Happy monday morning. its another sunny, 70 degree day in LA. Its so weird that its thanksgiving this week because i am still wearing shorts and a t shirt.
So i have decided to take a few hours on Monday mornings while my corps members are at service to do my weekly paperwork at the library. i have always appreciated quiet, but now appreciate it even more since i currently live with 9 people and work with elementary school kids!
Here is the project rundown. Half of the team is working at Dorsey High School offering extra help and tutoring in Math. The other half of the team is working at 61st St. Elementary School helping with an afterschool program. I am assigned to the elementary school, so i can tell you a little bit more about that. The school is for k-5th grade. It is so crowded that is runs year round. Each child is assigned to a "track" which dictates when they will go to school. They do not have a summer break where the school is closed, but instead each track has 2 6 week breaks throughout the year. Some kids on the track that is currently off come in for what is called "intercession" with us where they do some worksheets so they don't forget their math and reading skills and also do some enrichment activities like sports and arts. The intercession kids (usually no more than 10) come for 2 hours and then meet up with about 100 students who are currently in school, for which we provide after school care. Our site supervisor stands at the gate of the school to try to catch those who try to escape. There are always vendors outside selling junk food, which the kids sneak out to buy. the favorite is flaming hot cheeto-s which are bright red in color. many of the kids put chamoy sauce on them, making them even redder and wet and sticky. they eat all the cheeto-s then rip open the bags and lick off all the sauce. they have it down to a science. so once they have been dragged back into the school grounds they meet up at the cafeteria, which is really just picnic benches inside and they separate into grade levels. There is one corps member with kindergarteners, 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade. The corps members provide general crowd control, homework help, and lead enrichment activities such as sports and arts. It is chaos, but most people seem to like it so far. After just three days the kids already know us and ask if we will be there the next day. Many of us accidentally have favorites already, but really all the kids are pretty cute.
The kids are almost all Hispanic. I like to practice my spanish with them. We chat a little during homework time and I learned that a lot of them were born here and are fluent in both english and spanish (jealous!).
So this work week was fun and busy. we are still trying to get the routine of work, PT, cooking and grocery shopping down. but its been just a week and i think we are making progress.
on Saturday we went to Santa Monica. It was a beautiful beach, and empty because the californians think that 70 degrees is cold. it was a little too cold to go in the water, but some of the corps members went in anyways. i took a nap on the beach. i took pictures and need to put the up here! then we went to downtown santa monica which was really ritzy and fancy. we just wandered around for a while and went in shops. i can check santa monica off my list of things to see.
on sunday i met up with another team that is the area and checked out long beach. again, nice long, empty beach. time to enjoy quiet with another team leader. we went to a little downtown section which was much less ritzy than santa monica. had some ok lebanese food but the waitress was a mean weird old lady and we think she put a curse on us when she tripped on one of our chairs. she gave us the stink eye until we left. we expect our hair to fall our or our skin to turn blue or something...
and this week we have a short week. just 3 school days. one corps member has family in LA and has invited all who stay in town to thanksgiving at her house. Some corps members are thinking of going to san diego for the 4 days off. no plans for me yet, but there is plenty to do in LA. wouldn't mind being left alone in this house for a few days at all!
will keep you posted. ew, no pun intended. back to paperwork.
