As I was driving with Team Shell today to do our Urban Plunge (details to come), I was listening to the radio. The weather report came on and I thought how boring it must be to be a weather forecaster in Houston: "Today, hot. Tomorrow, hot. Friday, heading into the weekend, hot. Your 10-forecast calls for hot. And now, here's Ted with the sports." Seriously, it doesn't change here. It's just hot! It's a good thing it's known as the most air-conditioned place on earth.
After blogging yesterday, I caught up with Team NASA at the READ Commission, which provides literacy tutoring for adults. However, they are taking a two-week hiatus from the tutoring, so our students are helping out in the computer lab, which is not attended very well. So they had a less than fulfilling morning as they didn't do much more than goofed around on the computers and played hot hands. After we went back to the housing site for lunch, we went to the Holt House Boys & Girls Club. What a cool place! They had a game room, library, craft room, computer lab, and gymnasium. There were a ton of kids there playing and having a great time, and our students did a fantastic job interacting with them: playing Connect Four, pool, basketball, and doing crafts. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of the kids so you will have to use your imagination. While I was getting schooled in pool, Nate was playing Monopoly, and Clint was playing basketball, just to name a few. It was a much better experience than the morning. I'm not sure if the kids that were there were really poor or hurting - many of them had cell phones and video games - but all kids need to be loved on, and that's what our students did.
From there we went to Operation Hydration James Butte. James Butte is a park under one of the highways in Houston where many homeless men spend their days. Our task was to give them water bottles in an attempt to strike up a conversation. Some were open to talking while others were simply thankful for the water. I was with Morgan and Meredith and we had a good conversation with a man who is/was a truck driver who knew exactly where Cape Girardeau is since he passed it on the highway. There were other good conversations that happened. I have asked a couple of students to write down their experiences and as soon as I receive them, I will post them.
On my way there I received a call saying that Shelby had sprained her ankle. She still wanted to eat dinner, so Tom and Kim were going to keep an eye on it. I caught up with them at our dinner destination (This Is It Soul Food). Karen was there and looked at it and suggested that we not go to the hospital since it was just a sprain. Shelby was OK with that - as was her mom - so she toughed it out, and continues to do so. We had a great dinner of soul food: pork chops, BBQ chicken, corn, green beans, mac & cheese, and sweet potatoes. As delicious as it was, it was probably my least favorite so far on this trip as the Jamaican and Salvadoran food we had was amazing!
After dinner we went to the Harbor Light Salvation Army for a concert by their men's choir (photo above). Honestly, going in I was less than thrilled to be there. It stretched out our night and I wasn't expecting much. Man, were we blown away! It wasn't the best choir I've ever heard, but it was maybe one of the funnest and most interactive I had been to. They kept pulling people up 'on stage' to sing and dance with them, as you will be able to tell from the pictures. What a blast! We all had such a great time!
I did have to leave the concert early as Cori wanted to go to see a doctor. She has had a sore throat since before she came on the trip, and it got really bad yesterday. So we took off to take her to the hospital. We had a difficult time getting out of the building as many of the doors were now locked. We found an exit door that was unlocked, but it put us out behind the building in a completely fenced-in area. We were trapped. After checking out our situation, I found a gap in the gate that Cori was barely able to squeeze through. Needless to say, it was much more difficult for me to squeeze through the same space. Last year it was Derek's pants, this year, the gate. I need to lose weight.
We got to the hospital and got checked in. Fortunately there weren't many people there. Cori got tested for strep and influenza, and then we waited. The waiting room really filled up at that point. We came at a good time because if we had come a half-hour or an hour later, we would have waited a much longer time. We finally got called back for the results and they put us in an examining room which made me nervous, like they were going to admit her. They didn't. They told us that her tests came back negative. The doctor had to come talk to us, so more waiting. He checked her over too, gave her some prescriptions, and said that he was going to get her out of there. More waiting. Then the nurse told us that he had to go get us some stickers and then we could leave. We weren't sure what that meant, but we envisioned him coming back with a page of Spongebob Squarepants stickers for Cori. We got a good laugh out of that. It didn't hurt that it was past midnight and we were slap-happy. We finally got to leave, and as we were leaving the examining room area, there was a button to open the doors. I pressed it. We didn't figure that they would open towards us, but one of them did, crashing into Cori. She was OK, but again we got a good laugh. As we walked back to the van, I told Cori that I never expected to be walking down the streets of Houston after midnight with one of my students. She said, "I like to walk the streets late at night." I pointed out that that didn't sound really good. More laughs. After a stop at the pharmacy - and sadly, no donuts - we got back to the housing and got to bed at around 1:30am. Needless to say, we are quite tired today. She is doing better today. Not great, but better.
This morning we all took part in what is called the Urban Plunge. Basically what it is is a scavenger hunt in the city. We broke up into smaller groups and each team was given a set of instructions about what they were supposed to do and accomplish. This included such things as making note of churches that offer services to the homeless; asking various people (homeless, business person, police officer) about Houston and the problems and causes of poverty; getting a view of the city from a skyscraper and noting how different that experience is from interacting with the people on the ground; and finding out the costs of various things (a phone call to El Salvador, to cash a payroll check, get a money order - things that a homeless person or immigrant might have to deal with). It was good for the students to get this information and view of the city. It sort of puts them in the shoes of the people we are working with to understand their situation a little better.
After eating lunch in a park, I broke with the team so I could head back to get some blogging and photo uploading done, which is where I am now. I know I have more stories and anecdotes to share, but I haven't been writing them down as faithfully as I should. I will try to do better. I will leave you with these two, though (don't forget to check out the updated collection of pictures):
- At Cori's site, the man in charge was giving Cori some instructions on what to do. She didn't understand, but she had no voice so she couldn't ask. So she just looked kind of confused. The man looked at Tom and asked, "Can she hear?" LOL!
- While eating dinner at the Jamaican restaurant, we somehow got on the subject of monkeys. Ken expressed not liking monkeys. He said, "Monkeys tend to fling poo," to which Whitney replied, "That is so cool!" I don't know if she didn't realize what Ken had just said, or if she really thinks that flinging poo is cool. Who cares why she said it - it was hilarious!
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