April 17th Serve

My April 10th serve was from 5:30 to 7:00

At the serving experience, I also packed seeds, but this time, it was with my mom and sister. We went in to church on a saturday from 10 to 12:30 in the morning. It was a similar set up to last saturday's pack. but this time, were were with mainly adults, rather than middle schoolers, and we packed tomatos. It was a very cold, muggy day and my family got to the church a little late, so they had to split us up into different tables, which was a little scary and it made me not to want to do it anymore, and I really wasn't in the mood to serve. But a couple of the adults were kind and talked to me and took me into the table, which made the experience better. The other times I have packed seeds, I was at a job where I was sitting down, but this time, I ran packs of seeds to the boxers. It was a new experience, so it was fun. It kind of taught me that, although, things may not go the way I thought, it's still important to have a good attitude and make the most of a situation.

April 10th Serve

On Saturday nights, my sister and I volunteer in the junior high ministry at our church. But for "Celebration of Hope," This saturday night was different. We packed vegetable seeds that would be sent to communities in developing countries across the globe. During our shift, we packed cabbage seeds. All of the leaders went to stake out a table where our group would be packing and waited for the kids to come. My sister and I had a lot of oour girls show up, so it ended up being a really neat bonding experience, but I think the coolest thing about this serving experience was the video that was shown before we started. It showed a women, who had recieved seeds from our church last year, in her garden that was just flourishing. She was able to provide food for many people in her village and her income greatly increased. Its interesting to think about how dropping one little seed into a bag can travel so far and make such a large impact, while to me, it is just a seed.

Skin-Colored Marker

Since the school year is winding down and we have been doing a lot less work in most of our classes, on of my friends started to bring a coloring book and crayons to school. Earlier this week, a was coloring a face with a pale peach colored crayon and made the comment to my sister, "Do you remember in elementary school how frustrating it was to not have a skin-colored marker and we had to use a dried to orange or brown" She responded back with, "Well, someone's skin may be a color in the set." That comment really made me think. Then the next day in class, Sal showed us the picture and article of Michelle Obama wearing a "Flesh-colored" dress. I thought back to my comment about the marker; what made a peachy color marker normal "Skin" and not another colored marker?

When I was looking for a picture of crayola markers and I saw this one of "Multicultural" washable markers. I think this is really interesting.

Gasland and Social Class

First hour today in AP Environmental Science we watched a documentary called Gasland. While we were watching our video in sociology today, I kept getting the two movies confused and I was wondering why, but I think it was because of the Gasland's emphasis on social class. The Documentary was about the impact of drilling for natural gas. Big gas companies are drilling near low-income families, causing natural gas to contaminate water supplies, but doing nothing to fix the problem, they just keep drilling new wells. It has gotten so bad that many people's water will actually catch on fire. I found this really interesting because in the movie we watched in sociology, the upper-class citizens really emphasized their superiority to those who were finantially below them. These oil and gas companies, are run by the wealthy and their profit is more important than the health of those in the lower classes.

Make-Up blog from last week

This week we talked a lot about social class, but we focused on income. Looking at the overheads of the incomes of CEOs of companies made me think a lot about the show Secret Millionare. In this TV show, millianares, who are usually CEOs of companies, for a week live at poverty level, working low income jobs, and volunteering with non-profit programs. To not give up their true identity, they tell the other volunteers they work with they they are filming a documentarary. Its really interesting because people who are used to living a comfortable, wealthy life and experience it as someone who does not have those luxeries. At first, living a lower-income lifestyle is a culture shock, because within one city, there can be such a contrast between the social classes. but from the episodes I've seen, the millionares really gain a lot from the experience. At the end of the week, the millionares donate tens of thousands of dollars to the organizations they worked with.