An Eventful Weekend (Pictures coming soon!)

So, this whole weekly blog posting thing is embarassing, and I apologize for the lack of updates. I'll attempt to get you back up to speed.
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At work, I've mainly been working on the puppet show with the kids and keeping the technology and website in order. We've lost a few members of the puppet show due to scheduling conflicts, and I really hope more of them show up, because they've been working really hard and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I also participated in our weekly play that the "Library Players" puts on for the kids: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I was an offstage part, so I just shouted things from behind the curtain as Goldilocks's mother (yes, her mother). I also got to accompany Cathy's daughter as she sang a modified version of "Big and Loud," the song that I transcribed from the music.
My main side project has been working on the Habitat for Humanity of Marion website. We finally got clearance to move ahead with the project by the board, and the financials fell into place fairly quickly. So, if you'd like, you can check out the Habitat website by going to
http://www.habitatforhumanitymarionsc.org. It's still under construction, but it's fully functional for everything that's currently uploaded. I am now just working with Gordon and Wanda of Habitat to get it to their liking. So, that's been fun, but I am a little sad that there's not more to do. Of course, I'll be updating it for them throughout the year as well, so that'll keep me busy.
This weekend was quite a packed and awesome couple of days though. On Thursday, Lindsey and Kathryn came down from Duke and had dinner with us. We had a good talk telling them about our internships and what we had been up to. We went to a movie with them; that new Gangster movie. I was very confused for most of it, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. Regardless, I liked being in everyone's company, so it was good to get away for a little while. Nevertheless, this visit required that I miss play practice at the library, which I was kind of torn about. I hope I can still make up what I missed and still make the "Superheroes Save Summer Reading" play be great. Maybe I'll get to wear my superman costume this week!
ANYWHO, so on Friday, we got up early and drove to Carowinds, all packed into the Rav. It was quite an epic journey. When we got there, it was hot and bustling with people. We spent the day there, riding the rollercoasters, relaxing at the waterpark, and even seeing an impressive ice show - all of this for $25. Hooray special-priced admission for July 4th weekend! We were there for almost 8 hours, so by the time we left, I was a little motion sick and exhausted. I cleared up later though. Then, we had dinner at iHop. Unlimited pancakes were my choice, and boy, were they the right one. I left rather stuffed. My favorite part of the weekend was when we got to Brandon's house for the night (who so graciously let us stay there). After we were all cleaned up and relaxed, we all sat in Brandon's living room, as R&B slow jams played from his father's ipod and the sweet smells of vanilla and apple pie filled the air. No, I'm not making this up. We were sitting in what were quite possibly the comfiest chairs ever. When an Alicia Keys song came on, I knew that this was meant to be. Relaxation. We dozed off and had a great time just sleeping late in the morning.
We got up and Brandon's mom fixed us breakfast. It was a great way for us to start off our day, as we departed for our next destination: IKEA! For those of you who haven't been to IKEA, it is an amazing furniture warehouse filled with things that make you want to completely redesign your home. It was quite an exhausting trip, but we enjoyed browsing and getting ideas for stuff there. Next, we departed Charlotte for Columbia, to eat dinner and watch fireworks over Lake Murray. At the suggestion of my friend Paulina, we ate at Liberty, which was great. We left there and drove to Lake Murray to watch the fireworks; however, we realized we should have gotten there hours before. Parking was madness, and traffic was insane. So, we watched the fireworks as traffic slowed to a stop; people had nowhere to park, so they just stopped in the middle of the road, which was fine with us, albeit a little scary. After that, we headed back home for the night. We all bonded a lot that weekend, and I'm glad we were able to spend the 4th together.

Only 2 weeks left! :( It's going by fast....

WingFormersHorseCanoe AladVendettaMyrtleHoot.

Apologizing again for the lack of updates, I will attempt to summarize what has been an epically amazing weekend filled with a lot of BN bonding. Here goes!

