Written by: Marayka
Monday, July 30, 2007

It began at 6pm with crowds out the front of sea world, so many that they needed crowd control! I heard through the two-way that they where still selling loads of tickets at the door and I had no idea what to expect.

At about 6.05pm the first group (a group of teenage girls I had never seen before) walked down the path into Dolphin Cove where myself, Jade, Richard and Catherine were waiting for them with flyer's in arms. For the first 10mins people (still no one I knew) slowly poured through the gates......

Then.... a constant stream of people came in... so many we were overwhelmed and for a moment I was totally lost! There was just too many people for me to greet (now family and friends and familiar faces amongst the crowd) and I frantically found my fellow staff members (the dolphin team) and forced flyer's and raffle tickets into their hands. With all hands on deck we got through them all and soon everyone (at this stage an estimated 1000 pax!) was sitting down facing me! Oh shit went through my head. But our fabulous MC (an announcer from Sea World) was great and kept the night rolling. My welcome speech went, well lets say I didn't stuff up :-) In fact I think I remembered almost everything and it seemed that I got the message across about what we were all there for because the money came in very fast.

After the welcome and the talented singing from Movie World's own Adam King, we were all greeted by Conan the Australian Sea Lion. His entrance quite hilarious as he swam through the dolphins then jumped onto the land greeting all the small children in the front rows. Then he awed us with his brilliant painting abilities and kissed a lucky 6 guests from the audience. We later sold x5 framed paintings by Conan in the auction for around $150 each!

Which brings me to our Auction...what can I say. With a table full of items that I thought may hopefully make $1000 actually went for a total of $10,000! People were going nuts! By this stage the kids were getting a little restless, but all eyes soon focused back on the dolphins as I did a flash change into a wet suit for the Dolphin Show. Doing the show everyday I'm obviously very critical, but the show went pretty well, and the dolphins were very well behaved :-)

And this ended the night. :-) Our estimation of total amount raised is between 15 - 20,000. Holy Crap! What a relief and what a fantastic effort from everyone there. Catherine, Jade and Richard were fantastic (thank you thank you thank you) and were able to sell a few of Beck's beautiful cards and sell a number of t-shirts and undies and also sell a great deal of raffle tickets for Catherine's gorgeous quilts. Catherine also had some great interest in her upcoming event, which I can't wait to see in a couple of weeks.

Catherine: My mum and dad have given me money for tickets so they're coming along too!
Beck: I will take your cards along to Catherine's night to try and sell some more. Plus I'm taking them to work cause I think a few ladies in the office want some.

Well I think I'll leave it at that. But I'm now so excited that the first mountain is complete and a success... and now I feel like I'm on holiday :-). This afternoon for the first time in weeks I sat down with a book on Peru and got immersed in our upcoming adventure. Hopefully now my dreams will now longer be of dramatic problems with the fundraising event but rather be dreams of beautiful mountains and dense rainforests. I can't wait!!!!!

Let me know how you are all going. And let me know if I can help with anything. Looking forward to catching up with you all soon.

Lots of Luv
MK xx (MK is my nickname and it's become a sign off on emails in case you're wondering)

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