Spanglish, Ice Cats, and 500 Screaming Kids

I woke up early Saturday morning and rolled out to the Quincy Douglass Library for some tax preparation with Sarah, Shiny, Leia, and Christina. We arrived to find the Internet not working and a long line of people wanting their tax returns… not an ideal combination. Things turned around quickly: the Internet kicked on and we were off. We probably filed about 20 people’s taxes in total. I actually got to do taxes for 3 Spanish-speaking couples. It is always awesome to work on my Spanish… even if, at some point during their respective returns, they all laughed at my ‘Spanglish.’ It turned out to be a great site. It was fun getting to know Ben, the site supervisor, and the other handful of volunteers there. We packed up and headed back home.

We relaxed for a little and then headed out to go downtown. Ashley, Sarah, Jeremy, Leia, Christina and I had tickets to see the University of Arizona Ice Cats take on the Arizona State Sun Devils. It was a cool little stadium that filled up quick to see the big rivalry game. The cheering was pretty vicious between the two Arizona team’s fans. We cheered for the Ice Cats and it was an exciting game… but… 40 seconds into the sudden death overtime, ASU squeaked a goal past the U of A goalie. It was a very anti-climatic ending, but a great night all in all.

Later, I went home and watched a replay of the Syracuse v. Villanova college basketball game with Sarah. My ‘Cuse DEMOLISHED ‘Nova in front of 34,616 fans. This absurdly large attendance set the NCAA on-campus record. Wish I could have been there!
We woke up Sunday morning to a downpour of rain. It was coming down in sheets. Jeremy whipped up an incredible breakfast for everyone and we lounged around. The rain slowed in the afternoon and we headed out to Mike and Brad’s community center. Mike and Brad are the amazing couple we met while working for Red Cross in the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. They invited us and Sun 1 over for a small party. We went swimming, played shuffleboard, and had a Thanksgiving-esque smorgasbord of food… it was endless and delicious.

Monday was an extremely early wakeup. We were in the vans by 6:45 a.m. and on our way to Christina’s mom’s school, White Elementary. They recently lost funding for their music and arts programming and we came in to lead students in some fun activities. Throughout the day, we interacted with almost 500 Kindergarten through 5th graders. Derek and I had a station where we helped them write their own songs and perform them. There was an art project station and also a P.E. station. The kids had an awesome time and we loved working with them.

After working at the school, we vanned over to Christina’s house. Her family had an amazing goodbye barbeque for us. There was ribs, chicken, burgers, salmon, veggies and a ton of other great food… the company wasn’t bad either.

It was a great weekend and it’s back to taxes tomorrow. I cannot believe we only have a couple more days left in Tucson and we’re at the half way point of our AmeriCorps NCCC term... crazy stuff.

~Ian