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.*

CRAYZAY Blog Update

Yeah, so I haven't blogged in 3 days, so I apologize for keeping you guys on the edges of your seats regarding my current life.

Almost all of Thursday was spent fixing the bookkeeping computer - for some reason, it decided to crash and I worked very hard recovering everything back to the way it was. I also noticed the horrible conditions that the library office employees have to put up with - the wiring and electrical setup of the office basement, where everyone works, is simply atrocious, with power strips daisy-chained together into power supplies, into more power strips; this is not only in violation of the fire code but very dangerous, considering the basement floods whenever it rains. More and more, I see the need for an expanded facility for this library - they just can't do their jobs well when they are so cramped and pressed for resources.

Friday I spent working with Cathy's son on the musical that we are putting on in July, and doing lots of administrative things for the Summer Reading schedule. I'm going to continue to plan the music week I'm doing as well. I cut out some artwork that the kids colored, too.

Saturday was a lot of fun. Most of the Cheraw people came down to visit while Don was here, so we all got to catch up and enjoy each others company. We went to Benton's graduation party, which was some of the best Southern food I have ever eaten in my life, and a lot of fun. I am really really tired so I apologize for the lack of personality in this post. sleeeeepp timeee.

A Musical Day

So today, as indicated by my post title, was an extremely musical day. It started out pretty standard; I cut out some of the coloring activities that the kids had done earlier in the day (yeah, I'm a beast at cutting out pictures of cats), and I also got to use the awesomest laminating machine ever. I am a little obsessed with laminating currently, frankly. Anywho, later in the day was the fun part - Cathy asked me to help her plan a music-themed week for summer reading!
Drawing on my knowledge of Kindermusik, I suggested things that I had enjoyed in the past for the kids: composing music (in a very simple way), making instruments, singing songs, naming tunes... things like that. I think it's going to be a really awesome week and I'm excited to be more directly involved. I think I am going to be helping out with directing kids in a puppet show, too.
Last, I did stuff that reminded me of musical dictation from music theory back at Duke. We are putting on several musicals at the end of summer reading, and one of them will have a spoofed version of a song called "Big and Loud" from Disney's little-known movie Cats Don't Dance. Unfortunately, there isn't any sheet music for Big and Loud, so I sat down with the song and transcribed an accompaniment for it. All that ear training finally paid off at Duke! I finished transcribing it near the end of the work day. It was good to get my musical brain going again and to sit down with my keyboard. I'm going to record it for her soon as a backing track. I also got the pictures downloaded from yesterday's activities, so intermingled in this post are photos of the Van Gogh mosaic we made and the Be Creative at Your Library display I made at the front counter.
At home, we ordered pizza and watched the movie Taken. It was really epic and reminded me of 24 a lot - except the guy did everything he needed to do in 96 hours; Jack Bauer could have done that all in a fourth of the time! Oh well, it was still really exciting and definitely worth a watch. Check it out if you can't. Enjoy!

Grammar, Quesadillas, and Coloring

BONUS POST from YESTERDAY:
My final project yesterday was sorting a bunch of magnetic words (those poetry-word-type things) by parts of speech - oddly enough, I enjoyed this task way too much (thanks Mrs. Gordon!). We are making a poetry activity where the kids get to write poems with magnetic words. It's going to be really awesome. Ok, that's all I wanted to say about that.
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Today I worked in the Mullins library. The Mullins library is even more crippled by lack of space and finances than the Marion library; its walls are plainer and its technology is much more limited. I'm working on making the latter a little better, and the former we worked on today, as I will explain later. After creating a cool front counter display that spelled out 'Be Creative At Your Library' and doing some inventory in the library, I took lunch. Alice and I went to Webster's Restaurant, which is definitely the best food I have had the entire time I've been in Marion or Mullins. I walked in and paid $8 for an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of deliciousness. The place was southern down to the core; it was an old historic house that had been converted into a sit-down buffet restaurant of sorts (for those from Georgetown reading this, it reminded me a lot of Lafayette if it were in a house, but with food a 1000 times better). Everything I had was amazing, and they had plates just like my Gigi has at her house - the blue ones with pretty artwork that are so distinctly southern.

When I came back from lunch, I had the enjoyable experience of setting up activities for the summer reading later in the day. Once I was done, I noticed a girl whose mother was busy playing on the computers. Cathy had to go but was reading to her earlier so I continued to read to her. We read 3 books or so, one of which was Corduroy, one of my personal favorites. She seemed to really enjoy it, and I got a great personal fulfillment over how excited she was to grab another book the minute we finished one.