On Friday, after everyone got off work, we went to go see Transformers: Rise of the Fallen, which was really cool. Before we got to the movie, we stopped and ate at Carolina Wings (at my suggestion). Of course, I ordered the wings and they were very scrumptious. We got to the movie around 8-ish. I liked the first one better, but the story was still good, and the *ahem* acting was good too. I was also endlessly entertained that Glenn Morshower, the actor that plays Aaron Pierce on 24, was in the movie as well. He wasn't just a lacky in the movie, he was taking command! WOO! Oh, and I forgot to mention that on the way to the movie, the other car (containing Brandon, John Luttrell, John Deans, and Noelle) stopped at Krispy Kreme and ordered a dozen glazed doughnuts - more than half were gone by the time we got to the theater, which was less than 5 minutes away from Krispy Kreme. The hot doughnuts sign was on, so that's why they had to stop - perfectly understandable. Anywho, we came home and just chilled until the next day.

On Saturday, we got up and went to visit Benton Wise's farm! First, Benton took us and let us ride his horse Cherokee bareback - it was so thrilling! We mostly were just led around by Benton, but it was really exciting (although difficult to balance). After that, we shot rifles and shotguns at skeet targets - my first time ever shooting a gun! I shot a 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun, or something like that. I felt extremely manly completing this task, although I didn't actually hit anything. Oh well, maybe next time. Benton's family served us a delicious southern lunch, complete with sweet tea- I approved. After that, we headed out with some of the Cheraw folks (Alex Cortese, Nancy, Ross, and Maria) on a canoeing trip with Dr. Demarco. We ended up canoeing about 10 miles of the Little Pee Dee River. Ross and I were in a two-person canoe together, and although there were several attempts at tipping people over, everyone managed to stay relatively dry - until we got out and swam of course. At the end of the canoeing, we were received by a hot dog barbeque courtesy of the Methodist Church. After eating, we played Big Booty with Dr. Demarco and the pastor of the Church - priceless. Ok, so the pastor just watched; it was still fun though =] When we got back to the house, Ben came over and we watched Aladdin. About halfway through, though, we were getting hungry, so we all piled into the Rav (with Khadijah in the trunk) and drove off to Mcdonalds - bare in mind that I was still wearing my Wii Pajama Pants, which were bright, bright blue. Mcdonalds's shake machine was broken, so that meant no ice cream. Instead, Wendy's was the destination, and we hung out and ate there for a while. When we got back to the house, John Luttrell suggested that we all watch 'V for Vendetta'; I really enjoyed its alliteration, vocabulary, and wittiness. It's definitely a thinking person's movie. Check it out if you haven't already!
On Sunday, we spent the day at Myrtle Beach - we all came prepared with swiffer mop handles and small umbrellas (which we fashioned into beach umbrellas with duct tape), a cooler, and chairs that weren't really meant to be beach chairs but that did the job nonetheless. We all were quite a sight to behold at North Myrtle. We swam, took crazy 'jump shot' pictures, tried to spell 'Duke' with our bodies (which I failed at doing because I can't make a K very well, ahhahah), read, and had deep talks about our plans for the future. We also interrogated Alice, which is always fun :) After the beach, we stopped and ate at Hooters. Yes, the wings are, in fact, very good! The atmosphere was nice as well. We finally got back to the house (although about 10 minutes behind Noelle and her 9000000-mile-per-hour driving) and just chilled for the rest of the night, uploading all the photos from the day. And tomorrow.. BACK TO WORK!

A little more than halfway there.

