Volunteering at the Fall Foliage Festival

On Saturday, October 16th, some EF Academy students and I had the opportunity to engage in a community service project held at a local park. Around 9 o’clock, we headed to the park before the festival to help set up the little games and other activities. Only ten minutes away from the campus, Broadway Park was the perfect place for celebrating the season. It had a big baseball field with green grass, and the weather was warm enough for the kids to come out and play.

The Recreation Department employees and other volunteers from the community gave us a warm welcome as we came in. It was exciting to see so many people preparing for the event, and it reminded me of my neighborhood community back home. The leaves were changing colors and the park was already all decorated with pumpkins and straw grass. A lot of activities were being set up, but the face painting booth caught my eyes.

There were colorful paints and glitters on the table, and I knew it would be perfect even though I’ve never had any experience with it before. Before starting the festival, I told the members I wanted to help out with face painting. There was a professional face painter at the booth, and I had about 30 minutes to learn from her. I convinced myself I can just practice the easy ones for now, but it turned out that everyone wanted a unique design of their own.

Once the festival started, lots of families and kids came straight to the face painting booth. The first challenge came when the first customer said he wanted to be a tiger. For a tiger, I needed to paint his whole face yellow and add the mustache. I was a bit worried, but I picked out the yellow paint and started on his face. The boy looked nervous because the paint was cold and the brush tickled his face.

During the process, I had no idea how it would turn out, but I didn’t want to disappoint him by looking hesitant. Finally, I was confident enough to finish it off with black spots on his forehead, and I told him to open his eyes. The moment I held up a mirror to let him take a look, he gave me a big smile and said, “Thank you!” I was so surprised that he liked my painting. Then he ran to his father to showhim the painting. It made me so happy that my drawing could bring so much joy to them. Ifelt like I learned a valuable lesson that day.