Beer Bike!

Beer Bike was today, and it was a special one. While many people would think that I, as a Jonesian, would absolutely hate any Beer Bike that involved Will Rice sweeping for the first time in 26 years, I actually did have a good time and am really happy for all my friends at Will Rice who are in a state of unnatural bliss right now after their Beer Bike sweep.
First, a shout out to all of the colleges that made my Beer Bike awesome.
Baker: Thanks for being the only college that was still awake last night and partying through the night. Your apathy towards competition rivals that of Sid Rich's and makes us all remember to stop taking ourselves so seriously. It was also really funny to see "Jazz Hands" written on the backs of all the Will Rice jerseys.
Will Rice: Congrats on your win. I realized that you can have a lot more fun congratulating friends on a job well done than you can being upset about not winning as I was last year.
Hanszen: Without you, our jacks this year wouldn't have been anywhere near as great, or taken up half of the jacks section of the Thresher. This was a great year for Beer Bike jacks as a member of Jones, and one that will be remembered for a while. Also, major props on the uniforms of your pit crew, which were hilarious and perfect considering your theme this year, Drunker Mifflin. (They were all wearing uniforms that resembled those worn by the warehouse workers in The Office)
Wiess: West Side Story was amazing, and I've had an awesome time spending so much time with yall these past few weeks. Keep up your crazy awesome traditions, and hopefully I can be hanging out with yall during O-week next year, fingers still crossed since the co-fellow selections haven't been made yet.
Brown: Excellent job in the water balloon fight, but I still think yall care a bit too much about hating Jones and not enough about loving Brown.
Wiess and Brown: Thanks for reminding Jones and Will Rice that this isn't just a race between the two of us. Yall put up a great fight this year and had us both scared senseless at times.
Lovett: Thanks for taking one for the team and having the worst Beer Bike theme this year. Don't worry, we all have to be there at some point, and we at Jones served our time last year.
Sid: Amazing job with the DQ's this year. I'm sure most of the other Rice students were getting tired of the naked biker, and it was awesome to see a unicycler and a rocket propelled bicycle this year. It was a lot of fun. Keep up your Beer Bike traditions, they make the day more enjoyable for everyone.
Martel: Excellent warrior-like attitude in the water balloon fight, particularly with the red capes. Also, congrats on finally having enough people to field a full alumni team. Surely a historic moment in Beer Bike history. I imagine it will take many many years for Duncan and McMurtry to achieve that feat.
Jones: For being by far the greatest college in the history of the universe. For winning again, and getting 2nd place in all of the races we didn't crash in. For an amazing pit crew to work with, awesome bikers and chuggers and fans. Awesome water balloon fillers, jacks coordinators, and all of those people who sacrificed their chance to be in the water balloon fight to serve Jones as security and truck riders. I salute you.
JIBA!!

And the awards for the most obnoxious people of Beer Bike:
Autumn for popping my last water balloon that I was saving for Miguel.
Me for asking Miguel for one of his water balloons and then throwing the balloon that he gave me right back at him.
Allie and Rachel for hitting me with a couple balloons from behind.
Andrea, Robyn, and Marie for hunting me down on multiple occassions with water balloons.
Kyle Schnitzer for being absolutely ruthless during the water balloon fight.
Whoever decided that we could each only have one truck this year in the water balloon fight.
Will Rice for sweeping. No one likes it when that happens, but as I said earlier, congratulating your Will Rice friends makes you feel a lot better than just being upset about it.

Eagle Butte Wrap up!

I'm now back at Rice and...dang that trip was amazing!

Later on Friday night we went to Dairy Queen to talk to the staff and long term volunteers about what we thought went well and what wasn't so great about the week. We voiced our concerns about how we thought the structure of the program and the discipline at The Main could be improved. While Alex (the volunteer coordinator) and the long term volunteers were pretty defensive at first, the dialogue eventually improved (mostly after we returned to our living quarters and talked to them there instead of at DQ) and some agreements were reached. Alex realized that she should have been more clear about how much we were able to discipline the kids, and that the short term volunteers have just as much of a right to send kids home as anyone else, though it still makes it hard to be willing to do that when we've only spent a couple days with them. Hopefully our comments were helpful.

