Dance Marathon

Forgive me for this somewhat unrelated post, but I really want to share this with you guys.

So, this past weekend I participated in the 14th annual UNC dance marathon, which is where we danced/stayed on our feet for 24 hours to raise money for the For The Kids foundation and the North Carolina Children's Hospital. Yes, on out feet for 24 hours. No sitting, no sleeping, just standing, dancing, from 7:30 pm Friday to 7:30 pm Saturday. You might be thinking, dear god, these people are insane, and yes, perhaps we are. But I can proudly say I did it and it was such an incredible experience that I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was the best one night stand of my life! :)
The For The Kids (FTK) foundation supports kids and family at the children's hospital when they can't support themselves. They provide money for gas so the family can come visit the sick child, money for food and unpaid bills because they know that a lot of families spend every last cent on their child's medical bills, and other things like that. You can look them up online for more information.
There were hours of the morning where I thought I couldn't do it. I was standing around at 3 am thinking, I'm tired, I still have 16 hours of this left, how on earth can I do it. Then they showed us videos of our kid co-captains, the kids who have benefited from us standing to raise money, and I remembered why I was standing. It was hard, I won't lie, but being there with almost 2000 other students made it worth it. To see why we stand, watch this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAZyoWtqrvk&feature=related

We raised $483,210.36 FOR THE KIDS.

We met our kid co-captains at hour 23 during family hour (after we watched UNC beat Clemson to keep a 56-0 home record against them- go heels!) and it was truly inspirational. I think I almost cried when this little 2 and a half year old boy got up on stage, all decked out in Carolina gear, and sang his favorite song- the Alma mater. Too much cute bundled into one little boy. Anyways, all of these kids had different stories. Different adversities they had fought to overcome, or were still fighting against. But they were all smiling, and thrilled to be with us. It was the small things like that, that reminded us if these kids can live it up while fighting something terrifying, we can make it 24 hours on our feet, and we can remind ourselves how lucky we are that this is the only thing we have to complain about. And to top it off, we had videos from the kids encouraging US to keep going, to keep dancing. Even Trey Songz sent a video encouraging us, telling us to keep dancing. Apparently he heard about our cause, wanted to come visit but couldn't rearrange his schedule so had to settle for a video to us. How cool is that!

This experience also reminded me that no matter how much pain you're in, and no matter how much your feet hurt or your legs ache, you can always keep going. I kept going for 24 hours, through an 8 am flash rave and hours upon hours of dancing. I'll be sure to remember that when I dance tonight. You can always keep going.

Please check out our official site, http://www.uncmarathon.org/ and explore the blog. If you're ever looking for any inspiration to do something, or to keep dancing, just check this out and find videos online :)
We're also not the only university to do this! Many universities have their own form of dance marathon- Penn State has thon weekend- a 46 hour event that raise...wait for it... $10.68 million. That's incredible. UNCDM can only hope to be that successful some day.

Alright I'm done gushing about my weekend, I hope you enjoy reading about this as much as I enjoyed doing it.

Happy Monday!