Oha!

Oha! It’s Leia.

So today was a lovely day. Unlike yesterday, today was rather sunny and very much less muddy. Despite the turn for the better weather-wise, today’s assignment was less engaging than yesterday’s.

Today, I began the day by creating templates for exterior siding corners. I worked with two volunteers from California and Ian, but I believe there was one too many people assigned to this project. We successfully finished the last three corners just a little after lunch. Next, I worked with Christina and Jo, correcting starter strips: metal strips located along the perimeter of the house mounted before siding. Christina and Jo had finished at least 85% of the correcting before I began helping them, so it didn’t take long to finish this project. Shortly after that our house supervisor, Lauren, assigned our entire team to assemble and attach siding. Again, I believe that there was one, or four, too many assigned to this project. Fortunately, I was able to “half-sing,” which is when you sing only half a song, many Christmas songs with the small group of people waiting for our assistance to be needed.
It was a fun day -- surprisingly productive, but not nearly as taxing as others. I left the worksite very happy.

I had to leave a few minutes earlier than usual, because I was scheduled to work at the BRIDGE Ministry afterschool program along with Derek, Jeremy, Shawn, and Shiny. We were running a little late from the get go, but was made worse due to the local police blocking streets. Though late, we were warmly welcomed and sent off to work. Derek, Jeremy and Shawn signed up to work with the middle/high schoolers, while Shiny and I signed up to work with the elementary kids. Shiny and I went outside to play dodgeball with the kids. It was fun; I hadn’t played dodgeball in a long time…but I was really bad so I only played a few rounds. After a few more rounds we all had snack and then shuffled inside. The elementary kids are broken up into groups and rotate stations. I can’t remember all the stations, but I do know that there are at least two (reading and homework) because Shiny and I were assigned different stations. It was interesting to see disparity in reading ability. There were a few kids who were very comfortable reading at or beyond their grade/age level, however there were many more who were noticeably below their reading level. It was almost painful seeing them struggle and their frustration because of it. I wish we had more than 15 minutes for each station and/or had smaller groups for more individualized attention. I wish I had more time to work with each and every one of them. It was a joy being able to spend even a little amount of time with each. I am very excited to return.

For the rest of the day: we had dinner, which was lasagna… I love lasagna. We had a team meeting. We did a service learning project, which was a “mad lib”…It was interesting…I’ve never done that before. I apologize for writing such a long entry for just one day, but I had to keep up with Ian’s multi-paragraphed entry. Cheers!

~ Leia