Letter to My Bloomington Homies

Hey Bloomington, I miss you. I don’t miss you because things are rough here or because I am unhappy, but rather I miss sharing successes and smiles with you. Things have actually been pretty great here lately. I/we have had several prosperous projects and lessons, activities etc. everything I am supposed to be doing I am managing to more than fumble my way through this time, and I very much wish I could share this with you. 

(Why are you so far away? Also, here is a map with directions just in case you decide to visit me in the next 6 weeks)

I know, you guys are all wondering when I became so talented with Paint

I think my community of awesome people back in Btown who are so disgustingly generous would really love seeing the secondary project I have begun working with, a small organization called niños chuitinamit luz (Children of our town light, I don’t really get the light part, but sure). It’s an after school program for kids who either do not have parents or have only a single mom who often times can’t be in the house helping them with their homework. These kids, who often times need a little bit more assistance come to the escualita (little school) and receive help with their homework, art classes, health lessons, and a safe place to play keeping them off the streets.

To all my hippie friends back in Bloomington (yeah, all you vegan, all organic, Reduce, reuse, recycle fiend folks ;) I think you really would have appreciated the Earth Day event I helped create. For this event all of the schools/education centers in my district (16) got together to clean up our town. Kids went to the streets sweeping up trash and worked together in making our pueblo a little cleaner. As an added bonus, before the actual event I went to several schools and gave health lessons on how to take care of Mother Nature, the dangers of contamination, and of course trash classification and recycling! Then on our big Earth Day several schools separated the recycling from the rest of the trash and had it delivered to a recycling center in a nearby town. I know this doesn’t seem like a lot of work, but in reality, it kind of was. We organized over 2,000 kids to work on one singular project, over 50 teachers, we asked for help from the municipality through donations of gloves, masks, snack for the day, and a truck to gather the trash to take to the town dump and to take the recycling to the recycling center. All in all this project would not have been possible without all of the people who make of the educative community of my town. It was also a pretty great site mate project.  

This is only two or three schools

Look at them with all their brooms! They're like an angry mob against trash!

kids bringing refa (snack)

Bird flu protection! Jk just cleaning up disease ridden contaminants

Teacher leading the broom brigade

Recycling!

But that trash though...

Mirador!

To all of my derby friend and all of my feminist activist friends (most of you occupy both of these categories), I think you would get a kick out of watching the girls in my girls group. Week by week I see their self-esteem improving, they smile a little bit more, and we develop a little more confianza. Most importantly, they are beginning to learn the art of hip checking each other. Also, they are pretty tiny with bony hips and seem to have an inherent knack for it.

So my beloved friends, I miss you all, and I very much wish you could see the work that is being done here, because for so many of you, you taught me the basis of the things that I am passing on in my day to day work here, and for that I am eternally grateful, thank you.

Hugs and hip checks,

This lady