My last activity in the day was an arts and crafts project with a bunch of kids from a local daycare where each student colored a tile and then all the tiles were put together in a specific order in a grid pattern. These tiles all formed the pieces of a giant version of Van Gogh's Starry Night. The kids were surprisingly artistic, and the finished mural was hung on the walls of the kids room in the library- a definite improvement to the plain whiteness of before.

At home, John Luttrell and I cooked quesadillas for everyone for dinner and then later we all watched Mulan! I forgot how much I loved that movie and also how musical and epic Disney Movies are. Lots of fun there. More fun to be had tomorrow.. hopefully..

Express Yourself - At Your Library!

Today was the kickoff day for the library's Summer Reading Program - what I had originally been commissioned to help out with in the first place, as the main part of my internship. I arrived at the library at 8:30, helping Cathy set up tables, registration forms, and logistical things like that. Benton Wise also arrived unexpectedly and helped me set up the registration tent and some other things. This was really cool, because we got to catch up and tell each other how our summers had been going. I also helped Benton with room picks and other administrative Duke stuff - it's really weird thinking that it's already been a year since I was about to come as a freshman.
Anyways, the kickoff started with a performance by the Aynor Elementary steel drum band. They were really awesome and talented, performing both popular and traditional island tunes. While the performances were going on, I helped sign parents and children up for the program, giving them reading logs, registration forms, and bookmarks (the same ones I had slaved over in the previous days were finally being put to use!). This was exciting because it seemed like all the parents and children were excited not just by the creative activities we had planned, but by the essence of the program itself - reading. I saw one particular boy (one my supervisor informed me was a "regular") who took 3 or 4 of the reading log tracking sheets, because he knew he would fill them all up. This was no joke - he is the reading hour champ 2 years running. This kind of enthusiasm for learning and reading really strikes a chord with me (woah, first music metaphor!) - it's so harmonious and beautiful watching children get excited about something that is so often forced and prodded into the education system. Getting people excited about reading is a difficult task, but I think that the Marion County Library is doing an excellent job of it. I'm excited to be a part of it.
After the steel drum band, we had a sidewalk chalk drawing contest. All the kids got sidewalk chalk and their own reserved spot on the walkway to draw a picture. We gave out prizes for humor, creativity, best of show, and many more. Cathy dressed up in a French artist's outfit (complete with beret, paint brush, and palette) and judged the winners. The kids were sad to see that the kickoff had come to a close after that, but I know that we have a lot of fun activities in store for them in the future. Tomorrow I'll be in the Mullins library, supposedly working on our musical that we're planning for the end of Summer Reading.
I came back from work and we ate rotiserrie chicken and steamed vegetables, then had some thought-provoking chats about controversial issues in dating and race relations. I'm glad that our house is at a point where we can discuss these types of things with noone getting offended. I find these types of discussions very interesting, and I hope we get to have more of them in the future; we have such a wonderful collection of intellectuals here that it truly is a joy and privilege to participate in discourse with them.
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Below is a video of part of the Steel Drum Band's performances.

SUPER HUGE Blog Update

So I haven't blogged since Wednesday, and honestly, it's been so long ago that I don't remember much about it; here's what I do remember:

Thursday, work was mostly the same as the previous days; I made some bookmarks for people, worked the front counter, and spent about half the day fixing the last of the library's computers. I think we're pretty much caught up on that now.

Friday I went around with Cathy doing various errands, and got off early because we were fully prepared for Monday (tomorrow!)'s kickoff for the Summer Reading Program! I am really excited about starting it - we're going to be having a lot of fun, doing all sorts of reading activities, and also creative/musical things. I just hope the turnout is good.

I left Friday evening for Georgetown and spent the weekend at home, attending my friend Haven Hilliard's graduation party - which was amazing. I got to see all my home friends and did some good hanging out.

Sunday evening when I got back, we went to Ming Wah and had some really delicious japanese food. The people working there were really cool as well and were particularly interested in Alice. We came back and played Mafia- where I was the Mafia 3 TIMES! And lost two of them. GAH. It was still fun though!! More fun to be had tomorrow!

Russell Stover is officially my new favorite place in Marion.

