Folks, if you want the Badlands National Park all to yourself, visit in February. Andy and I spent hours yesterday hiking around the park and saw not a soul. It was eerie, but tranquil.
As some of you know, part of my duties at the Sioux YMCA has been to create a long term volunteer program so that more people like me can come volunteer at the Sioux YMCA. So far I've created an application, a manual, put together suggested readings, and cold emailed probably close to 300 departments at various colleges. We've gotten probably around 25 responses and a few applications are rolling in. I wrote a letter for the last page of the volunteer manual. I wanted to share it here because I feel that it encapsulates the experience pretty well. I caught a short clip of some bull riding. The cowboy gets bucked off at the end. In order to qualify, they have to hang on for 8 seconds. That doesn't sound like much, but not many made it even that long. My video quality turned out to be not so good. Camera phones, so it goes...
The rodeo featured the following events:
I can't believe that I'm adding another page to my blog and entitling it "Feb"! Where has the time gone?! One more week and I'll have been on the rez for seven months. I just wanted to give a quick update since there's been lots of changes happening at the Y lately that I haven't posted about, but now I feel like I'm beginning to process them. Courtney quit her position at the Y and has moved on to a new position at the Denver YMCA. She left last Saturday. Colleen (do you remember Colleen? I lived with her (took her room when mine had mushrooms growing from the ceiling) on the weekends this past summer. She was our resident camp's water/safety director) will be replacing Courtney starting in March. Andy just got back from his three week trip to the YMCA in Togo [Africa] and a total of five weeks off. This has brought a sense of normalcy for the kids and sanity for me. We've been switching up evening programming at the Y and doing Girls Night and Boys Night instead of tween and teen nights. Today at Girls Night we made scarves from donated t-shirts. Reduce, reuse, recycle, recreate! This weekend Andy, Carol, and I are attending the Rapid City Rodeo so be sure to check back for my next post.
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AuthorYou've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. --Annie Dillard ArchivesCategories |