when the place started to clear out, we returned the apron and materials, each grabbed a World Vision pen as a souvenir and headed home at around 9.30pm.

All in all, a very enjoyable and meaningful way to attend a free concert.