So today was very eventful, tiring, and exciting. I got to work at around 9:30, and worked on the website some while I waited for my supervisor to get there. When she did, I was assigned the task of cutting out all of the library's promotional bookmarks for the summer reading camp that starts on June 1st. Using a paper cutter that was able to cut a few papers at a time, I proceeded to cut them all out - 2 hours later, I had a stack of 2,776 bookmarks. That's a lot of page-marking. These will supposedly be distributed to local children and schools soon to promote all the activities. I took lunch and came back at 1.
When I got back, Cathy informed me I had some forms to input into the computer from students who had already signed up for the reading program - exciting! We now have like 5 or 6 students signed up - of course, we'll have loads more soon. Once I finished that, Cathy gave me the task of going around to various local businesses in Marion, and soliciting donations for the program. I strategically chose the places I asked for donations in correspondance with places I wanted to check out in Marion that I had never been to - For instance, the Russell Stover outlet was more than happy to give me a bag of free chocolate for the kids, and also some free samples for myself. I conveniently asked Burger King if they wanted to donate, and bought some ice cream while I was there. I also visited Professional Pharmacy, which is an incredibly cool local pharmacy with a full-service lunch counter with sandwiches and milkshakes; I'm definitely going to do lunch there one day. The process was definitely frustrating overall with the amount of "no"s that I got, but it was still worth it - I was productive to a considerable extent.
I got back to the library and helped fix the printer for one of the computers in the reference room, and started an ongoing project for re-imaging another one of them that I should be able to fix tomorrow.
Once at home, we waited on the mayor's wife, Melina, and daughter (whom we had invited to dinner - the mayor himself couldn't make it because of a meeting) to arrive. We had delicious pesto pasta served by Charlotte and Khadijah, with brownies that were OUT OF THIS WORLD. So gooey, and so good. There was some great conversation about how Noelle and the mayor's daughter Hayley had a lot of stuff in common (John and Kate + 8 and also fashion designing), and we got to hear about the inner workings of She Magazine, which Melina manages.
After dinner, we played a word game called Contact, and kind of just chilled. Another exciting day tomorrow, for sure! WOOO!

Breakfast for dinner.. And Khadijah is a sneaky Mafia member.

Monday was Memorial day so we had a day off. Which was awesome! I slept late and just spent most of the day doing laundry, reading some books (I'm about halfway done with my Dean Koontz, and I also have been reading my book on Java), and just hanging out with everyone. It was a very fun and chill day, even though I didn't do anything super productive. For dinner, we had BREAKFAST. It was great. Pancakes, and bacon, and all that jazz - delicious and sweet.
Courtesy of Khadijah, Noelle, and Alice, it was a great meal.
Later that night we played a few games. The first of which was a cool game by Noelle which is called "This is a What." It was fast-paced and involved us passing objects frantically around to the rhythm of a chant. It was pretty cool. Next, we played Cranium and, well.. frankly, the girls killed us. Only because there were 4 of them, and 3 of us. And I didn't realize that Monet and Manet were different painters. Oops. After that, we turned off every light in the house, lit two candles... (no we didn't have a seance), and played... MAFIA. In the end, Khadijah's deceptiveness and John Deans's hilarious inaccurate accusations caused Khadijah to emerge victorious. Woot!
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Today, I got to work and my supervisor, Cathy, was back! Hooray! In the morning, I concentrated on working on the Marion Library website, improving minor things, and talking to tech support to resolve logistical issues. That's always fun. In the afternoon, I talked with Cathy about setting up a database to hold all of the student information for Summer Reading this year - it would need to hold contact info and also information like how many reading hours they had accumulated. After several hours of googling and trying programs out, I decided on the Zoho Creator web program (Access 2007 was simply a mess - Microsoft, you've really destroyed what little faith I had left in you), which was easy to use, powerful, allowed me to implement whatever I wanted, and was most importantly, FREE. I set it up, complete with an online signup form on the Marion website, and typed up instructions for the librarians to use. Later in the day, I filled in at the front desk because many of the employees at the library had to attend a funeral for a local student who drowned recently. Working the desk today was hectic- I was the only one up there, and when multiple people come at you, asking you to look books up, give them the bathroom key, sign them up for library cards, give them candy, and give them white-out (yes, all of these things happened within a short span of time), I was a little overwhelmed. At my old job, having lots of people coming at once was never frustrating, but because I was still getting used to all of the policies and procedures, I was operating a little slower than usual. Luckily, I eventually got through it. I also found myself constantly checking the door (out of habit from my job at Radioshack) to see if "customers" (now called patrons) were stealing "merchandise" (in this case, they could have gotten anything in the library for free, ironically enough). I never witnessed this happening, but I guess old habits die hard. I did almost catch a kid stealing the bathroom key though.
My most interesting observation today was that the library often plays the role of daycare/afterschool care unintentionally for many kids in the area. Around 3:30, children of all shapes and sizes began barrelling through the door, wanting things to play with, access to the computers, the bathrooms, the bathrooms, the bathrooms, THE BATHROOMS, and ocasionally some books. The library wasn't exactly a quiet sanctuary, but I suppose this is a better place than many locations for them to hang out - many of the kids were legitamately excited about the books though. The library is certainly an interesting place.
For dinner, we had taco night, courtesy of Brandon and John. Thanks guys!
We have dinner with the mayor tomorrow! Woo!!

