September 6th, 2006

• Casa de Carlitos: CI today was located at a home for Mexican children diagnosed with cancer. These children and their families are given the opportunity to come to the U.S. to receive treatment that they otherwise may not receive back home. Here we had several projects, including: taking down trees, clearing brush, rebuilding a swing set, and building a wheelchair ramp. My main project was to rebuild the apparatus. To some extent this was mind numbing work, trying to rebuild something that I would personally replace, but there was a lot of satisfaction in helping to get it to work again. I also learned about the glory that is the hammer. There aren’t too many things that can’t be fixed by a good strong blow from a hammer. By the time we were done, I had helped to recreate a fully functional (non-lethal) swing set
• On camera! KELO channel 3 (CBS): While working at Casa, Emilie (from Belgium) and I were interviewed by a local television station. This was a first for me. Emilie did an amazing job; though I had to laugh…she called the Washington Pavilion, where we will be doing the show, the “Washington Palace”. Personally felt like a bumbling idiot. Thankfully, the piece they decided to show on air was fairly coherent.
• Back home, after some ice cream and some TV, Dong and I had the fortune of sharing a conversation with Rick. We talked about the politics of South Dakota and the current hot topics of Abortion and Same Sex Marriage. Any doubt of me being from Massachusetts was promptly squashed at this time. I couldn’t get over how conservative South Dakota is. They have made abortion completely illegal and they are working to take away all rights for same sex couples!!! I could feel myself getting really fired up. Thankfully, I got the impression from Rick that he wasn’t quite so conservative. Though he did make an interesting comment that he has found that many people start off as liberals when they are young, then as they become more established and have children, they become more conservative. That was an interesting point. I have to wonder though, if conservative orientation is relative to the time period. I can imagine that what I consider liberal and groundbreaking now, will in 20 years, be rather passé and conservative. Food for thought, I guess.