So this is week 6 of my 9-week summer of service; it certainly is going by quickly. I have some really awesome pictures to share with you guys, but first, I thought I'd reflect a little on my summer so far - it seems like an appropriate time to do so.
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I set a goal at the beginning of the summer of understanding the reasons why an education gap and illiteracy exist in Marion County. I thought, at first, that this was something to be blamed exclusively on lack of initiative at home (by the parents). However, my experiences on the bookmobile have proven otherwise - many parents are thoroughly excited about checking out books, reading to their children, and taking advantage of the services the bookmobile offers. Perhaps because the bookmobile is a limited resource (in the sense of how many times it can make its routes), only a limited (although significant) number of patrons in Marion County are affected. Surely, the bookmobile alone cannot fix an education problem.
Working with kids in the puppet show has also revealed this blatant gap in reading level. The children I've encountered are sometimes several years behind in the level of reading that they can handle, with others only slightly behind. There are several possible factors I can identify here. The first that comes to mind is motivation - both on the part of the parent, and consequently, the child. Although it is difficult for me to analyze each child individually and decide whether his or her parents are reading to him or her every night and actively showing and interest in his or her life, I am sure that this contributes to the problem. This motivation is not just something that I am attempting to morally condemn parents for not having - I understand that single mothers, low-income families, and a multitude of other home life situations make setting aside time for anything that's not absolutely "life essential" difficult. But this "life essential" argument may be where the discrepancies arise - reading to your child or participating in his or her education should be a "life essential" task. Having involved parents who do this with their children, especially in the crucial 0-4 years, will certainly foster a better-educated community.
Frankly, one of my first perceptions of educational problems in Marion when I arrived at the library was a lack of better facilities. The Marion library, which I have mentioned before, is crowded (both administratively and on the "business side"), with a lack of children's programming areas and a collection that is cramped for space because of the physical limitations of the building. However, five weeks into this internship, I see that while better facilities would certainly help the situation to some extent, the library is rich with resources for all age groups - at least to an extent that no child should ever be hungry for knowledge when visiting.
For example, it offers the Mother Goose on the Loose program, a weekly workshop for babies and their mothers that emphasizes reading and singing. What's so interesting about MGOTL, as phrased by Cathy, is that "even if you don't have time [or literacy skills] to read to your child, every mother can share the pictures from a book or sing a nursery rhyme with him or her." This quote really shows the power of investing time in a child's life - doing whatever you can, when you can, to improve his or her life.
Undoubtedly, the issue of education is an extremely complex problem: one that we can't just "solve" quickly and easily. The last contributing factor that I have perceived both during my internship here and life experience is a striking educational counterculture amongst many economically unprivileged youth. I've perceived it as something emphasizing that it's "cool" to not care about education. What this has sprung out of it another complicated issue in itself, but I felt that this culture was worth mentioning of my analysis of the situation so far.
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So what has Summer Reading done to combat the issues of education Marion County is facing? We're putting the "fun" and "cool" back into learning and reading. Whether we're exercising creativity by making LEGO structures, or acting out stories about mischievous pigeons, Summer Reading seeks to get kids excited about both the library and reading in general. We reward them for the hours they rack up on their reading logs and try to emphasize that reading is something you can do whether you're sitting down with a good novel or just reading a comic book. I'm really happy with the moods and activities that the whole program has been pervading.
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And now, for some cool pictures! The expressions on the kids' faces really make this all worth it.


The kids making "friend finger puppets" with felt and craft supplies.

If you want a running tab on all the pictures and happenings going on during Summer Reading, make sure to check out the Marion County Library Summer Reading Page , as one of my internship responsibilities is updating this page pretty frequently. It has links to all the photo slideshows (being updated almost daily) and other happenings.

I hope you enjoyed this extremely long and reflective post =]

- David

PS: Why do I sign these? I guess it's like I'm writing a letter. Oh well.

Shish Kabobs

Again, I apologize for the lack of updates.
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Monday was primarily a day of paperwork and administrative tasks; I did a few clean-up things with Betterworld, helped out where I could upstairs with our classes, put things up on the website, and was just kind of generally helpful.
Tuesday was a lot of fun; I went to Mullins to do our Summer Reading activities with the kids there. Jean and I started out with reading a kids story to a preschooler for our Storytime section of the day. We also sang a little ditty based on a George Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm, I've Got Music":

I've got summer,
I've got reading,
I've got my books, who could ask for anything more?

Jean belted this like a diva, and I casually harmonized along - we only had one kid in attendance, but it was a joyful experience seeing her get into it.

The rest of the day was all poetry - we gave the kids a sentence to complete ("I wish..." or "I used to be _____ but now I'm _____") and they wrote poems based on those. A lot of them were very creative:

I wish I had a house of spikes
I wish girls didn't exist
I wish I was a teenager
I wish me and Macey lived on Candyland

For some reason, the lived on Candyland brings me much joy. I'm not sure why it's so funny. Haha. Anywho, there were tons and tons of poems and we were working hard to get the kids' creative juices flowing. For lunch, Jean and Cathy and I went to Websters again - and it was deliciously sinful. I was sooooo full but it was ok; totally worth it. The rest of the day I just helped people with poetry more.