DA WEEKEND. DA BOMB.

So this whole not blogging daily thing is really getting old. I'm falling into an abyss of procrastination. Ok, enough emo-ranting about my bad blogging habits. Here goes my days.
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So Saturday was a sleep-late day. It was GLORIOUS, frankly. I got up around 11 or 12ish and we just lounged around for a while, deciding what to do. We eventually decided to hit up the mall in Florence. We had dinner at Ruby Tuesdays (whose salad bar was amazing), watched Star Trek (my second time, but still EPIC), and just hung out later. It was great.

So today we went to the same Methodist church that the Demarcos go to - it was cool, albeit a little different than my Episcopal roots. Later, we split up and some people went to Walmart, and some people went to the gym (Yes, I actually worked out!). Frankly, I felt like I was going to die after the gym, but I'm proud of myself and hopefully I'll keep it up. Then, we ate watermelon! Then, we went to Zapatas (after riding around to 3 different places that were all closed - evidently all of Marion doesn't eat on Sunday) and ate. That was essentially it. A chill weekend but still fun. Memorial day coming up! Woo, a day off!!

T-Roy's/Troys/T'roys? Also, BOOKMOBILE.

The title of this post basically summarizes my two days, but I'll try to make them a bit more exciting for you. So.. here goes!
Since I got off of my post-a-day roll I was on, I'll start with yesterday. I came into work, and my supervisor Cathy was still sick. This meant that I would need to find stuff for myself to do. My first project was finishing up the BetterWorld books project (I finally remembered the name of the company!) Turns out this isn't a wholesaler we are selling to for funds for the library; BetterWorld's mission (as stated on its website) is stated as follows: "Better World Books collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide." Wow, what a cool project! I wonder why they don't want all the books - maybe some of them aren't as effective at combatting illiteracy? Haha, who knows. Anyways, I spent the next hour or two scanning and organizing the last of the books for this project. I think all that's left is printing a shipping label and sending them off.
The next part of the day was "Mother Goose on the Loose" storytime. This is when Jean or Cathy read stories to parents and their children, but they also participate in simple musical activities designed to teach that reminded me a lot of the Kindermusik program I was in as a child. Salley told me to take pictures of everything that went on. Although we only had two parents/children attend, they seemed to enjoy it and the event was still fairly successful.
I got back down to the library basement and several of the ladies downstairs were having trouble with a laptop. I immediately was interested in how I could help. It turns out that this specific laptop was the BookMobile laptop; this one allowed us to check out/in books for the Bookmobile while on the route, eliminating the need for writing down long barcodes and such. I'll spare you the technical jargon, but the bottom line is that we got it going after about an hour and a half of playing with it. I then typed up a list of instructions on how to do everything I'd done - that way, when I leave, everyone will know how to do what I already did. Wow, that last sentence was very confusing, I hope it made sense. After that I rode on the bookmobile again to a variety of locations, most of which were no-shows -- people didn't show up when they were supposed to. So it was relatively uneventful.
I went back to the house and we decided that since John Deans, Noelle, and Alice went to a benefit concert/dinner for a breast cancer patient, that we would go out for dinner. I called Ben Demarco up and asked him what he recommended. He said that T-Roys was a pretty good place. So, after no one really cared where we went, we headed off. T-Roys was dimly lit, although it was very friendly. The prices on the food were a bit expensive, but my French Dip sandwich did not disappoint. We had some great chatter while we were waiting in the mean time. On my way out, I noticed T-Roy's business card/magnet said T'roys. As if it was a fancy French dining restaurant. Then I started thinking, why did Troy feel the need to give himself a nickname if he only had 4 characters in his name? Thus the great spelling/pronunciation debate began. Only it wasn't really much of a debate, I just thought it was funny (so did Khadijah =] ). We came home and watched Ocean's Eleven - I'd seen it before but it's still a great movie - and I went to bed. And that was yesterday!
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Now for today. I got up and went to work. Nothing new there. I was informed I'd be riding on the bookmobile all day til around 2 PM. Nothing truly eventful happened other than we were using the laptop for the first time. It worked out well. At 2, I went home for a lunch break and had a VERY productive break - I made a calzone for lunch, made sweet tea for the first time since I've been here (it was heavenly and David Womble approved too!), and started the Italian-cut green beans (which I got fatback for from Food Lion on the way to the house). Back at work I worked the counter for a little while. When I got home, Noelle and I got messy and did our chicken, marinated in awesomeness, made the mashed potatoes/gravy, and just made an AMAZING meal. I think it tasted just a little better because we made it. A good day. Later, we went to Dr. Demarco's house and watched and discussed an interesting PBS show on single-payer healthcare - we crammed far too many people for legality into the back of John Deans's truck and road over all in one car. And we saved gas! Tomorrow, hopefully pancakes!!!

