Reflections on Project 2 (plus Photos!)

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Even with one less person/ set of luggage, somehow our dark blue, 15-passenger van (lovingly dubbed "Iron Hide") was still packed to the rims with 10 red duffle bags, rolled-up sleeping bags, hard hats and boots (that we never used but were required to bring in case of emergency...), and various other bags as we made the 7 hour treck up from Los Angeles back to Sacramento.

This transition week in between projects consists of end of the project paperwork, new project paperwork, debriefings for project 2, briefings for project 3, unpacking, and repacking. Not to mention sleeping in, POD reunions, and dinners out using the rest of the food budget.

Transition week in Sac also provides lots of time to get ahead on Independent Service Project hours. As of yesterday I am now officially over the requirement of 80 hours!! I am still going to do a few more; there's a presidential award for reaching 100 and most of us are trying for that.

Sadly, as of yesterday's project I also no longer own a clean pair of uniform pants... My first pair had an unfortunate incident with a container of carper glue back at Sugar Pine (that does NOT come out...) so I save those for dirty work and have a "nice" pair of cargo khaki pants that I wore to school and to nice ISP projects. I wore them yesterday since we were working at a store that supplies affordable resources to local teachers. At some point while we were working my pen split in my pocket, so now my "nice" pants are completed soaked in blue ink...
At least at a farm I won't need to look nice. Hopefully project 4 will also be dirty work, or at least somewhere hot so I can wear my shorts to work!

Back here in Sacramento I've immediately started missing the LA weather and of course my kindergarteners! We had a nice last day where I gave them special presents (pencils that never need a sharpener, colorful erasers, little books, and a goofy class picture) on the condition that they work hard in school and go to college. Most of them plan to be police officers; although we also have a future teacher, doctor, and astronaut.

Every day at 2:35 I wonder who is at the kindergarten playground lining the group up and leading them back to the program area. They usually found me (I think for the first few weeks they knew me by the uniform) and ran to be the first in line. The problems would come if there was one straggler out of class, during that time somebody would head to the jungle gym- so while I would go try to re-gather that kid the rest would bolt out of line to go play too!

Then came the scary task of leading my little line through the crowd of big kids pushing and running for the door. It was always a miracle to make it through the crowd with 10 little people still lined up behind me.

I'll also miss my recess friends. I somehow became an official jump rope swinger and chant leader. It was always fun, until the day they wanted to play double-dutch which is surprisingly hard! Britt and I always tried to be involved in games and create some kind of organized fun to keep anyone from doing anything disruptive. Britt took on the boys soccer game and somehow created order out of utter, utter chaos.

Here are a few pictures from our house and time in LA. I am so, so sad that I can't put any kid pictures on here since that's all I've really talked about in this blog, but I don't have permission from the school to post any kid pictures publicly.... =(

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Comments

[Art Hagy]

family photo
Watching you, and listening to your experiences, I think of a family photo. I am so proud to know you and to be part of your life. God bless you. Art