Today we went to The North America Auto Convention. We were really looking forward to going because this event is where it all started- a year later, it is still fresh in my mind. One year ago, we had just thought of this project and had absolutely no money and no idea how we would proceed with our idea. We were clueless whether this seemingly out of reach idea would actually work, if people would be interested to hear about it and support us. We heard about this event from Alex Zhuang, whose dad is one of the organizers. Ryan Chen and Weilin tuye and I excitedly prepared brochures, chinese and english proposals and even a raffle for us to advertise at the event. We gave a speech on the stage in front of more than 300 people and then went around to each table collecting donations. It was the first time I had to explain my idea to strangers and it was terrifying. I was really scared of facing rejection and it felt like a direct punch when people refused to donate or waved us off when we tried to approach them. Holding back tears and forcing a smile, I soon realized that for every two or three people that rejects us, there is always a kind hearted stranger who would take the time to listen to our cause and donate. Some even kindly gave us suggestions and their contact information on how to reach them for help in the future. It was exhilarating to hear that my weird, impossibly far fetched idea could actually generate interest. We ended up raising over 4,000 RMB. This year, we went to the event on a short notice. Although we were told we would not have a chance to speak on stage we were determined to go to thank all the people who supported us a year ago and to show them that their kindness went to support a great cause. 96 boxes of eggs just arrived this morning and I was excited to sell most of them before next week's shipment. My goal: to sell ALL of them!! It did not go off to a great start, when Yiping Lin, Weilin Tuye and I arrived at the event, we were harangued by the organizer because we had not officially notified them ahead of them about our participation. She was annoyed and was very reluctant to help us so we had to find tables and supplies to set up our egg booth ourselves. Luckily, the hotel staff was very helpful and helped us set up in an area next to the entrance. We introduced people to eggschange and our on sell eggs and managed to sell a few boxes as people came in. However, soon the event began and we had nothing to do sitting outside. So we went in and approached a couple tables, most people responded with an impatient wave of their hands or simply averting their eyes. The worst experience was when we went to the "vip" table and the man rudely cut us off and said "go to another table", he made me pretty sad and I realized I hadn't grown as tough skinned as i thought. The event went poorly for us compared to last year, probably because we did not get a chance to speak on stage so we surprised a lot of people and they may of thought we were scammers.... On the bright side, a fair amount of people remembered us from last year and are willing to try our eggs. Best of all, we ran into our "mentor" Goodwin Wang who we met at the event last year, he had given us a lot of valuable advice before and had sponsored our website. We had recently lost touch but we set up a meeting with him for this friday:) Most disappointing of all, we waited until 9:30 outside the ballroom because a lot of people we talked to said they will come outside to buy our eggs after the event is over. After hearing the music stop after a while we realized that something was wrong and the event seemed to be over. We went in and were shocked to find that most of the people have already left through ANOTHER entrance, we had waited the whole night for NOTHING! In silence, we packed up our untouched egg boxes: we sold 14 boxes (gave goodwin two for free) and was very far from my original goal. In all it was a very disappointing day for me but I guess there are bound to be failures at times.