Moving here this summer has opened me up to a lot of new experiences and willingness to put myself out there and try new things. Yesterday Aunt Cindy talked me into attending a yoga class in Rio Grande. This specific type of yoga was called Bikram yoga or what is known as hot yoga. This past semester at college I started practicing yoga, but Bikram is a whole other adventure. Bikram yoga consists of a 90 minute class in a 104 degree room. The studio we went to had space heaters and fireplaces all throughout the room. Bikram is made up of 26 poses that are practiced in each class. Bikram has many health benefits one being the releasing your body of toxins through your sweat. The high temperatures open up your blood vessels and allow better blood and oxygen flow throughout the body. The class was definitely an experience. I never knew how much a person could honestly sweat. The lady next to me was sweating so much that it sounded like it was raining on her mat. The whole class I had to go to the bathroom really bad, so I was feeling really uncomfortable, but I knew if I left the hot room to go to the bathroom coming back into it would be completely agonizing. In this case, I decided to lay down for a pose or two until I felt like I could participate again. After the class, I was feeling slightly nauseous because I didn’t properly hydrate, but I was proud of myself for making it through the whole class. Aunt Cindy said she’s seen a lot of first timers and I did great. So since I’ve survived, I can cross Bikram yoga off my bucket list. While at this class, I also made a nice connection with a woman who planned events for the Olympics in Australia. She also plans weddings in Cape May and has tons of connections all over the place because of her involvement with the Olympics. I gave her my name and e-mail and she said she would contact me if she needs any help in Cape May this summer or hears of any good opportunities. Its really cool how you have the ability to network everywhere you go.
Bikram Yoga class
This morning I went to my internship. I am now on the third leg of the program which is working with the Banquet manager. When I got there he had me do “liquor trackers”. Before an event, the bartenders count how many bottles of each alcohol they have and then they do the same at the end of the night. I enter this information in a spreadsheet which calculates how much alcohol was consumed at each event, along with the consumed cost for that alcohol. All this gets added up to see how much that specific event’s alcohol cost. This is how we keep track of what alcohol is being consumed, how much we spent, and how to better prepare for each event. After I finished the liquor trackers, I helped Paul with the payroll for all the servers, bartenders, barbacks, and greeters. Like before, I also copied information onto “The Board” for the upcoming wedding on Saturday.
After this, Paul didn’t have anything for me to do at the time, so I asked one of the sales ladies if she needed anything done. She gave me approximately 200 business cards and asked me to create a spreadsheet with all their names and e-mail addresses. The spreadsheet is going to be used in a few months when it’s time to send out information regarding One Atlantic’s holiday parties. The winter months are usually slow for One Atlantic weddings, so this is when they try to book a lot of corporate events and parties. After I was finished with the spreadsheet, Paul showed me how to operate the security cameras and time clocks for employees. So far, the event planning portion has been my favorite part of the internship, so I always check with Daniella and Eileen if they have anything that needs to be done before I leave. Daniella asked me to help her with a project she was working on. Like I mentioned in a previous post, couples are not allowed to have the Starry Night lighting fixture up when there is going to be a hora. Another reason a couple could not have Starry Night would be if they have more than 250 guests. This is because the normal ceremony space holds 250 people and if a couple has more guests we have to use a larger portion of the ballroom for the ceremony space. This would not allow enough time to switch over the entire ballroom and put up the fixture during the short cocktail hour. Daniella asked me to go through the folders for all her booked weddings and check information regarding Starry Night, Horas and if they have over 250 guests. She was creating e-mails to remind the brides of the information regarding Starry Night and its restrictions. After I was finished with this, Daniella allowed me to create a wedding timeline and menu in Reserve for one of her weddings in October. I’ve seen Eileen and Daniella use Reserve for different aspects of events, but it was really helpful to be able to do it myself. In addition to weddings and office hours, I’ve been working on One Atlantic’s Pinterest account from home. Its been really fun to take the pictures and categorize them.
On my way to One Atlantic today, I was walking through the pier and I saw a press conference happening, so I decided to stop and listen for a little while. It was a DOAC press conference announcing the opening acts for the free Blake Shelton and Lady Antebellum concerts in a month. Dan and Shay will be opening up for Blake Shelton on July 31st and Alex and Sierra from the X Factor are opening for Lady Antebellum on August 3rd. Kelsey and I have tickets for both concerts so it was exciting to see the announcement live. The speaker was also providing a lot of valuable information regarding the concert including a map and parking information.
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