Today, in our fifth day of Habitat for Humanity, we went to the Perkins Center of the Arts and helped them build raised planting beds for their garden. We built the frames out of 2 by 8s and filled them using dirt from a large pile that the Perkins Center had delivered last Friday....
Continue readingMulticultural Philly: Around Chinatown
We started out the day by going to the Peking Duck House. The food there was really good and everyone had a good time. For appetizers we enjoyed wonton soup and spring rolls; for the main course we had duck, General Tso’s chicken, vegetable fried-rice, white rice, ginger lo mein, and string beans; for...
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Exploring Art: Synergies
Today everyone worked on completing a project for tomorrow’s trip to the Pine Barrens. These projects consisted of creating either an abstract or realism sculpture. Some people worked together, others chose to work alone. The students were offered various options on the type of sculpture they could create, or there was the option to...
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First day in the village
By Sarah Henig, Vanessa, and Kendall On the first full day of service we ate breakfast with our families. Then, we went out to work on the playground at the local school. After a morning of hard work, we took a siesta and had a delicious lunch provided by our family. With the extra...
Continue readingCosta Rica: Lots of fun pictures
Here are some pictures. More pics and video to come when we can find a stronger Internet signal....
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Snow on deck!
Today was a fun yet wintery day. When we got to the Bayshore Center at Bivalve, we immediately went to the boat. There was snow on the deck, so Kiera, Harvey, and Ian shoveled it off. While they shoveled, Mrs. Van Meter, Caroline, Kelcie, Natalie, and Aparna cleaned the living quarters under the deck....
Continue readingThe Quilt Shop: Adding bedding and seams
At the Burlington quilt shop we finished our large quilts by adding bedding onto them. We used a giant machine to make seams all over the quilts and to make designs and doodles on the quilt squares. After that we made personalized logos along with our names, the date, and title of our quilts...
Continue readingSouth Jersey Food Bank: Foxes Pack Boxes
Today, Service in Camden traveled to the South Jersey Food Bank to sort, pack, and ship food donated from a variety of sources. Here is what we did today:...
Continue readingHabitat for Humanity: The Warehouse Was Be-Squeegeed
Day Four Our day at the Habitat Warehouse began with Steven, Anthony and Peter taking down an office space by removing the windows and doors, preparing the area for demolition on Friday (hopefully by our group). While this was happening, a number of students, plus Mr. Thomson and Mr. Newman, started the long practice...
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The Neighborhood Center, Part Two
Today, the Service in Camden group went back to The Neighborhood Center to finish some projects and begin some new ones. We pulled roots out of garden beds, created garden beds, scrubbed some chairs for kids to use, cleaned chairs and tables for neighbors to eat from, organized books to be ready to go...
Continue readingConformity, social roles, obedience … oh my!
Prisons designed to depersonalize inmates trigger antisocial behavior. Students learned about the three keystones of the social psychology of prison life – the Stanford Prison experiment on social roles, the Yale Milgram studies of obedience, and the Swarthmore Asch work on conformity – as a prelude to understanding the social pressures on behavior. Today...
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Bayshore: Lots of work and some play
Day Two Day two of our Bayshore trip and the boat still hasn’t arrived (hopefully tomorrow!). But that doesn’t mean our group of 14 eager (and slightly frozen) students couldn’t find work to be done. Not only does the boat need to be taken care of, but also the dock she resides in, and the...
Continue readingMulticultural Philadelphia: African-American history
Day Two We began the day with a riveting talk about the African-American history of Philly thanks to our entertaining tour guide Ernest. He talked about how African-American women and children were significant to the history of Philadelphia, how Quakers came about, and how Pennsylvania came about. He talked about William Penn, and his...
Continue readingQuilting: Our skills are improving!
Day Two Hey guys! Today we made quilts! Everyone improved their skills and can finish quilting more quickly. We were grouped in pairs of two to help each other out. All of us were focused and careful. During lunch, we went uptown and ate at Passarello’s. We then went to Starbuck’s afterwards. All of...
Continue readingHabitat for Humanity: Demolition
Day Two Today, we had breakfast as soon as we arrived. Then, we went to the Habitat Restore warehouse to do whatever was needed. The visit was actually a surprise because we were supposed to be making raised beds, but due to frigid temperatures we decided to change our plans. Of course, the Habitat community...
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