Today we split into four groups to help out R.O.C.K (Real options for city kids). My group helped out Ms. Phapha in her second grade class room of 19 amazing children. Corrie, Zach, and myself left the hostel at 7:00am (Corrie likes to be VERY early:-)) By this point we kind of had the public transportation under control, but decided instead of waiting for the connection we could walk the sort distance left to the elementary school. After we arrived at the school we all came to the conclusion that San Francisco does not have hills, but mountains:-) Tia - R.O.C.K Coordinator - met us at the school to help get us in the right rooms and what not. As soon as the three amigos (Me, Zach, and Corrie) walked into the classroom and saw 19 smiling faces, we had no doubt in our minds why we are here. All the kids attached to the 'cool college kids' immediately, they wanted to know everything about us and wanted to tell us everything about them. Ms. Phapha was one of the most amazing teachers I have met, I could never imagine what she does everyday to keep those kids interested in learning. There was such diversity of skill levels which made it very hard to work with them as a group, but there was no time or resources to work one on one. The kids split into four groups to do math, grammar, science, and reading. For science they were learning about vibrations, so I got a group who got to experiment with hitting tuning forks then putting them in water or against a ping pong ball. They all had a blast with it and just wanted to do it over and over to learn how everything works. For math I got to play math bingo with four kids, learning place values; ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands. Then for English I got the group working with Nouns, Verbs, Pronouns, and Proper nouns. I had to stop and think, because its amazing how much we forget, but in no time the kids were teaching me more then I could retain:-) I had one girl who was a phenomenal reader, but next to her was a young boy who could barely read simple sentences. Even though we only got to be with the kids for a short time, I got to see progress with some of the ones I worked with. All of the kids were amazing with great hearts and curious minds.
Because we were one of the first groups to go, we were done by 2:00pm, so Zach, Corrie, Emily, Holley, and myself wanted to run to Chinatown to find this cool place Doug had told us about. After asking a few people we turned down a dark scary alley and found this cute little Fortune Cookie Factory. It wasn't too much bigger then two dorm rooms and had a couple little ladies making the cookies and two men at the front helping us. We all got a least one bag of cookies (don't worry Doug we got you a bag too:-)) -they had the original, chocolate, and strawberry cookies! Between all of us I think we tried everything they had, including a bag of 'adult' cookies:-) hehe
Finally the whole clan met back up and went to the San Francisco Food Bank, we all got there in perfect timing.... except Dominique, Colleen, Jordan, and Iseley got a little lost. They took the bus going East instead of West and ended up in the other side of town. No worries they got there an hour later:-) At the food bank we took 2,000 pound bags of rice and rebagged them into one pound bags; weighted them, sealed them, and tagged them:-) Our team was by far the fastest and most amazing!!!!!!! At the end of the night we rebagged a total of 2,228 pounds of white rice:-) We got a lovely tour of the building and information of how everything runs. Turns out their second largest costumer is the organization we are working with tomorrow!
- Alex
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