Spiders are Cute, What's Wrong with the World?

Last Monday I met with my Korean conversation partner, Inyoung, and we had a fun hour talking. She is a very interesting individual and our conversations vary from stances on gay marriage to her three month old son.  Speaking of her son, it was his 100th day yesterday!  In Korea 100 days is a big thing. Inyoung told me the tradition stems from long ago when it wasn't expected for babies to live very long, so 100 days was a good sign. They have a tradition of making rice cakes, I believe it was, and sharing it with 100 people as good luck. Inyoung promised to give me a bit of rice cake tomorrow when we meet, I'm kind of excited.

Also, this past Friday was my first day working at the YMCA in Lafayette. I had a blast working with the kids, even if it was only for two hours. They attached to me pretty quickly, there were three of them that literally attached themselves to me. "I'm walking with you," Reese said to me as they lined up. Little Nora just loves hugging everybody and seems to have it out for Reese. Friday I didn't do much because this coming week will be their spring break and they don't have much homework (which will be my primary job, homework help) but I still helped out. In the hallway from the Gym one little girl stopped and pointed into thin air, "There's a spider," she said, her voice shaking, her body stiff. The other three councillors, college students like myself, were also freaked out, trying to coax the girl to walk around the spider. "I can get rid of it if you like," I offer.
"If that's what you want...."
I grabbed the spider's web about a foot above the spider and turned around, "Does that door behind me open?" A councillor opened the door and I was able to let Mr. Spider go free.  I came back in and the councillor that hadn't held the door for me was so...excited.
 "I can't believe you did that! That was amazing, it was so scary, OMG!"
Well.... I thought he was kind of cute.

Spring Break Soliloquy

I am so exhausted. I’ve just spent the past four days volunteering at the YMCA in my hometown for at least four hours a day. It was such a wonderful place, and I’m thinking of working there over the summer, but I never knew how tiring it could be! 

I started work on Tuesday afternoon and the very first exciting task I was set to doing was coin counting. Now, I know what you may be thinking, such a glamourous job, how did you handle it? I have no idea. I zoned out or something because I was suddenly at the end of my pot of gold and in need of another task. 

This is how it went for my four days of service, I would come in at 1 pm and Miss Mona, my supervisor, would be running around looking for any odd jobs I could do. The three main things I was doing was counting coins, scanning people in and sorting papers. I felt kind of useless when I was at the front desk scanning people in because I couldn’t do anything else; if someone came in with a question about memberships I would have to direct them to Cody, the person who works the front desk at 1pm, and he was always doing three things at once so I felt very useless. However, Miss Mona slipped me a job application for the summer so I can learn how to be of help and have a pretty entertaining job, because I would not be counting coins and searching for records. 

This week was nothing like I had imagined it. I suppose I figured  everywhere had an idea of what volunteer’s could do and always had things that needed to be done.  YMCA North was nothing like that! The YMCA back at Purdue has it all set out, what they would need volunteers to do, and actually at YMCA Lafayette I am working with children in after school care, so this is different from what I expected again. Hopefully soon I can regain my energy I’ve depleted this week.