More bags

The last day of working at the Tri City Volunteers was like any other time I have worked there. I again worked with the same people and same job. I helped bag more food and dry goods. It was only fun because there were people to talk to. I feel like I will not work there any longer because it is so slow-pace and not an active environment with constant stimulation to the brain.

Bagging food and making a new friend

On my third day of volunteering at the Tri city volunteers I worked again with Sierra Barrisonie and Karlie Cambel and a girl named Zena Abdallah who I did not know well, but she seemed petty cool and I think I made a new friend. This time we were assigned to pack canned food and dry goods in bag for the less fortunate. We were working with a group of people and me the genius I am thought of making some sort of assembly line so we could work allot faster and more efficient. We packed food for about two hours and it was a bit boring and tedious. It was not a job what feels like you are making a difference in the community.

Me Karlie and poo

On my second day of volunteering at the Tri city volunteers I worked with long time friend and constitutes Sierra Barrisonie and Karlie Cambel, we were assigned to clean the restrooms of the thrift store, right on the other side of the Food bank. Sierra was assigned to vacuum the whole store while I was assigned to clean the men’s restroom and Karle the female’s restroom. It was pretty easy to clean because I didn’t have to clean the stall, all I had to do was mop the floors and clean the sink and mirror. So later I helped Karlie with her restroom because it was so much dirtier. It was more fun working together, even though we were cleaning a place were people crap in. After we finished it was time to leave because they were closing up. Overall it was fun to work together but the experience was not a fulfilling because we did not feel we were helping the world becoming a better place, because all we did was clean the public restrooms.

SEED ART AND PAPER BOATS!

For my extra credit volunteer post, I decided to use the time I spent when I volunteered at the Eco-Fair. I spent most of my day with my buddies: Angela, Genesis, Janel, Laura, Leo, and Mindy. We had two booths at the Eco-Fair that taught students from Washington how to make seed art and paper boats. Our seed art booth had materials like glue, brown paper bags, and bird seeds. To make seed art, all you have to do is follow three simple steps. First, you take a brown paper bag and lay it on an aluminum tray. Second, you take glue and write whatever you want on the brown paper bag. Last but not least, you drop bird seeds on the brown paper bag and let it stay for about ten seconds, lift your paper bag then BAM! You just made a beautiful creation :) Throughout the whole day, I would ask students if they wanted to make seed art and some of them were nice to actually do it while others were rude and ignored me. The same thing occured when I asked students if they wanted to make paper boats and race them. Even though some students were rude, most of them were very nice and engaged in our booths. It felt great being able to teach students simple things like making seed art or paper boats. Also, you felt the excitement of the students who really got into what they were doing. It was a great day filled with great interactions made by great people. GO ECO-FAIR!

C-Dart? No Seed Art!

On Friday, May 27th, I along w/... yeah pretty much all my friends worked the Eco-Faire! We had thee coolest booths there, Seed Art and Paper Boat Racing w/ a pool and errthing. I worked the 4th, 5th and 6th period shifts with Casey Case and Leo. I showed up at 4th and was appointed lurer (as in I lure people I don't know if that's a word or not but if it isn't it is now my friend), trying to get people to come over and be Picassos with seeds. My cowbell and wonderful acting of "Whoa mind blooown, what is this? Seed art? Looks sick, join me stranger" worked and many people came over . There was a situation though where some freshmen were making a mess then refused to take their art with them. The little boy handed me his paper like "Here you go, its a present" and I was like "Nair my brethren, that's all yours you worked hard on it. How about you give it to your mom, she'd Totes McGotes enjoy it" then he got all offended "Okay I don't even have a mom so you just made me feel horrible thanks now you have to take it" but as I recall I had seen him with a woman who looked like a female 40 year old version of him a couple days ago in the parking lot afterschool so I was taken aback. I put my sassy nature aside and took his art so he'd go away and I could proceed to have a delightful afternoon. I occassionally supervised the paper boat racing but some people didn't know how to make boats... and I didn't either... so yeah they raced their attempts at boats and I gave a ticket to the winner. When things got slow, I walked over to mon petit chou Vivian's booth about oil spills and helped her demonstrate and urge people that the polymer was not candy! The wind was flowing and whatnot and I loved it until it started knocking over the tri-folds (and nearly our big tin of seeds!) I can't even say how much tape I used. Then there'd be lapses of uncomfortable warmth but tis all well because there were puhlenty of snow cones provided (can I get a woot woot). Leadership even passed out pizza to everyone working and that was much appreciated since I worked lunch. There were a lot of other good and creative booths that I enjoyed visiting also and overall I had a good time with good people, good food, and good music too showing people to reconsider just recycling their paper and to make art and boats instead! Don't judge me by my run on sentences of enthusiasm.

