"Kevina, rocks are heavy!"

July: Library Stimulation Month!!!

Yvette and I

With school being out the library has become kinda my main project. Meredith and I have been meeting with Yvette and with our three brains combined we have come up with some pretty amazing things! First of which the inaugural year of 'Library Stimulation Month' to be held hence forth every July. So far the main events are:

-Women's Craft Day

-Library Beautification Day

-MOVIE night

(to be held in the community center with pop corn and juice for sale)

There are lots of other projects for the month in the works and we've already had great success with the first activity! We were all in the library on Thursday, even several women and teenage girls, discussing the Craft Day. Between Meredith and I the weekend was totally out so it was suggested we just do it for the next day. We wrote up a little invitation letter and sent out two girls to scour the village to see if any women would come. Eight said yes that day! However, I wasn't getting my hopes up. Well, come 2:00 there were already two women with their children waiting with their 'ring' (embroidery hoop) to start making the signs! By 2:30 we had 13 women all working and chatting. There was much joking and teasing. Women were constantly asking to see each other's sign, asking if their's was good, and giving tips and lessons to one another. Yvette thought it would be good, after much hinting by the ladies, to treat everyone to a soda. She has collected quite an amount of money from fines and I think the cloth for the section signs is awesome and worth a little soda each. The women were very grateful and worked hard up until 5:00. We hastily cleaned and cut off pieces of thread to finish our signs and went home agreeing to meet later to turn in and do a final compare of all our signs (we did 21 signs total!)

First day of holiday hours!

Look at Amir in the bottom right, he is 4 and comes every day.

Tearing the cloth into sections

I love how Ms. Che brought her 'lem' (glasses)

Choosing thread

After sewing for 3 hours here's what we got so far:

A. (adult) Fiction, Local, ?

C.(children) Poetry, C. Reader

C. Adventure, C. Fairy Tales

C. Sci Fiction, C. Conc

Y. A. Fiction, C. Humor

Everyone agreed to take it home as homework and set Wednesday at 2:00 as the due date.

Ladies Trip to the Farm

Lynette invited me to join them on a short trip to the farm to get more stones for their fire-hearth. Since it is vacation time I jumped at the opportunity. We packed our bags (I was the only one that brought water). We started walking down farmers road towards their farm. Lynette chatted with me pretty much the whole time. We stopped briefly to look at the late Estevan's house (her son). Cecilia told me of her days, "when I first start life, only rice and pig and work" She would help harvest rice, beat it and cook it. She says she doesn't know why her children are so lazy now, they don't even have hard work (this on the way to pick and carry back 10-30 pounds of rock each).

Right past the village there is this lovely creek, both going and coming back we stopped to play. Even Cecilia was frolicking and we were all swimming around playing in all the different waterfalls. The water was crystal clear and cool.

lynette on the way back

Lynette finding a good rock

On the way back with each of us 'backing' a few rocks each lynette, after I just rearranged the corn sack protecting her back from the rock, "Kevina, rocks are very heavy." I had to laugh.