THANKYOU♥

the design on the back of our shirts/hoodies!

So. Yesterday (April 5th) was our first annual Poetry Picnic, and I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped out with our first ever Poetry Picnic yesterday. It was a huge success and it was one of the funnest days I've ever had on campus. And our shirts and hoodies were amazing. Pictures and videos should be up soon, and expect a blog post about the actual event itself possibly over the weekend!

Thanks to Society of Pathology, Lyceum, and IASA for cosponsoring the Picnic, performing, and helping us out! Thanks to the Greek organizations for volunteering their members to help out, coming to the Picnic, and supporting Danielle B in her performance. Thanks to Brandon and the UMD Jazz band for playing such amazing and fabulous music for us to open the Picnic. Thanks to everyone who performed and read poetry! And of course, thanks to all of our friends for attending the picnic and having a great time!

A ton of time and effort went into making the Picnic into what it was, and I can't say thank you enough to the following people for just doing a spectacular job.

To top off the list, we have Erich Beregszaszy, our most esteemed Duke of Scribes. Putting together the Picnic was of course a combined effort, but Erich was totally the genius behind the entire day. The Picnic was based off of the annual picnic held at his high school, and he brought it to UMD for us. Not only that, but Erich came up with all the cool ideas for decorating and giving Kochoff an authentic outdoor feel so we wouldn't have to worry about crazy MI weather. And he did an insanely amazing job! You'll see the pictures soon, but everything was so creatively put together and fabulous and that just made the Picnic a million times more awesome than your average picnic. We had balloon trees, balloon clouds, a photo mural, a trellis in the entry way, floaty fabric to look like sky, and GRASS MATS that looked like actual grass. It was perfect. Erich definitely deserves a very special thank you for all of his work. THANK YOU, ERICH!

Then we have Wafa Algahmi, our very valuable Countess of Expression. Wafa was very prompt and timely about making sure everything getting done on time, and brough up a lot of things we needed to address during the planning stages. She found our picnic basket sellar, and we ordered 30 picnic baskets and stayed within our limited budget. Her biggest contribution to the Picnic, though, was theDeath be not proud video. Remember that? She set up the filming schedule, bought the supplies, organized the actors's schedules, and then put together all of the video footage into a fantastic movie that we finally had a chance to screen at our Picnic yesterday. It'll soon be out on DVD and Blu-ray, and who knows, there may be a musical version in the future. THANK YOU, WAFA!

We also have Myra Khan, our most honored Princess of Rhymes. Since the beginning of the LEP, Myra has been one of our go-to people whenever we needed creative advice, especially when it came to buying things. This time, we needed to buy 20 picnic blankets, and Myra and her lovely mom were able to to pick out the best cloth from JoAnn's for us, including a cute one covvered in watermelon slices. THANK YOU, MYRA!

Sara Milward, LEP "Jester of Gestures" and saxophone player was the one to get us in touch with the Jazz band to play at the Picnic. She also helped out a TON with set up and assembling the garden display in the Kochoff entranceway. Sara was also a star in our video, and we shared a hot glue gun, so she must be fantastic. LOVE YOU, SARA.

Sara Arnold, Miriam Bukhsh, and Jamilah Alhashidi were wonderful at putting up the photo mural (which did NOT want to stick to the wall), making the balloon clouds, and decorating the room with flowers. Sara A.'s height was a huge asset to us! Moe Sadek was great at helping with setup, directing people into the Picnic area, and taking photos of everything. He also wrote a poem that the Society of Pathology read during their performance. Thanks a million, guys! :D

Keysha Wall from Lyceum helped out from 8am to 3pm with EVERYTHING - set up, tear down, running the event, singing, running around, etc. She was amazing help! Kent from Lyceum and Lance Slatton did a fabulous job assembling the trees with help from various people. Byron Cheng is the man with the amazing lungs who blew up 144 green balloons BY HIMSELF for these trees, and Marie Arnaout and Maddie from Delta Phi Epsilon sorority were a great help as well! We also had help from Emma Slonina and Nadia Khalyleh during set up and clean up, and apparently Emma is great at dancing too. We would also like to thank Zina Karana for bringing in her little brother and sister who had a great time at the picnic by participating in our bubble wrap popping challenge, and then popping all the balloons we had. Nice work, everyone!

As you can see, we had  a great team of people working on this in pre-planning and also on the day of, and without this combined effort, the Picnic wouldn't have been as great as it was. 

Amal A.
LEP Queen of Poetry