Service Day, Pigging Out, and other random thoughts.

I had a one day weekend. 6 days on the clock is hard and tiring, but the Service Day with ABC/Disney was pretty cool. We painted murals and walls at PS 129 in West Harlem. There were several actors and actresses from different Soap Operas there. Most of them were very nice and seemed genuinely happy to be doing community service. Wouldn't you know I found a southern boy with a thicker accent than my roommate's AND an LSU fan! We were conspiring to paint the walls purple and gold, but our plan got smashed. Oh well! At the end of the day, we had painted tons of things: walls of the basement with the word "welcome" in different languages, different fruits/veggies/healthy words in the cafeteria, canvas murals to hang around the school, and some different books and such in the library. It was a tiring day, but really cool to participate in some physical service at a school we don't typically work at. I really enjoyed working with the Civic Engagement team too.

Made up for the one day weekend on Saturday night...Woooo! Such a great game against Auburn. Sunday I laid on the couch alllll day. I don't think I moved for 8 hours. NICE. Jan and I ate so much on Sunday. Between the burrito, pizza, and Cinnastix, I'll be surprised if I can fit into my clothes.

This week is going pretty well at school. We did our last BBL 1.1 today (Bringing Books to Life, Unit 1, Lesson 1) and our teamlet ended on a really good note. The kids were just great today too. Even the challenging ones. I woke up on Monday morning SO ready to see them. I forgot how much I love working with children. Even when they mess up, it's hard to be upset with them.

For our EAST Harlem Committee, one of my jobs was to make the Event One Pager to hand out to potential representatives who will set up booths at our Career Fair. If anyone ever doubted the impact of City Year, take a look at these stats. I put them in the One Pager because they really drive home the idea of grassroots efforts.

• Graduated more than 12,500 alumni - diverse young people between 17 and 24
• Served more than 2,020,000 million children - 3rd through 9th grade students
• Completed more than 20 million hours of service
• Engaged more than 1,000,000 citizens in service
• Established 20 locations: 19 in the United States and one in South Africa. Two new locations are in the launch phase: Milwaukee and London.

I'm sure some people wondered why I didn't get a "real job" with "real money" and, truthfully, it crossed my mind before I started City Year as well, but I wouldn't change my decision for the world. This is such a rewarding experience. I already know how hard of a time I'm going to have letting go of these kids at the end of the year.

I'll update more later this week as I think of things. Have a good week, everyone.

Amanda