Dallas Day 2!

Greetings from Dallas! 

Another great day in the Lone Star state!  We had an early morning and then headed off to Bryan's House for another full day of work.  We began with a read through of our script for our puppet show (Lyle, Lyle Crocodile) for the kids on Friday.  This is sure to be an Oscar-winning performance with a rock star cast!  Next, a group of us worked on the set design for the play while others headed to classrooms to play with the kids.  After lunch it was back to work where we finished up the final touches on our play, organized some supplies, and continued to plow through some databases. 

Here are some thoughts from the day:

Alex King: Today I worked with the 3-5 year old age group and really enjoyed their excitement of drawing pancakes and fruit salad. My favorite moment was when the kids starting fighting over who I was best friends with meeting them five minutes prior. The kids are sweet and I enjoyed being a part of their day.

Katie Jones: Today I worked mostly doing data transfer and helping with the puppet show. I'm quite impressed by the awesome ingenuity we used to make Barbie dolls into old grumpy men. I really appreciated how much effort the people do at Bryan's House doing the data analysis. Today we went through 8.5 pages of the 39 that started with 'A', and it just put into perspective how much time it would take for a single person to do so.

Francis Ahrens: It has been such a great couple of days in Dallas. Although I did not work with the children today, I was able to help in other ways. For the most part, I put in information into the database. It may not seem like a whole lot, but it was because of the fact we were still helping Bryan's House. I also had a lot of fun making the dolls for our play. I'm definitely looking forward to our final two days of service at Bryan's House! :)

Aubrey Snedeker (trip leader): Our second day of service it went really well. We all got to work with the children as of now. I worked in room of 5-10 year olds. They were so adorable and very accepting of the children with physical and mental disabilities. It was truly nice to see how at a young age the kids were already learning to treat other with respect and all the same, no matter what they had working against them in this world. Overall it was a wonderful day.

Our day ended with a some reflection where we discussed 'The Star Fish Story.'  In this story, an old man notices a young kid throwing star fish back into the ocean as the tide is going out.  When the old man questions the young child about how insignificant his impact can be since there are so many starfish along the beach, the young man throws another one in and replies, "It made a difference to that one."  We reflected how our work at Bryan's House is similar in the sense that even though we can't solve the entire HIV/AIDS and child welfare problem, we can make a huge different in the life of one child.  We summed it up in the famous quote: "To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you might be the world."

The group is currently huddled around a table in one of our hotel rooms, playing a surprisingly intense game of Catch Phrase.  This is really an amazing group of students and I couldn't have asked for a better spring break trip!

Good night again from Dallas! 
--Kelly (trip leader)