This year the Buddy Walk was held at Wolf Pen Creek off of Holleman. I chose to work with this program because I am currently volunteering my Mondays at the Down Syndrome Association of Brazos Valley, whom actually put on this event. As soon as I heard about this event I signed up to work it from 11:30am to 2:30pm on October 5, 2014.

I was very excited to work with this event and extremely anxious to see what the day was to hold. Once I arrived at Wolf Pen Creek at 11am, the activities were already started and there were many people already on the lawn enjoying their Saturday. I checked in at the volunteer check-in, received my T-shirt, and was told that I would be taking the next shift at that very check-in tent. I patiently began to wait for my shift to begin. I introduced myself to a couple of people and got to know one lady who seemed to have an important role as an event coordinator for Buddy Walk. As I found out more and more about her, I learned exactly whom she was, what her job was, and we got to figure out what mutual friends we have in common.

 After I started my shift at 11:30, the first hour or so was very slow, as people were not going to be checking in until the next shift period around 12:30 to 1:00.  Again, I began to become familiar with those working the visitor’s tent with me and found out that a couple of the girls I had met were there for the same reason as me: to get volunteer hours for their Recreation Parks and Services Tourism classes. This was about the extent of my day until the crowd rushed in and I became busy from around 1:00 to the end of my shift. I think that this shift went by very quickly and it was a mild task to perform for the sake of this event.

Although I had the opportunity to meet a few interesting people who were in the same boat as me, I do wish I could have done more interacting with those actually participating in the Buddy Walk. I only had a couple encounters with special needs kids while I was volunteering at this event, and that is not what I expected. My anticipation was that I would be able to spend more time with some of the friends I have made this semester at the Down Syndrome Association of Brazos Valley. While the activities that I performed did not meet my expectations, I still realize how valuable I was in contributing to this event. The volunteer check –in would have been chaos without me and the other RPTS students there serving their time.