Thursday's Post: Coming Soon!

I am too tired to blog. Long day that I will summarize tomorrow or sometime soon. Yay procrastination.

Check In. Check Out. Overdue. Fines. That'll be $24.00.

So today was a very interesting, wild, and varied day for me. My supervisor, Cathy, was out sick, which meant that the library was shorthanded and needed a substitute librarian - guess who that was: Me! So I spent the morning until about 12 PM learning how to check books in/out, shelve the books in the correct places (trickier than you think, actually!), sign people up for library cards, and charge people for fines on overdue books. By the end of the morning, I was quickly up to speed and working just like one of the regulars. I was given a 30-minute lunch break (Oh, boy!) and ran home for a quick sandwich.
I came back and we were pretty caught up on all the busywork that had to be done; shortly after, Salley, the library director, came up to me and informed me that she had a very important project for me and that my hours were being changed to a longer day 4 days a week, with Fridays off, rather than 5 shorter days a week. I think having Fridays off should be nice; I can do some of the things I've been meaning to do this summer, like learn Java, work on Spanish, and also Calculus. Oh, fun X_X
I followed Salley down to the library basement (where all of the bookkeeping and administrative tasks get done), and she explained my next task to me. The library had a large number of books that were either old, donated, or taken out of stock for various reasons; Salley had the idea of sending off these books to an outside wholesaler to get money for the library. The profits wouldn't be huge, but every little penny counts in getting it on firm financial footing. My job was to sort the stacks and stacks of books into piles of books that the wholesaler would take, and ones they "rejected." The only way to see if a book is permitted by the company is by checking the ISBN number on a cross-reference tool on the internet; this involves me typing in the ISBN number by hand (it can't be scanned because it's not on the barcode) for each individual book and seeing the result from the web tool. This is a very tedious process that Salley said no volunteer or person who ever started the project ever completed. This comment didn't discourage me though - it excited me, because I knew it was doable, and I would finish it. I sat there for hours, typing like mad, sorting and stacking, typing, sorting, stacking, typing, typing, typing.. And at the end of the day, I only have maybe 2 shelves of books left to go through. I'll easily be able to finish everything tomorrow if everything goes according to plan. Hooray!
I wasn't able to finish today because at 2:30, I went with Jean (who I was already good friends with from the desk) on her BookMobile route. We went north of Marion, into areas that I honestly don't remember the names of. These areas were also extremely rural and impoverished. Jean took the time to explain to me that Marion's education system was good, but had some "holes" in it. All of my conversations with Jean on the ride were so deeply empathetic; I could tell that she legimately cared about the mission of the organization she worked for. She told me that because of the BookMobile's rural route, the roads it traveled on were paved by the County. This really made me realize that the BookMobile wasn't just bringing education and excitement to these rural residents - it was improving their lives! We had two interesting stops today -
The first interesting stop was a nice family with a child named Daquan. Daquan was the most excited little boy I had ever met - he was so happy about the BookMobile, and just reading in general. Because of budget cuts, the BookMobile is only running once a month in the summer, so Jean told Daquan and his family to get as many books now as they could to stock up. Jean and I helped them pick out picture books that were appropriate for his age - unlike the child from yesterday, Daquan seemed to be on just about the right reading level, if not just a tad behind. I handed his mother one of my favorite children's books, Chicka Chicka Boom-Boom - she checked it out, and replied, "Hey, I like this. I'll get it." Jean and I continued picking out books, and I also suggested a book in the Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? series. Daquan's mom informed me that Daquan had read that book so many times she was sick of it. This was a happy thing for me to hear. Jean was in no hurry for them to leave, since she has a pre-determined time she spends at each stop. Jean sat down on the bus with Daquan and read him a preview of two or three of the books. He enjoyed this profusely, and jumped around in excitement - especially when he would guess a word correctly.
My other stop was extremely atypical of the normal Bookmobile stop. We stopped at a rural home of a woman named Peggy. Peggy was at least 75 or 80 years old, and apparently very sick, from what Jean told me of her. Because she was so sick, Jean brought her book deliveries in to her normally. We stepped into the house, which was saturated with cigarette smell, and Jean introduced me. Peggy said, "Oh, that's nice. Would you mind pulling my trash can to the door?" I obliged willingly, albeit a little bemused by this opening conversation. I grabbed Peggy's books for her, (which turned out to be a series of extremely steamy romance novels) gave them to her, and sat down. Peggy talked to Jean and told her about her life recently. Peggy's family life is rough; she has virtually no one to support her. Jean seems to be one of her last friends. I was heartbroken by the situation, but warmed by the fact that the BookMobile enables Jean to be there for this woman in such a desperate condition. The Marion library enabled her to bring not only intellectual stimulation but friendship and compassion to places all over the county.

