Education!

This has been my week for outreach. Yesterday I went to the school district's secondary bilingual school, where immigrant children (and a few adults) learn English. They were having a Science and Literature fair and I put up a table in the main area. The fair was pretty successful with over a hundred students attending. There were drummers during the first half and a play after the contest they held to encourage the kids to visit all the exhibits. The aquarium attended and had a workshop where kids could dissect squid. I brought The Boy and his two friends and they loved that and the owl pellets exhibit. They also went out in back of the school and played basketball with some bigger Latino boys. When I came out to gather them, they were hanging out, listening to them speak Spanish. I was really impressed with how their attitude changed between when we went in and when we left.

The Boy and his friends live in Darrington, where everyone is white and speaks English. When I told them where we were going, they started making jokes and pretending to speak a foreign language. When we got there, they were very respectful and impressed with the activities available. They found out how cool the other kids were, especially when they whooped them at basketball. It was a fun transformation to watch. (The also thought that any people walking were bums and women together were lesbians--2+2=5!)

Should be fun at central today. I hope they will lose some more of their preconceived ideas...