26 Jul Showtime

Most of this week was spent in preparation of our Latino Conservation Week event this Saturday (tomorrow at the time of me writing this). On Monday, my supervisor Miguel went to Little Rock (the state capital and largest city) to be recorded by the local Univision network. He was making an announcement of our event as well as promoting national parks in general to a Spanish-speaking audience. There he met with our community partner who delivered the banner we printed for our event. Then on Wednesday I was able to have some TV time as well. The previous week I had been invited to participate on a televised panel called El Latino, where the subject of the talk was going to be public parks and how Latinos can better access the public land resources Arkansas has. I joined a park ranger from Little Rock Central High National Historic Site and a landscaper from Mississippi River State Park. The panel was led by Michel Leidermann, who is the director of El Latino, a Spanish newspaper for the state. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be going in, even though this was my first time formally being on TV (not interviews or actions shots). I had Monday off because I would be working at the event on Saturday, so I spent the weekend at a coworker’s family home in northern Arkansas. We explored the beautiful town of Mountain View, Arkansas, where we browsed antique shops and old buildings. Then we kayaked nine miles on the Buffalo National River. The Buffalo River was the first river in the U.S. to be designated a National River in 1972. Lastly, we got to go on two tours of Blanchard Springs Caverns, which are huge limestone caves with underground rooms the size of football fields. This trip was a great way to get my mind off of the upcoming week of planning for my event tomorrow, though I’m confident in all of the work I have done to prepare for it and I believe everything will go well.