The first full day of Go Wild!

Early Morning Turn-Out
I was only listed on the volunteer schedule from 12 pm to 10:30 pm on Wednesday for unloading/swag duty, but had checked in with Stephanie on Wednesday night and found that her calendar had me listed as working on Friday as Saturday as well, in addition to the all-hands-on-deck events (#swagfairy!).

All volunteers were to meet at 6:45 am at the ballroom for a run-down of how the day was going to go. I was excited to put on my Team Wild T-shirt and get ready for the day. I tried to coordinate with some grey eyeshadow, but it ended up looking odd. Kinda like the 70s blue eyeshadow debacle. Oh well. I cannot make-up. Usually, I barely manage to girl. I need lessons on how to be girly.

Rachel had headed down to the ballroom earlier, to get a place in line. Julia and I went to the ballroom and waited with all the other volunteers in the ballroom lobby, while an ever-growing line of attendees sat in a long snakey line in the lobby to the lobby (or whatever they called it).

I’m getting my days confused a bit at this point, but I think it was this morning, after we had our meeting and got our assignments, that the volunteer group went outside with the photographer to the patio and took a group shot of all of the volunteers. Looking at the photo (which I haven’t seen yet), I should be on the left-most side in the second row from the front. Yay for being short!

I was assigned to Spirit duty. Since I was too short to fit into the llama suit, I was going to be tossing beach balls into the crowd. Kemy and I ran down to the Ryman room and grabbed all the beach balls and carried them back to the ballroom. Correction: Kemy grabbed 4-5 garbage bags full of the smaller beach balls while I could only manage ONE GIANT beach ball. She had like 30 and I had 1. It was a little awkward to carry, so I held it over my head and danced with it as we passed the attendees waiting to enter the lobby at 8 am. I may have even dribbled it a little. We set the beach balls in the conference room and went about seeing where else we could help out last minute, while waiting for the conference to begin and everyone to come in.

I took this time to take a photo of Every. Single. Table. I didn’t get a chance to do this last year, because when the doors open, everyone floods into the room and you are consumed with finding your friends and figuring out where to sit (with your friends). By the time you have a seat, it’s hard to see all of the tables because of everyone already sitting at them. And usually there’s not a lot of time before the conference itself starts.

Sorry (not sorry) for anyone with a slow internet connection. There’s going to be a LOT of photos! Here are ALL of the tables! Enjoy!

Finally, it was time! The music was playing, the llama was on stage, I was dancing with my beach balls, and excitement was thick in the air! The doors opened and everyone started streaming into the room!

To be continued….