do more volunteer work

Finally went with my mom and sister to meet with the camp director and talk to her. I’ll be coming to help out at camp whenever camp doesn’t conflict with my work schedule. In a convenient twist of fate, work isn’t scheduling me (or anyone else) a whole lot, and hardly at all during the morning-midafternoon period of the day, so I’ll probably be at camp for the whole week. The theme for camp this year is something along the lines of “A world of understanding” – each day has as its theme a different region of the world, and activities are being planned to teach the girls about other cultures and lifestyles and such. I get to be in charge of the activities for Europe day (Wonder why they came up with that idea?). I’m thinking soccer. Other than that, I’m not really sure what to do – Europe involves so many different cultures and traditions and histories that it’s hard to pick what to do to represent the whole continent. The director has contacted one of our area’s ethnic dance groups (something Eastern European, I want to say Ukranian, but I’m not sure) but whether or not they’re coming is up in the air. Darn the fact that I’m only starting to get involved with this thing like a week before camp, otherwise I’d be trying to track down lots more ethnic dancers and ethnic things in general…will make do though. Maybe soccer, crepes, and some activity involving learning words for “hi!” in various European languages. Maybe a polka.

There’s a chance I may be helping out with Girl Scout day camp again this summer. I was the craft director there for about 4 or 5 years (I honestly lost track of how long I did it), but then I went away to college (and thus wasn’t around to plan anything) and our day camp merged with the neighboring service units’ day camp for a couple years, so I haven’t done it since the summer after I graduated high school. Apparently day camp is actually happening this year, with a new director (a nearly yearly occurance), and I’ve been volunteered (by at least TWO people nonetheless, my mother and my best friend) to do arts and crafts again.

We’ll see how this fits with the (marginally) more profitable employment that I have and the internship that I am (hopefully) going to find.

Ok, scratch that entry, since I’ll only be here for another month and a half they don’t want my help. Well boo to them. So this goal is once again waiting till I get back to the States.

I went to mass at Santa Susannah, the American parish in Rome, on Sunday. They have a small library of English books there. I left my name and contact information to see about possibly volunteering a few hours a week there for the rest of the semester (which is only about a month and a half, but still, why not). Haven’t heard back from them yet – we’ll see. Maybe if I’m volunteering there they’ll let me check out books without actually signing up to become a library member (and having to pay the membership fee for months of membership that I won’t be around for).

Or at least until I learn a bit more Italian, anyways. The school has a community service opportunity with a soup kitchen run by Catholic charities, but you have to have a working knowledge of Italian, or at least be able to communicate decently. I don’t and I can’t; not yet, anyways. Maybe soon.

I would like to get back into volunteering often though. I did it all the time in high school but have kind of been slacking since. :-(