March Blog Post - helping kids make musical instruments and being a sommelier!

                                                      March Community Service Hours: 10 hours

Total Spring Community Service Hours: 19 hours

The first of two volunteer activities I participated in this month was a STEM NOLA Saturday morning interactive learning event. I previously volunteered with them in January for a pre-Mardi Gras children's event. As described in my January blog post, STEM NOLA aims to provide children in the community with free enrichment opportunities to explore science outside of the classroom and develop their skills. As one of the activities, I helped a small group of elementary-aged students build DIY xylophones - pictured on the right above is one of my students who agreed to let me share a picture of her project. 

For my second volunteer activity, I was a wine pourer at the Bacchanalia wine tasting competition and fundraiser, which is an annual event to fundraise for HandsOn which is a non-profit volunteer center that helps volunteers find a variety of experiences they can participate in to help the local community, and I had previously used their website to find volunteer experiences in the fall semester. In relation to our program, I thought heavily about MAO inhibiters while there - as many of the attendees were consuming large amounts of wine and eatings platters of cheese form the serving table. I wondered if the wine and cheese combination could be dangerous for any of the over 100 attendees there, as we learned in class that they contain tyramine and could cause a "tyramine reaction", making patients who take MAO inhibiters more susceptible to hypertensive crises. Luckily there were no major medical emergencies - only a few people who drank a little too much and had to sit and drink water.