Yesterday was my first day working at the Y, where they are holding summer day camp for the kids. I’ve been given the position of Program Director, which are big shoes to fill when you have no experience and are thrown into another culture. In one day I have learned not to ask kids their names, but instead to learn them when someone else calls them by their name. Andy, the guy I work under, says the children don’t like questions because white people always come in and ask lots of questions and are too nosey. This week’s theme is dino week. We only had a handful of kids yesterday, which was nice for my first day. Kenton, a local teenager who has a part time job at the Y thinks that everyone was traveling this weekend with the powwow. J.R. thinks it might be because of the dead rattlesnake that we had in the fridge that Andy was going to practice gutting. It’s bad luck to keep a dead snake around and it keeps the children away. I’m a little nervous for when we have the normal amount of kids—24—at camp. Like the dogs, the kids here also roam free. There’s a two-year-old boy, I’ll call him C, who always wanders down to the Y barefoot and in his diaper. Yesterday he was on a skateboard. I ended the night with a dinner at Andy’s house with a visiting team from the Y Initiative, which is based out of Minneapolis. They are one of our Y’s partner and the team’s here for two weeks visiting the communities and playing with the kids. They were really cool people, like everyone I’ve met from the Y so far.
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