Today, we held our 1st annual Library Idol auditions. It was a lot of fun and we had kids singing songs like Cotton Eye Joe, Always Be My Baby, and selections from Vacation Bible School. We rented a really old amplifier system from the Middle School, which didn't work ideally but it was still plenty loud for what we were trying to do. Some of the kids were a little stage shy, but a few of them warmed up to it eventually.

Later, me and Mark (Cathy's son) worked on the play "Superheroes Save Summer Reading." I don't want to spoil it (hopefully we'll get a video up when it is performed), but I play Superman, and there are other superheroes ("reject ones") such as the Banana Twins, Cave Guy, and Cost Analysis Boy. For the record, I was the inspiration for Cost Analysis Boy. Long story involving my cynicism but anyways he's going to be funny. Cathy was really nice and let me leave early today to start our dinner that I was helping cook since we were having the Wises over tonight.

We were cooking chicken and shrimp kabobs with lime marinade. I got home and to my surprise, Khadijah and Noelle had done almost everything! It was a relief to not have a ton of things to do; all we had to do was skewer them and barbeque them. So everyone else pitched in and made them, and then I cooked them all by myself! I was really proud of myself; I had never done any type of meal like it before, and it turned out really well for the most part. It was a Paula Deen recipe, so I knew it had to be good. We also had corn on the cob, which was INCREDIBLE and easy to make (thanks Khadijah!). The dinner was great, the conversation with the Wises was relaxed and fun, and we had LOTS of desserts and cake. (I just realized I talk more about food in my blog than anything else - I apologize for the lack of introversion/reflection in this post; there's plenty I'd like to write at some point. You'll get it eventually.) The night was great and tomorrow should be fun as well. Blogging soon (hopefully!) again...

Cinder Fella, DDR, The Beach, Laser Tag, Seafood.

Wow, no posts in almost a week. Embarrassing. Rather than recounting day by day and detail by detail what happened since the last post, let me just say the last week has been filled with mostly LEGOs and working on the website. Nothing too interesting to post.. until Friday.

Friday was the day for me to start work on the Puppet Show with the children, so the day before, I assembled the PVC Pipe Puppet Theatre (total engineering skills necessary) and picked the play we would do: Stable Fella. It's basically a western twist on Cinderella, with the main character as a guy instead of a girl. It includes such celebrities as the Fairy Hogfather as well. Just the name Fairy Hogfather pretty much sold me on the play. So, anyways, I made copies of the script, highlighted parts, and made a tentative calendar of practices/events. We really don't have but 3 practices to get this show together, so I'm counting on the kids to be motivated.
Once Friday morning rolled around, I waited for the participants to arrive. We had about 7 - the perfect number for the play. That day was going to be a "read-through," where we did just that - read through the play. I distributed parts and watched the children read their parts aloud, scene-by-scene. This was where I began to notice the wide discrepancies in reading level. Of course, they were all different ages (from 8 to 12), but one of the 8-year olds couldn't even get through one sentence without serious help from his friends. He had apparently been held back in 3rd grade, too. Cases like this one make me think of the snowball effect that these cases can often grow into. First, the student gets held back and might lose motivation because his friends are in a different grade and moving on without him or her. Then, the students grades suffer even further, and he or she is just moving along at the bare minimum. How do we solve this problem? Or does the existing teaching system between school life and home life (this is a big one) need to be improved? Interesting things to ponder on.
Nonetheless, the read-through went well, and I feel like the parts I assigned were quite good matches, and the children seemed excited about the read-throughs.



On Saturday, Nancy and her friend Torsten came to Marion for a day at Myrtle, along with me, David Womble, Lauren, and Alice. We piled into the Rav (I love Rav roadtrips), with Torsten graciously taking the trunk, and drove down to the beach. We first stopped and had Gyros on the boardwalk, near the Gay Dolphin (yes, that's the name of the store), and then Nancy and I played DDR. Man, just like good old times - except our lack of practice caused us to fail multiple times. But it was still a lot of fun. We went down to the beach and just relaxed, played in the ocean, buried our feet... that kind of thing. After that, we went to go play Laser Tag - which was really fun, except for little kids who follow you around and keep shooting you. They are the ones who always end up doing better than me. Somehow, I managed to be the top person on our team though! So that was cool. We came back and had dinner at Dry Dock Seafood - for $15 we had a great seafood buffet. It reminded me a lot of Georgetown Seafood, before it closed. At home, Lauren and I played DDR, then we watched a few episodes of the funny British show, "Faulty Towers." A satisfyingly fun day for sure.

