Destination imagination, all I ever heard from my friends that where in plp last year was that its the worst thing they’ve ever done, that its like hell. So from the start I pretty much had no confidence and was dreading doing it the second I found out I was in plp but lets just say that it actually wasn’t that bad. From the start I was actually very happy with the group I was placed in, my group consisted of Ryan, Alex, Tatum and myself. My group was very well balanced and we where all happy with who we where partnered with.
Planning: So are challenge that we got was the project outreach challenge, we had to find a problem in a community and solve the problem. We kind of already knew what we where going to do from the begging, our plan was to build a model of a mini hatchery that could purify water and create a safe hating area for the cutthrought salmon that live in the stream near Alex’s house, we never actually built a real hat hatchery as that would cost thousands of dollars and we didn’t have that sort of budget. We did build a model of the hatchery out of wood and glue that kept falling apart due to people knocking it over (willemse wasn’t to happy about that). To present our challenge we had to implement the problem into a fairy tale and have main characters who are not human, Tatum wrote the script and apparently it was very good because that was one of the best parts of our presentation. Me and Ryan where the main characters of the story, the story is that Timothy the trout has a best friend named Bruce the bear, one day Timothy is swimming around and runs into a bunch of garbage, the local troll rags has been polluting the stream so Bruce comes up with a plan to create a hatchery and water purifying system. Bruce shows Timothy his plan and they decide to go talk to rags about it, rags agrees that he’ll move away from the stream and try to stop polluting as much, Timothy and bruce build a small model design of the hatchery and are ready to build the real one but the city dwellers tell them they can’t build it due to the permit restrictions. In the end Timothy and Bruce are saddened by the results but decide to make another plan to fix their problem. The ending reflects upon how we couldn’t get permits to actually build a hatchery and how we didn’t have enough money to carry out the plan.

Destination imagination: 6:30 AM, my alarm was ringing and DI was just starting. We had to meet at St. George’s at 8:00 AM for the opening of DI, I was very nervous as I hadn’t fully memorized my script and I wasn’t sure how many people we had to present in front of. We also had to do a team challenge before our presentation so we could be evaluated on our teamwork and ability to solve challenges. All I can say is that my team crushed the challenge, I’m not really sure I can say what the challenge was but we almost got maximum points and we all worked as a team to complete it. I can personally say that DI is very hectic, there isn’t an age restriction so there are a bunch of younger grades running around and doing stuff I personally think shouldn’t be done at a big important presentation like this. I found it very distracting and annoying but the most annoying thing about DI was their planning, while waiting to do the team challenge they where half an hour late so we had to wait around and we could’ve spent that time rehearsing our lines. Another time was when, at the end of DI you all move to the gym To receive awards and find out which teams did the best, that usually starts at around 4:30-5:30 PM but we had to wait in the gym all the way to 6:00 PM just so they could say that they where experiencing technical difficulties. They could of just told us that twenty minutes after their computers not working but they didn’t and had to extend it out.

Presentation & Scoring: So, it was around forty minutes before we had to do our presentation, all my group memebers and I where in a class room a few doors down practicing the lines and growing through the presentation to make sure we knew what we where doing. Around twenty minutes before go time and we started heading down to the presentation class room, we brought everything we need like the “ghetto backdrop” we made (Ms. Willemse hates it when we say that), each of the costumes we made ( I was dressed as a bear, Ryan was a trout, Tatum was the fairy narrator and Alex was rags the troll). We went down early so we could answer the questions that one of the judges had about are presentation like “will your presentation use live explosives or anything that goes boom”, we answered her questions and moved into the room. I looked to the crowd of around twenty five people and all faces seemed familiar, I could see most of my class mates, my family, and my wonderful teachers. Ok so now is when we really started feeling nervous, the model of the hatchery we mad had made fell over so me and Alex where taping it back together as Tatum and Ryan fixed the backdrop. We all got our costumes on and set everything up, we hadn’t fully memeorized the script so for good measure ryan had put the script in a TelePrompTer app on his iPad and set it up behind a box in front of us just in case. We all got behind the backdrop and Tatum walked to the front to start the narration, Soon after Ryan walked in and said some of his lines and soon after that it was my turn. I walked to the front and said my first couple lines, the crowd laughed, they loved our script. We where told that everyone loved all the humour and it was a good change from all the other groups that had very dark stories. Our background did fall over so me and Tatum had to hold it up for half of our presentation time, the judges loved our story and execution. We where the only senior team doing project outreach so there was no possible way to come in second, we still tried our best and I think it showed off. For Regionals my group has to redo the whole challenge, we have to find a new problem, Ryan have alex have suggested that we donate money to help Field prep at MSLL (mount Seymour little league). It wo uld would make a safer and cleaner environment for the kids playing baseball. We would make an instructional video showing how to properly prep the field and revolve a fairytale around it. I personally think DI isnt the greates thing in the world but it’s definitely not the worst thing I’ve ever done, it builds public speaking skills, team building skills, willemse and Hughes points, leadership. These are all skills id love to improve and i hope to improve throughout the rest of the year. By the end of the year i hope to score higher with DI regionals and achieve bigger with my goals, DI was pretty fun and id like to see how it turns out next year. (Below is a video my friend Alex uploaded of our presentation)