Yesterday was filled with a lot of travel along with visits to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Liz was really upset about us going to Mt Rushmore and none of us were quite sure why at first. She explained briefly before we got there, and went into more detail after we had left. Apparently the sculpting of Mt Rushmore was a huge slap in the face to the Lakota people for a number of reasons. First, it defiled the Black Hills, which are sacred grounds for the Lakota people and are said to be the birthplace of creation. Not only did the US government desecrate the Black Hills, but they did it by sculpting the faces of US leaders who oppressed Native Americans while they were in power. According to Liz, even Abe Lincoln, right after freeing blacks from slavery, encouraged the elimination of Native Americans. Throughout American history the US government has been doing things to oppress and kill American Indians, and all of the presidents on Mt Rushmore were fine with letting that happen or even encouraging it during their presidency. Absolutely horrible! All four of them were great leaders, don't get me wrong, but they did do some horrible things too.

I think the most imporant thing I got out of the trip is that the Native Americans are a very oppressed people. When people talk about poor minorities and impoverished communities, they usually think of hispanics and blacks in urban areas. They've got it way better than the Native Americans living on the reservations do, or at least the ones in the community that we worked in, which is definitely one of the worst ones in the country, which is why we went there. They need help, and that help isn't going to come from the government, or even from volunteers like us. They need an internal catalyst to start change there to improve their community.
I also realized that a problem I've been having this semester isn't going to be resolved any time soon, and I have no idea what I can really do about it. It's not something I want to discuss a lot on this blog, but I'm going to keep praying about it.

I'm so thankful for the friendships that were formed on the trip. It was an amazing experience for all of us. The food that was prepared by different pairs of people each night was fantastic, the kids were awesome to hang out with, the other volunteers were awesome for the most part, and I really hope the Cheyenne River Youth Project continues its amazing work!

Getting ready for Fashion for Passion

Today The Main and the Teen Center were both closed so that we could spend the entire day preparing for an event called Passion for Fashion (I may have mentioned it in my first post). I didn't think that it would take very long to set up, all we had to do was put out all of the prom dresses, shoes, makeup, etc, but we spent pretty much the whole day decorating and doing all kinds of things that I didn't originally think that we would need to do. Once I put the pictures up on facebook you can get a better picture of what happened then I can explain here, but it was just amazing how many people they are expecting to come. We had hundreds of dresses for them to choose from in the gym and the one girl who came in today before the event which is technically tomorrow was SOOO happy to get her dress. It made me think of how much joy will be in the air tomorrow. It will be insane.
Sorry to cut it short, but it's time to eat!

Eagle Butte Thursday

Today was our last day to be working with the kids, which was pretty sad. Some of the things I discovered today and that our group talked about:
These kids could really use some permanent staff. The after school program is run entirely by volunteers, some of which, like us, who are only there for a week, and others who are here for longer. Discipline is a huge problem, especially with the younger kids. It starts with trouble in their households. Lack of strong parents who raise their kids responsibly, but also lack of discipline at The Main is a problem. The long term volunteers, with the exception of Dave, don't really punish kids for misbehaving and often either ignore the bad behavior or try so hard to be their friends that they don't want to hurt that relationship by upsetting them, and the short term volunteers are here for so little time that we don't really feel like we have a good idea of how the disciplinary procedure even works. It would be really great if the CRYP had more money to hire more staff (they only have 4 full time staff that are usually busy doing the more administrative things instead of working with the kids), or if some local high schoolers could come and volunteer frequently instead of only having volunteers who come from far away and then leave after a week or two, or a few months.
Another thing that bothered me occured when we were working in the kitchen today. We were told to go through the refrigerator and freezer and throw out anything that had expired or looked old. After going through it all and bringing boxes of expired foods out of the kitchen, some of the staff members insisted that we put about 2/3 of it back. Their reasoning was that when you are in such a poor community, you need to save as much food as you can. I didn't think it was right to save food that could possibly be bad for people when they already had plenty of good food in their pantries and refrigerator. AJ even mentioned this evening that the Houston Food Bank always throws out food that is expired, and it is benefitting poor communities just like the CRYP is.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that we can't lower our standards just because we are helping poor communities. We can't let discipline slide just because we don't want to hurt feelings or want to be the friends of the kids. We can't let the health of this community's citizens be sacrificed so that we save some money on food. It's unacceptable. I think the CRYP has the right goals and ideals, but I feel like some things should be changed on the administrative side of things to make the mission work the way it is trying to work.

