Nothing like the Present

Presents. Split it into two and you got pre-sents, which suggests things you send to someone beforehand - ironic considering what 'in the present' means. Why am I analysing vocabulary? I don't know but it's Christmas Eve so all in the spirit of Christmas :)!

In the holidays, a few friends and I decided to try out the annual Myer Gift Wrap, which supported Vision Australia this year.

What is Myer Gift Wrap? Basically in every Myer store, there was a charity gift wrap counter where customers could get their gifts wrapped. Depending the size (and how pretty they thought we wrapped!), we suggested a donation and they could chose to pay that. If not, they could pay whatever they could afford, so the great thing about it was there was no pressure.

All the money went to aiding children with vision problems to help them lead normal lives. To volunteer for this, I had to attend a training session where a lady really put it in perspective.

"Imagine" she said quietly, "if you had never seen somebody use a fork before. How would you know how to hold it?"

"How would you be able to eat like everybody else? How would you ever fit in?"

It made me value my ability to see a little more. And try as we might, I don't think anyone of us can ever imagine what it would be like to have the same dreams, insecurities and worries that we teens have.

Only you also live in darkness.

We also were specially trained to wrap the queerest things. I won't give away the secrets, but there ARE ways to wrap giant teddy bears and lumpy toys.

To the actual event - I had two five-hour shifts after I got back from NZ which sounded pretty scary to me. But everything surprised me. Some smilelights:

=) Every customer gave us a donation of something. Most customers handed us notes and then with a cheery smile, told us to keep the change.

=) The gorgeous wrapping itself! I think you all know I'm not the best person to wrap gifts - Let's just say they don't survive the process. But with all that practice, I got good enough that Nayoung Lee complimented, "Hey, that's not half bad." I know, amazing!

=) Meeting Laily, the new girl that had her shift with us. She was very nice and very, very good at tying ribbons.

=) The fact that there was a free gift wrapping service right outside myers, but people still chose to come to our charity gift wrap. Maybe they didn't know, but I'm sure some people made the choice. That inspires me.

All in all, it was a great experience. Definitely next year if you have the time, or you have an incredible eye for gift wrapping, do it.

For some more information on Vision Australia and what it does (there's a very endearing picture of a child on the homepage), visit http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/

And now it's 4 minutes to Christmas by my clock! Merry Christmas everybody, keep safe and happy!

And remember, Happiness Equals Bracket =)