Painting it up in Canada, eh?!

The phone rings and I pick it up...."Hello?"..."hey it's Michelle (a 3rd grade teacher from Canada I became friends with while she was visiting for my sister's wedding last year) I've got some great news to tell you! You know how I have your Boys and Girls Club calendar with all your art up in my classroom? Well a women who is a director for our annual teachers conference saw it and loves your work and she says she would like you to come here and be a guest presenter at the conference. You would be teaching teachers new art techniques/lessons for them to teach to their kids. They'll fly you here, put you up in a nice room, and even pay you to present...the only thing is the deadline is coming up quick so you need to get your proposal in soon. What do you think? I think you would do great....Check out the conference website, it's GETCA.com and let me know if you're interested and get back to me!"

"It sounds like a great opportunity, but let me think about it and I'll get back to you."

Wow, this could be kinda cool...should I do it?!? I thought it over for a while and checked out their website for more information...still not quite sure what I would be getting myself into, but I thought this could really be a great new experience going to a new city in Canada, having a new speaking/teaching opportunity, getting my art out in another country, and it's paid for...I might as well try it...what do I have to lose? I have to admit I was a litttle nervous...can I really do this? Teaching teachers...that just sounds wrong in itself...why would they want to sit and listen to me? should I really commit to this? I don't speak, I paint! How many people are going to be there? hmmm, I'll have to think about this...

....So after my self doubt susbided I talk to Michelle again and tell her I'm interested! I end up submitting proposals to do 2 presentations and they were both excepted. Whew! So that parts done, but I still don't have a solid plan and they mentioned my needing to do a Powerpoint...I didn't think artists and Powerpoints mixed-but I guess they will now!...also how many people will be there and are the teachers doing this project with me or am I just demonstrating it? I guess I'll find out eventually....

A couple months go by as I continued to imagine what it was going to be like....until it was finally time to go! 7 days in in freezing cold Canada!

Sitting on the plane...destination:Edomonton, Alberta, CA. Here I come!

The plane comes in a little late as well as the baggage, but my friend Michelle is there to pick me up, it's snowing and about -10 outside. She looks at me and laughs, "You call that a winter coat, eh?, and your shoes...you don't even have on any socks, you're so from Vegas!

Below is Michelle and her wonderful new Ford Escape with heated seats!! Those things are good!

Off we go...right away we grab a bite to eat and then head straight to Michael's Craft Store to pick up the needed art supplies.Keep in mind Michelle has also arranged for me to visit 3 schools and teach 6 art workshops for grades 2-4. No real plan on my part...but she's trusting I have one and that it's going to be good! So we get what I think I should need; I'm doing my first day of art workshops for the kids starting early in the morning...so I better be ready! We get to her home, she shows me around, and after staying up talking much later than we should have....we finally went to bed.

BEEP!, BEEP!, BEEP! I awake...it's 6:30 am, pretty darn early for me (I'm more of an 8am person) I get up and get ready and it's off to school I go!, this morning I'm definitley needing a good ol' Rockstar energy drink to get me going! Michelle drops me off at a school and in I go to teach my first art class which is 3rd grade, the plan is to teach Absract portraits in Chalk pastel and I have a half day to do it...so I do my thing, the kids are awesome and do a wonderful job! They're loving it! I'm feeling pretty good about things...bell rings...I pack up and this teacher takes me to the next school where Michelle teaches. She greets me at the door and says okay you have 2 hours to do 2 2nd grade classes...mmm,okay!? I better hurry...man was I feeling tired, I gave all I had to the last class!! but to my surprise I see Michelle has brought me another Rockstar...She's the best!! (Normally I don't drink so many of these things, but it ended up being that I had 2-3 of them every day I was there! Yikes!) Gotta do what you gotta do! So I do two second grade classes; a bit hectic, but a huge success. The kids are happy, the teachers are happy! Cool!! One day down!

Next day, a 2nd grade class, a 3rd grade class, and another 4th grade class at another school! All of them go wonderfully and I am really getting the hang of it, but wow it's been quite a whilrwind so far!Now it's Wednesday night and my presentations are tomorrow morning; I still need to get things all put together and planned out, then go get checked into my hotel room which is downtown. Michelle and I are both exhausted but keep pushing ourselves...crack open another Rockstar and keep truckin'!...Michelle's family were all ready to help as well!! and I must mention that Michelle and her parents (and grandma) are some of the most helpful, generous, thoughtful, kind, loving people I've met..apart from my own family of course :-) and they were fully prepared to help me get ready for my big day. I am so very thankful for them! Michelle's mom, Cheryl, helped fine tune my Powerpoint, she also bought nice colored folders and made great printouts from my website. We all sat at the kitchen table putting all 250 folders together along with extra paper and nice new pencils...it was getting late too, Michelle and I were feeling a little delerious and acting pretty silly by that point...everything was fuuny at that point! It was about midnight when we started packing stuff up to go to the hotel room....we finally got checked in and ready for bed by 2 or 2:30 am..not good!!! but atleast we got some sleep!!

Alarm goes off...it's about 7am...we got all showered, packed up and lug everything to the Westin to find the room I would be presenting in. We find the 'Manitoba' room,get all set up, powerpoint ready, microphone on, sound check good, people are busy finding seats. It's almost time to start...Holy crap! I better not screw this up!

Michelle introduces me, I say a little prayer as I stand by waiting for my que and then up I go...

"Good morning! my name is Jennifer, I'm honored to be here today, ... and today we're going to do... "and on and on. Clicking through the Powerpoint and doing a demonstration at the same time. It wasn't so bad at all except for some problems with my mike and the speakers, but overall is went fairly smooth! and then I was done! I made it through; the whole hour and 20 minutes of it! and people liked it! they really liked it!! .....but not so quick...about 30 minutes later my second session was about to start which was really the same as the first and more people showed up and again I got great responses. Some people said it was the best session they've been to....really? that surely made me feel good! I also had to get evaluated by random people at the sessions and I got excellent ratings which was very encouraging! It sure felt great to be done though and so very proud that I had chosen to walk through the door of this new opportunity!
...Now they have invited me back for next years conference and some of the schools I did workshops for would like me to do an artist in residency with them...how cool is that? I love how one thing leads to the next, but how important it is to say YES when opportunity presents itself! You just never know what great things are waiting for you if you'll just give it a try :-)

For the rest of my visit I got to relax a bit and visit Edomton's gigantic mall, including their shooting range, rollercoaster, and very fun piano bar! They really have a beautiful city, the people were all so very nice, and best of all I got to become great friends with Michelle and meet her wonderful family!

And that's my visit to Edmonton in a nutshell!