Upsetting experience #1: CCTV arrives with a whole bunch of young people and a black jazz singer who fundraised with Bethel before. Right now they’re out on the lawn singing and getting filmed. Those young people (mostly tall young men with punkish looking hair) are sitting behind the children and clapping with them. I have no idea who they are; I guess they’re just here to provide a nice background for the video. But why not the nannies and volunteers already here?

Maybe my annoyance has no grounds and I’m just irritated for no good reason. Actually, just this second I found out from Audrey that those people are minor actors and actresses. I wonder if they’re here to just show their faces on TV.

30 minutes later: Sarah came into the office to take a breather from the filming. The kids were making paper mache eye models…or rather, the celebrity-wannabe guys were making the models for them so that they could be filmed in their little video as really awesome people helping these poor children. They wanted a finished eye model to show the TV audience that the project was finished, but Sarah told them paper mache takes days to dry, so they just stopped the kids in the middle of the project and are having them say goodbye so it looks nice on camera. The kids are all saying, What about our arts and crafts?

Ah, the media. My annoyance has grounds.