We came home and Noelle and I bought ingredients for our dinner we're cooking Friday: Oven Fried Chicken!! Wooo! I ate a leftover monster burger, and we just hung out the rest of the night. Now. Sleep. Tired. Ugh. Library tomorrow. Post ya later.

THE BURGERS WERE HUGE

Well, today was my first day at the Marion County Library internship. Let's see if I can break down everything that happened - it was pretty darn eventful. I apologize for the length of this post! I tend to be a little too detailed.
I walked into the library at 9:30 AM, right went they opened up. I asked if Cathy, my supervisor, was there, and I was told that she normally runs late but should be in shortly. In the mean time, I met one of my main coworkers, Jean Townsend. Jean was very nice, bubbly, and easy to talk to. She gave me a brief overview of the library, asked me some questions about Duke and where I was from, and told me to just look around in the mean time. The Marion library is definitely old and limited in technology, space, and resources; it is smaller than the Georgetown library, but still functional and appeared ok. I discovered a featured display on Dean Koontz, one of my favorite thriller novel writers, and quickly picked up a book I had been wanting to read for a while - Velocity. It was at this point that I went and applied for a library card and internet access. I used my newfound library power to check out the book, as Jean happily replied, "Thank You, and we welcome you to the library!" I read a little of my new book to pass the time, and a few minutes later, Cathy arrived.
Cathy Pruett was funny and energetic, with a hint of well-timed cynicism - just how I like it. Wearing a gumby pin next to her name tag, I could tell that she was going to be fun to work with. Cathy took me on a more in-depth tour of the library, as well as introducing me to each of the library's employees; everyone was so friendly and nice; the Southern hospitality I had come to enjoy in Georgetown was even more prevalent here. Already, I felt like "one of the regulars."
After filling out some paperwork, Cathy, who is the library's Children's Librarian, explained to me the situations that plagued the library: first of all, there is no space for children's programming like storytime, arts and crafts, or perhaps most importantly, the summer reading activities. They currently use the South Carolina reading room or the periodicals section of the library for these tasks - certainly not an ideal situation. Also, the library needs more funding - they want/need to expand to three times their current size, but the project would obviously need a lot of money to succeed. Money that the library simply doesn't have. Cathy informed me that I would be helping to plan the Summer Reading program which begins in two weeks at the library. I'll be doing things like planning arts and crafts programs or helping with musicals. It should be a lot of fun. I wasn't able to meet Salley, the director of the library yet, and there wasn't much to do at the moment, so I went home for a lunch break.

When I came back from my lunch break, I met Salley, a very interesting woman who had even been to Andrews, a small suburb near my hometown (and asked me if I was familiar with the town's practice of hiding cops behind trees to police people speeding through their town - I was.). After a brief chat with Salley, I was given my final assignment for the day - I would get to ride with Barron, another one of my coworkers, in the BookMobile route this afternoon.


We departed for our route - extremely rural areas of Marion, Mullins, and the surrounding area. The bookmobile provides a mobile library service to the rural areas in Marion county; places where people don't have access to a library or the means to have transportation to one. Arriving at our first stop, I met a family who rushed out almost immediately after we pulled up to their house. A mother with three children marched up to the bus and began pulling books they were interested in off the shelf and returning ones they had from a previous visit. I noticed that one child, who was apparently in 5th grade, had a huge stack of books he was very excited about. They were all primarily picture books meant for 2nd or 3rd graders, though. I think this was my first exposure to the education gap that Marion faced - this was probably emphasized by my placement in rural Marion, where transportation to school alone is a huge factor. Anyways, the family was very nice and happy to meet me. They brought their dogs inside the bookmobile and introduced them - adorable! Our other stops were less eventful, but nonetheless, I had fun. My first day was quite an introduction to the library.

