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4.25.03

Oh, what a wonderful week! This week I got to work with Yosemite Institute and what a week. I worked with Andrew formally known as Boots; He was great. I can not say this was the best week with YI since I have no other week to compare it with, so far so good.
Boots and I had six graders from a middle school in LA, they were really interesting kids. It was really interesting how they adapt to the climate of Yosemite Valley, most of them were really cold even do they were wearing so many thick layers of clothing. A funny thing was the way that they didn’t want to get dirty even do they had to do activities outdoors. It is nice to see schools that bring their students to such beautiful place like Yosemite. I wished I had that privilege that these kids have.

This group of kids was really diverse and I like to see that in a group. Monday morning we had an early bird meeting with the rest of the YI instructors, something that I do not do everyday, I felt special. Being in a circle with some amazing outdoor teachers and sharing ideas among each other on how to teach the students and also getting the best out of the coming week. After the meeting we went out and met our students.

They were a bit shock with the weather; this week has being crazy with sun in the morning and closing the day with some rain. On the meeting with the kids we were told that a girl had injured her ankle and she was going to be send home, which was a bummer. After we [the instructors] checked that everyone had everything such: as water, writing utensil and some layers, we took off. We went to the meadow in front of curry village. We walked to the side of the Merced River and after ten minutes or so into our walk, I and the rest of the kids did our first group activity in Yosemite. The activity was the “name game”, this game or activity is about learning the name of the group members, something that I am not good at. As everyone said their name they had to come up with some kind of special dance, it is hilarious! I got to do the Ketchup song dance. After the name activity, Boots dared the group to giggle 4 balls at the same time. The deal was this: we had to past the ball among each other, but we had to past it to a person that haven’t gotten the ball —it is something that you need to be in order to understand of what I am trying to say. Even do it was a children game I had fun, but of course I am a eighteen year old guy with the mind of a six year old kid. The day went on and as the time went off, my energy went off too, I do no know how kids get to have so much energy, they went on and on and on; just like the energizer bunny. The rest of the week was almost the same; we stayed all the time with in the Yosemite Valley.

I hope that the rest of the weeks get to be fun like this one. I love working with kids and at the same time getting to know the park of which John Muir and Ansel Adams talk and take pictures so much. I am still thinking that all this is a dream, well if that is the case; I never want to wake up.

"Lots of minds for a small world" - José