938 Hrs.

Today was the MLK Day of Service, as well as the Opening Day for Miami's first ever Young Heroes Corps.

This morning, I woke up at the time I normally have to wake up, because I had to be at the City Year office by 7:00 a.m. in order to plan for the day and meet some of the Young Heroes. Some of the students met us at the office and followed us to the service site, while some of them met us directly at the site.

By 9:30, all of the students were finally in their places for the start of the Opening Ceremony. I was very proud to watch my students get sworn in for their six months of service. Fortunately, the ceremony was brief, and then we were able to start our service.

I don't like a lot of the physical service I do with City Year, since almost all of it has to do with mulch and picking up trash. I enjoy volunteer work and have been volunteering for most of my life, by sometimes it seems as if all City Year is good for is picking up trash and spreading wood chips. I realize that this is all work that needs to be done, but it is hard for me to imagine that the people we work for can't find ANYTHING else for us to do, EVER. Since I was with the Young Heroes today, the service work we got to do was scrapbooking. The scrapbook we made was for some kind of global peace project, and will be sent to a group of people in Honduras, who have already sent us a scrapbook of their own. We got to spend some time learning about Honduras from some of our own corps members who have lived there, and then we were set off on our own to work on scrapbook pages. How fun!

I could have left for home at 3:00 p.m., but I decided to help the Young Heroes Program Leader get twenty kids back to the City Year office via bus and then rail, so I got home around 5:30, which is a lot earlier than most Monday nights!

-Aly