At home, we were shortly served with an extravagant meal cooked by John Deans and David Womble - GIGANTIC Burgers, Hot Dogs, Salad, and Baked Potatoes (complete with bacon bits and other dressings!). They were amazing - and, well.. ENORMOUS. Also delicious. We had some great dinner conversation too. Wow. What a huge day. And this is only the beginning.
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Memorable Quotes:
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"If I had a choice, I'd pick The Sims over school." - Noelle
"A good burger is like a good woman - pretty damn good." - David Womble

Banks, Walmart, Home Cooked Meals

Well today was first of all a day to sleep late. Relatively. Well, at least to me, sleeping til 9 AM seemed pretty late, but when half of the house still wasn't awake yet, I realized that maybe I could give myself some more leeway. Hm, well internships start tomorrow; so much for sleeping late. And here I am blogging instead of getting a good night's rest. Procrastination. What I do best.

But I digress. John and I drove to Bank of America today, which was a pretty epic trip. 30 minutes away practically! It didn't seem too bad, until I got there and failed to fill the deposit slip out correctly. So.. other people went in front of me as I worked on making my complicated transaction involving 2 accounts and cash back work. The teller still had to fix my corrected slip again. The point is, I have money now! YES.

Next up on our exciting day was WALMART. The pinnacle of shopping civilization. I frankly was a little overwhelmed. We had pooled our funds together to buy everything for the upcoming week, but WOW. It was a little more complicated than I expected. Even just choosing the type of lettuce, or salad dressing, or what size of syrup bottle, or the amounts of all of the previous things was incredibly complicated. Somehow, we got through it, and $250 later, we have many, MANY groceries. Of course, I bought some things for myself that were staples of my daily routine: sausage biscuits, waffles, ritz crackers, and Dr. Pepper. Sorry to the healthy people - I need to indulge regularly to function properly.

Speaking of healthy people, we stopped by the hospital (which houses the local gym) today and got applications for gym memberships. The question is, will I have the willpower to actually submit the application, and then to actually go to the gym? We'll see about that, but I'll certainly try.

In the evening, we were served a very delicious meal by Khadijah and Alice. Spaghetti with salad. It was fantastic, and we had plenty of leftovers - until David Womble got into the food ;) Noelle and I are cooking oven-fried chicken on Thursday - I'm excited about that though. Having our first meal together as a family was our first act of bonding. It felt good to all sit around the same table, eat the same food, and just share in each others' company. The BN family rocks, essentially.

Finally, we watched Tyler Perry's "Diary of a Mad Black Woman." The movie was HILARIOUS, interspersed with funny comments from the audience. Fun times, fun times. I'd give the movie 4/5. A little predictable, but certainly worth watching - very, very entertaining and Tyler Perry is a genius.

Our family still probably spends more time in front of its laptops than in talking, bonding, and sharing, but I really hope we break those barriers down in the next few weeks (days?). I can see it happening, and I think we all just need to make a little extra effort. Internship at the library starts tomorrow, although I don't think my supervisor is going to be there because she is sick. We'll see how that goes - as always, I'll keep you updated.

Quotes of the Day:
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Lauren: "The tea tastes.. Swedish.. I mean sweet-ish." (only I heard this)
Khadijah: "I'm brown too!!"

Watermelon - OR NOT?

Well today was a very exciting and logistical day. I never realized living with 10 people was going to be so complicated! ...okay I knew it wouldn't be a piece of cake, but actually, the difficult part wasn't the amount of people but just figuring out meals, transportation, house rules, goals, things of that nature. Minda came over and we basically spent the day having our "retreat," talking about what it really meant to serve, instead of merely "help" or "fix." Wow, I just used a lot of quotation marks there. Anywho.

Things we decided:
- Watermelon WILL be essential! (Thanks Alice/Charlotte ;) )
- Summarized rule: "JUST ASK!"
- The sweet tea trio (David Womble, David Oberst, and Lauren) will have a self-sufficient supply of sweet tea
- The word communal was used WAY too much.

We went out to dinner at Zapata, which, contrary to popular belief, does not mean Shoes, as we established with Zapato yesterday. Ah, the details of Marion life.

Most of us are going to take a CPR class later next month, which should be exciting too!

