It's that time of year again...

It's that time of year again! This only happens once a year, for only one week. The time of year when there are no classes, but you still have to go to school! The time of year that always happens to be the hottest week of the year...proving that God has a sense of humor!  The time of year when you work hard, occasionally hurt yourself or others, and wonder why on earth God placed you in the team he did while you hide on the bottom of the bus! Yes, it's SEW!!!

I was tempted to steal this dog. It's so cute!

For those of you who don't know what SEW is, it stands for Service Emphasis Week.  It is something our school does every year.  The entire student body participates by choosing one place they would like to go to serve.  We are given a list, and from our choices, we are placed in teams.  For example, this year some of our choices included:

~Salvation Army
~A cancer ward
~An animal shelter
~Many orphanages
~An alcoholic rehabilitation centre
~And many, many more...

For Monday through Thursday, we go to our work place and help doing whatever they need.  On Friday, we share presentations of what we did throughout the week and what we learned.

So...for this year, I got to visit the animal shelter...with all the puppies and kitties!! I was so happy!

My team was quite diverse, all ninth graders, but from all over the place. Our team consisted of Lizzie (American-New Zealander, Ena (Greek), Ben (Zimbabwean), Daudi (German), Rudransh (Indian) and Celia (Hispanic-African).  It made for an interesting experience, to say the least!

Our team!

Day 1...

Adorable, huh?

We got in the bus and immediately knew we had made a mistake.  One of the guys decided to lean out the window and shout "HABARI!!!" (hello in Swahili) in an extremely annoying accent to random people as we made our way to the shelter.  So, part of the bus trip was spent trying to pry him away from the window, and the other part was spent hiding on the floor, trying to avoid eye contact with the people he was shouting at.

We spent most of the day getting used to the area, deciding on our strategy and what we should build...not to mention playing with the puppies. I also learned some valuable life lessons.  For example, if people say a structure is bolted together, check to make sure that is an accurate statement before climbing on it!

The finished decorations

However, day two was much more work now that we knew what to do.  We started rebuilding and shading a play area for the dog enclosure, took the dogs for walks down by the beach, as well as decorated the dog enclosure with painted tires.

Aren't they the cutest things?!?!

Day three and four were the same work as before, but we took a break to play with kitties.  By this point, we were all comfortable with each other, and our interactions were rather hilarious.  I will make a point to mention that Ena locked me in the cat enclosure, and Ben refused to let me out. Daudi and Rudransh argued half the time, and could barely agree on anything.  It's a miracle they got the work done that they did. But somehow, they managed just fine! Last, but not least, Celia accidentally whacked Ben in the nose with a massive piece of wood (don't ask me how).

But for all the mishaps that happened, our team was awesome, and we had a ton of fun on our SEW week, making lots of memories along the way.  For the most part, we had a blast, and I will always remember my ninth grade SEW!

I swear, this cat wanted to kill me

Thought bubble: "Attack!!"