Rediscovering My Inner Child

Today I spent almost all day in the Mullins library. Jean and I got there early, setting up various LEGO parts that we took out of 3 huge bins of LEGOs that Cathy had lent us. We had so much fun organizing everything that we ended up spending a long time just building things ourselves! I made a cool jungle fortress and a fire truck. I honestly forgot how much I loved to play with LEGOs, and why - they spur so much imagination. I still vaguely remembered what stories and games I would come up with when I used to be obsessed with LEGOs, and when I picked these up, everything came back to me. We had a class come in at 2 PM and Jean and I assisted in getting the creative juices flowing with the kids. Everyone was very excited to display their new creations, and we took a lot of pictures for the website which I uploaded later in the day.
Back at home, we ate spaghetti for dinner, planned basically every weekend til the end of the summer (it's coming up so quickly!!), and I went to the gym with Lauren and Khadijah (where I decided that working out and watching Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Deal or No Deal, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire were a very good combination). Tomorrow, I think it's more Legos at the Marion library! I'll keep you guys posted.

Finding a Better World

Today at the library was almost entirely spent working on the Better World Books project I had started about a week ago. Now that I had shelves and shelves worth of books that had been pre-approved by BetterWorld for donation, I had to take them out of POLARIS, the SC library system, put them into a record list that would be used as a packing slip, and pack the books into boxes for shipping. For the books that were donated to us by patrons and never were library property, I had to type up the titles and authors of each book in a word document. This was a tedious process, but by the end of the day, I had a set of 6 boxes filled with books and packing slips, printed out UPS shipping labels, and scheduled pickup for tomorrow. I have another 5 almost ready for pickup that I should be able to finish on Wednesday. I also spent a lot of the day fixing the rest of the Bookkeeping computer - it didn't want to work with the SC Department of Revenue System (the programmers in Columbia did a really crappy job), so I had to play with it a little. Finally, I fixed up the Marion County Library Website - I kind of messed it up on Friday and had to undo some damage I did. Check it out! Click Here

Anyways, I guess you really didn't need to know all that technical stuff, but that's essentially all I did at work today. It overall wasn't super-exciting, but it was productive and I had fun listening to music while I was doing it. I thought you might be interested in what exactly Better World does; it's a really interesting company (also, it is a for-profit organization, although it does donate most of its profits to non-profits). Here's some background info from Wikipedia:

• They raise funding for over 80 non-profit literacy programs.
• They have collected over 10 million books, raised over 2.3 million for non-profit literacy programs, US$1.2 million for libraries and US$850,000 for student groups.
• Better World Books sells collected books through 17 online marketplaces, including Amazon.com, Ebay, and their own online e-commerce site, betterworldbooks.com.
• The main charities Better World Books donates to are:
  * Books for Africa– the largest shipper of donated books to the African continent – since 1988, shipped over 18 million books to 37 countries
  * Room to Read– supports the construction of schools, libraries & language labs, publishes local-language children’s books and funds long-term scholarships for young girls in South Asia & Africa
  * National Center for Family Literacy– provides literacy materials and training to over 6,000 family literacy programs across the United States
  * Worldfund in Latin America - supports high-quality education for impoverished children in Latin America
  * Robinson Community Learning Center in South Bend, IN
  * Prison Book Program in Quincy, MA

For dinner tonight, I made everyone Stouffer's Stir-fry (the way my Dad and I always make it, minus the barbeque sauce and Emeril essence) with the Oberst classic "yummy rolls." It is a family secret what keeps the yummy rolls so yummy. Sorry guys, some things just can't be disclosed in a blog. It was a big hit, and I was happy to do it. Tomorrow I get to go to Mullins and play Legos with the kids! Should be a fun day :)

*Note: The Pictures in today's blog post are of: 1) Some of the cats the kids in summer reading colored and 2) My supervisor Cathy doing our baby storytime program Mother Goose on the Loose, which I have told you guys about before.*