Illuminate The Lemon

What a long day! My house mistress invited me and jo to go to a horse racing thing today. Rosy (an upper six) came as well. Sue ( a retired teacher's wife ) is running a charity called Save The Children http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/?gclid=CNr8zN2w65UCFQyR1Qodbl9xew So we're helping her out to collect donations from the public at the race.

We thought that it might be a cold day so i wore like 3 layers of clothing.So we left school at 9am. The journey was like one a half hours long -..- but the view was good..nice country side..cows, horses, sheeeeep. Its a town near Bath called Castle Combe. We saw some road signs with a checkered flag with it and we were wondering how come horse racing has checkered flags? So we asked Sue what race is it and she said it was motor racing! Yeah so we found out it was car racing only half way through the journey while thinking it was horse racing all along lmao

It turned out that it was a very sunny and bright day :D like msia really..the sun hurt my eyes..didnt bring my shades along :( cuz i never expected it to be sunny in UK at all haha.

Motor racing sounds more exciting cuz like..omg all different type of cars will be there and stuff. So yeah there were tons of people there in the open field. Sport cars parked almost everywhere and the car hoods open to show off the engines. There were some cars driving to their parking spot so there were all like..vrooom vrooooom

The atmosphere was great! I suddenly felt so interested in cars (though i've been loving the audi for quite awhile hehe) There were tents selling shirts, sport car toys. We have our own Save The Children tent and we had to wear a T shirt about the campaign..not so bad i guess :P

Our first task was to hand out flyers to the public. We had to split up. I prepared myself with a yellow balloon for advertising sake saying : WIN A RIDE £1
Basically ppl buy raffle tickets at our tent and there will be a lucky draw at 2.30pm and that lucky winner will have a ride with Mikko Hirvonen who is a famous rally racer from Finland.

I went to the far end of the tracks and i found a really nice narrow spot where i can easily give out the flyers. Managed to hand out all of them in like 15 minutes. I walked back to the tent to get more flyers. This time i took double the amount since i know it'll finish really fast (8000 ppl here!) so yeah i finished that batch in 15 minutes as well woo! There was this random guy whom i gave a flyer to, he wanted a picture with me and the balloon as well..and i was like..uhhhh okay then *smiles* weird huh

I walked all the way back to the tent (gah had blisters) and while walking back i was looking at the cars like audi, subaru, toyota, mitsubishi, mustang, ford and so many more which i dont know their names haha. I waited for jo and rosy to come back in the tent. And when they did, they came back with an autograph signed by Mikko himself! I was like..aah i want an autograph (eventhough i had no idea who he was till today) but the autograph session was closed so i was like sad for some reason.

We had lunch after that. We bought some burgers from a little food stall. We were watching the warm up rounds while eating but it wasnt really a good view cuz there were ppl blocking and we were not in the proper spectators stand. So once we were done eating we went to the spectators stand (we had one hour and a half of break!) and we were lucky that we had a good spot. It was where the cars took off at the starting point :D The cars actually take off one by one..which is awesome!! Eventhough the cars take off the same way but we never get bored of it..its just too exciting to get bored here!

When our break time was over, we sold some raffle tickets at the tent. It was quite fun selling it to people i guess. The sales were quite successful ^^
When the sales were closed, we went to the stand (you know those typical stands where the racers go up to when they spray champagne and stuff?) yeah! So we went up there to witness the lucky draw and we took a picture of the whole Save The Children group.

Our next task : asking for donation

This is actually the toughest part of the whole charity thing. We had to say 'save the children save the children! any spare change to save the children?' like so many times while carrying a bucket and we get so exhausted over it. Cuz the thing is..not many people responded. But Sue said that last year there were £400 in each bucket! I was feeling a bit pathetic..i started to hit the bucket to make a beat out of the jingling coins..and STILL nobody put any money in my bucket T-T

We did this for one whole long hour. We went back to the tent half dead. Sue had some good news though :

We were going to have a photoshoot with Mikko!

All 3 of us were jumping and 'screaming' with joy (well screaming isnt really the word) and we might even have our shirts signed!! We were like YAAAAYYYY
The moment finally came. The Save The Children group with him and the guy who won the lucky draw. The best thing was..he didnt mind signing our shirts!! We went mad after the whole thing was over xD *i locked my shirt in my drawer..nobody shall have it bwahahaha..not gonna wash it either lolzz*

We packed up and stuff after that. But sue wanted more donations so we stayed back 15 minutes longer. Rosy wasnt feeling too good so she stayed in Sue's car while waiting for us.

I slept on the way back to school..really really tired (the weather didnt help either..we ate like 2 ice cream sticks!) but over all today was one of the most exciting days i ever had here :D plus this was my first time meeting a famous person...and even got my shirt autographed! woooo
I think i love cars more now..this whole rally experience was truly awesome. I really hope i can go to next year's rally ^^