July 22nd—Drip, drip, drop!

     This morning we got up at around 7am…made some breakfast and headed to our first res visit…LaPlant. The drive was pretty short and scenic and we had a chance to drive around the houses before we started going house to house to recruit kids to play some games with us. There were a few random dogs roaming around but all were harmless. We met a young boy named Julian on his bike who helped us find which houses had children in them and whether they were home. After knocking on several homes we had about 5 kids who were ready to come play with us at the Boys and Girls Club. We played a game called drip, drip, drop which was fun and very wet! The game had the kids laughing and running around. We played two other games that involved water balloons which they also enjoyed.

     At lunch we had a few of the kids that didn’t want to clean up after their lunch. After asking one of the girls Laney to clean her area up, Ragin, another girl that came to play with us said I should do it myself “black girl”, to which I was stunned and also embarrassed about. I told her if she wanted to talk to me she can call me by my name, Nancy, and not black girl. I was unsure how to follow through with that situation but thankfully Adam from Team 4 talked to her and she came up to me later apologized and gave me a hug. I was thinking I would receive some comments while on the reservation, I just wasn’t thinking it wouldn’t be from one of the kids. After we finished our time with the kids we headed to lunch by the river…past Swiftbird.

Swiftbird..games!

Swift bird was our next stop. We had a great turnout with the kids and many of them were familiar faces that Derek recognized from last year. We played the same games that we did with the kids from LaPlant and they loved the drip, drip, drop game as well. We talked to a few of the adolescent girls and many of them said that they would be around tomorrow for the Pow Wow. Taylor said she would be participating in it. Overall, we had a great time with the kids today and met some new kids who I hope continue to come out for the YMCA.

This entry was from Nancy my roomate/ team member/ friend!

Mural in town... amazing work!