One persons old books, is Josh and Genesis' Labor

For the extra credit post Genesis and I went to our favorite community service place ever! We went to the Tri City Valley community service place. But instead of just going immediately to the food pantry, we went to the thrift store. Both Genesis and I were tired of working in the food pantry, packing potatoes, and sweeping the huge floor. So we just thought it would be a good idea to check out the thrift store to see if there was anything we could do. The lady who was running it was really nice, so she let us organize the blankets, books, and shoes. Genesis and I started folding blankets, then we went to the books. There had to be at least 300 books that needed to be organized on the shelfs. So we started to get to work. The books took forever, but once we were done we felt good that we helped out. It was a very different experience from the food pantry. It was a good change from doing the same thing, and it got us to feel like we were helping poorer people. They had couches in the thrift store that were only 35 dollars and they were actually pretty good looking couches. After we were done we went into the food pantry to see Patricia... but we couldn't find her. So we went to the front and there she was washing windows. So at that point Genesis and I knew we had made the right choice by going to the thrift store right away indtead of the food pantry.

Rain, Rain, Go Away Already!

Today was the first year of the ECT and IBEW safety fair in Dublin. I went along with some friends from water polo and we did a lot of community service. Overall, we did about 10 hours. It was raining all morning and the most dangerest part of the safety fair was getting there. I could barely see anything in front of me on the road because it was pouring so badly. When we got there we went inside a giant building and talked with the director of the fair. We then started to set up easy ups for all the booths that would be there. One the booths were set up it was cool looking at them. There was a CPR booth with the plastic dummies set up, then there was a policeman booth, and a fireman booth. For our service we handed out the food that the firemen were cooking. We had to serve hot links, hotdogs, hamburgers, and chicken dogs... which were really gross. It was about noon when people started swarming us for food, even thjough the food wasn't ready yet from the fire fighters. Once some food was finally done, the people waiting grabbed and took most of the food. Which meant that other people waiting had to wait even longer for food. Everyone was standing in the rain, but it didn't matter because they were all there to learn about safety and other stuff. Most of the people working there and others who were there were really nice. Doing the safety fair was the best community service I've ever done. It allowed for people to know about safety, but it was also a good way to get out of doing community service at the Tri City place. I am glad that I went out and did this because it was a good way of helping out the community.

To Early For Me

On the morning of May 28^th 2011 I had to wake up early in the morning to go to church and help make food for homeless people. I woke up at four in the morning, took a shower, and woke up my younger brother Giovanni (he is ten years old), and finally headed to Our Lady Of Guadalupe church on Fremont Blvd. and Blacow. When I got there I had to sign in put on gloves and helped with the foil, for wrapping the burritos at the end, once done with that I was assigned to help make coffee. Of course my brother was helping me do the things I was put to do. After helping make a big pot of coffee outside me, and my brother went inside. And inside was a guy that needed help with some boxes and bread, once again me and Giovanni came to the rescue. There were about four to five boxes that needed to be filled with fifty different kinds of Mexican bread. When we were done filling up the boxes they told us to stop doing what we were doing because the holiest was going to come in and bless the food. Since it was my first time I didn’t know what to do or who they were even talking about, everyone around me got on their knees while I and another person were just standing. After that happened everyone soon got back to what they were doing, and now I was assign a new task, I had to count each burrito that was made and in each box their needed to be 200 burritos. When done with that around seven we got into groups of ten people. Each group had to take a box of bread, chips, burrito, water, and had to take coffee. Each group was either assigned to go to Oakland, San Jose, Frisco, etc. My group took two cars to San Francisco; we took two boxes of each thing. When we got there we went under bridges and just gave out food to the people that we saw that needed nutrition. After going under one bridge and another we were going around parks and other places. It was a fun experience. People were really thankful, and appreciated for what we were doing. Finally we got back to Fremont around twelve (I think, I don’t quite remember). On the way back I ate a burrito, and it was good. They do this about every two months and I think I’m going to do it again. Even my brother liked it. It’s a nice feeling, non-profit, and it’s from a catholic church.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbdcjA2mAQ

An afternoon of bagging!

Me telling you what I did for my 2nd volunteering!

I took both of these pictures, even though only my foot is in the one to the left.

Cleaning....yay

This was my first time going to Tri-City and I went with Karlie and Alencio. When we got there it was Karlie and I first time volunteering there so we had to fill out some paper work. Once we finished we had to have a little run down on how things worked there, and it was all pretty simple. Just come sign in put on a vest and volunteer tag and you are ready to go. I thought that we were going to pack and sort food because that is what other people who volunteered there did. But they already had enough people doing that, so they made us work in the thrift store. Karlie and Alencio were assigned to clean the bathroom while I was assigned to vacuum. At first I thought that I got the better end of the deal, but in reality I didn't. For one Alencio and Karlie got to work together and I had to work with a vacuum. I also kept getting tangled in the cord and I had to make sure that the cord wasn't out to much because there were some people there looking around and I couldn't have them trip. Defiantly I was happy to help out the people working in the thrift store and making the place cleaner, but I was kind of hoping to do something a little more important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghJ4EdzhVJg