Week 16 continued

The remainder of the December follow-up was exciting.  We had a sex education seminar that lasted about 2 hours.  Lots of great questions were asked, plus there were several diagrams and props.  The speaker passed around examples of forms of contraception and most youth leaders stayed awake the whole time.  We were all very tired.  The entire group participated in a wild and crazy gift exchange afterward.  We had dinner, too.  Then we all met in the peace center for a college board.  I was a part of the panel.  About 7 college kids positioned themselves in front of a seated audience of about 60 youth leaders to talk about their experiences and advice concerning college.  We all had topics like "freshman year" "college partying" "scholarships and grants" and so forth.  I had a great time answering questions and talking about my unique experiences as a college student.  I spent the rest of the night hours planning for the next morning's trust activity for the mentors and mentees.  I made lines on the floor using blue tape and asked each pair of youth leaders to take a line.  Their mission was to blind fold one of the partners and guide him or her to the end of the line without letting either foot leave the line.  Afterward, we debriefed and played clean-up.  It was a very successful gathering.

Week 16

The past week has been insanely stressful.  Monday was a day for catch-up.  I was sick on Wednesday, and worked from home.  I had spent most of my time preparing for the follow-up activities.  I hosted an activity called "popcorn" with about 60 people present.  I didn't have the most energy as my body is fighting infection, and the crowd was barely manageable since it was a crazy first night of follow-up.  I think the leaders and potential leaders got at least a little something out of the activity.  I spoke about how leaders are like popcorn and we animated an analogy for why leaders need support.  We also extended the activity to include an analogy of the infernal kernel that represents the things that get in our way as leaders.  The main prop was a beach ball.  This morning, we woke up early to host the Holiday Party.  We set up and manned a table that had applications for the toy drive, information about Jameson Camp, the toy-pick up reminder sheets, and lots of pens.  We also handed clipboards around for evaluations at the end of the movie.  The main events were watching Madagascar 2, pictures with santa, gifts for kids, concessions, and food basket raffles.  Now we are preparing for a sex education seminar.