Also, I helped fix the internet today. Hooray tech support!!

Retrospectively, I feel like I already am a lot closer to my housemates. I set character goals of humility, flexibility, and integrity this summer in my personal reflections. I realized today that this summer is just as much about me changing the people in Marion as the people in Marion changing me - we aren't on unequal footing with these people; we have a lot to learn from their experience, wisdom, and cultures. Of course, being a southern small-towner (Georgetown is only about 1000 more people than Marion), this place isn't a terrible culture shock for me; however, a step out of my place of birth may be just what I needed to examine the very culture that has raised me, along with its issues of poverty/economic disparity, education, and things of that nature. Tomorrow is Bank of America, and WALMART!!! WOOO!!!

Also, Alice: "Do you wanna talk?"
Everyone Else: ...... (Silence)

¿Donde Están Los Zapatos?

So I drove up today into 204 Blue St (which my GPS refuses to believe exists - turns out that my Magellan thinks it is a whole block and street away from where we actually are. Oh well, I'll actually have to use my sense of direction this year. UGH.) Khadijah and Noelle were there, and the house is actually quite nice. I'll try to upload some pictures soon enough - I already took like 70 pictures! We had a great day which entailed the following:

1. Unpacking MANIA (no Alice, it's not an acronym)- not very exciting, other than I got a good bedroom. Me + John squared.
2. Lunch at Richard's Restaurant. Yes, that's what it's called. They only serve a limited amount of drinks for lunch. These include (according to the sign): Tea, Coke, and Pepsi. Luckily, the tea was fine for me, but it was almost too sweet for me. Which is saying something, considering I'm probably the "most southern " (geographically) of all the other BNs. Richard's Restaurant is a very greasy, quaint diner, where the service is mediocre, but the food slides down just perfectly, if you know what I mean. Definitely going to be a regular for me. It's cheap and unhealthy :)
3. The Foxtrot Festival - A celebration of fried food, gospel music, and arts and crafts. Basically amazing. We watched a couple of gospel groups sing, enjoyed some smoothies, and then just walked around.
4. Dinner with Minda + Piggly Wiggly - Pizza Hut for dinner and we bought items for tomorrow's lunch of peanut butter and jelly + cold cut sandwiches. Piggly Wiggly was quaint, although some people were disillusioned with the amount of "pig parts" that were available to be purchased. Hahaaha. It's called Piggly Wiggly, what do you expect?
5. Chillout time with Lauren's Birthday, Catch Phrase, Cards, and Wii. This included an epic event of having the candles blown out (thanks to John Deans), delicious cake, and fellowship. We later had an intense game of Catch Phrase, epic hula-hooping and tennis-ing on the Wii, boxing matches (Lauren vs. Noelle: Winner - LAUREN) and (David Womble vs. Brandon: Winner - BRANDON), and finally, a HUGELY epic game of spoons, where the winner emerged as Charlotte, but the surprise runner-up was first-timer John Deans! Woot!

That's all we did today, but I can already tell that this is going to be an amazing summer. We're already bonding and having a great time, making decisions, buying cake.. the whole house thing might just work out.

Oh, and so we're working on a name for this house - maybe Betty Blue Bloom (Khadijah?) The Blue House (Jharlotte?)
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Memorable Quotes of the Day (until we get a quote board):
"¿Donde Están Los Zapatos?" (Rosetta Stone Spanish HATES US)
"What a fail day in heaven!" (Noelle?!)
"It is INTENSELY COLD IN HERE! " (John Deans - with feeling - about the coldness at Pizza Hut)

"What's the difference between Chocolate Cake and Lemon Cake?"
"One's chocolate....and one's lemon??" - Unknown

"I'm reading the Faerie Queen, which isn't as gay as it sounds" (David Womble about his reading habits)

"How do you start this timer?" (Charlotte)
"There's only one button..." (John, reprimanding Charlotte about the intricacies of the CatchPhrase buzzer)

"David, I thought I expelled you from this house!" (Khadijah expelling me)

"Is there a Y in Marion?" (Misc. People)

"Veggie Salad?" Uhh..

"Life gets better Noelle, alright?"

Beginning the Summer

I've started this blog to keep track of all my adventures in Marion, SC on the Benjamin N. Duke Summer of Service experience. This summer, my housemates are: Lauren Anderson, Brandon Hill, Noelle Kelly, Alice Yen, David Womble, John Luttrell, John Deans, Charlotte Mabe, and Khadijah Bhatti. It's going to be amazing, I'm sure. Keep you posted as soon as I'm actually there.

- David