Eagle Butte Wednesday

Today we spent the morning doing actual work in the teen center which involved sorting incoming donations and writting down every last thing that was inside the boxes that we received. We then also filled orders for people who came needing supplies for their families like clothing, toiletries, diapers, etc.

It made me begin to wonder about the purpose of wellfare. Is it good or is it bad? It's hard to think of how giving people things that they need to survive could be a bad thing since it is done out of kindness, selflessness and charity, but it seems like Americans often become dependent on this wellfare and use it an an excuse to not work. I think it is safe to say that we are helping them in the short term for sure, since these families would be in a dire condition indeed if they didn't have food and clothing, but I think in addition to giving them essential tools for surviving in the short term, it is equally important for us to give them tools for surviving in the long term. Perhaps the Cheyenne River Youth Project should also spend time training the adults of the Cheyenne River Reservation so that they can get jobs, teaching the kids the importance of graduating high school and making it to college, and telling them at an incredibly early age about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

This is why I really enjoyed our last activity of the evening, college night. We spent about an hour sharing information about college with the teens at the teen center. We talked about Rice and answered a variety of questions about how hard class work is, what kinds of sports we play, if we get to go on trips, and how many roommates we have. These all seemed like pretty standard questions to ask about college, but there were also some that surprised me. One kid asked how many Native Americans there were at Rice. It seemed like a really odd question to ask, but then I realized that these kids have been surrounded only by other American Indians for their entire lives and how scary it would be for them to travel to a different state and be surrounded by people with different skin and hair color that come from a different culture than you. I can't imagine how strange it would be for me to go to a school with no other Catholics, or no other white people. It would be really intimidating. While many of my friends come from different cultures and have different religious views than me, I still think that one needs to have other people like them that they can easily connect with on certain things.

Another tricky question that was asked was one about how often people drink at Rice. The quick and obvious response was yes, and they drink a lot. Rice is a very wet campus and everyone knows about it. Yet we all realized that we couldn't say this to kids in a community that struggles so much with alcohol abuse. I was afraid to answer the question, but David Younger had a great response. He explained that people do drink at college, because many of them are of legal age, but that it is a really foolish thing for them to do and many people aren't able to keep up with their school work when they drink too much. He explained how stupid it was for people to spend a lot of money on a college education and then waste it by getting drunk every night. I don't think I could have explained it better myself.

Actual Eagle Butte Post Number 1

I apologize for the last post. Andrea was being ridiculous. And now I'm talking as I type, and it's pretty weird.

So two days ago, we arrived in Eagle Butte, SD after flying through Denver and Rapid City and then driving from Rapid City to Eagle Butte. Eagle Butte is a Native American (Lakota) reservation in the center of South Dakota that is in one of the poorest counties in the nation.

We started our work Monday morning by sorting a lot of prom dresses and accessories to prepare for the Cheyenne River Youth Project's annual Passion for Fashion event on Saturday after we leave. The event give the native girls a chance to dress up nice and boost their self image. Eagle Butte doesn't have any prom dress stores, and most people don't have enough money to even afford dresses, even if they could make the trip to a bigger city which would be at least an hour drive away.

But this morning we became aware of much more dire problems in the community after talking to a counselor in this area. There were a ton of things that absolutely shocked me about the community here:
1. Something like 80-85% of kids in this community have been sexually abused. The counselor we spoke to said she hadn't talked to anyone on the reservation who hadn't been sexually abused.
2. The unemployment rate is almost as high, somewhere between 70 and 75% from what I recall. The people have no motivation to work and are seriously better off not having a job. If you have a job here, the price of rent goes up based on a percentage of your income, you don't qualify for food stamps, and you are basically worse off. The people who do find jobs often quit them quickly because they seriously can't afford to have jobs, even if they want to, because they can't spend time with family, pay rent, or feed their families.
3. Continuing off of number 2, the government has done so much harm to this community. It's insane. As I mentioned, welfare makes a job not worth having. Also, while they have "free" healthcare, everyone is afraid to use it. In the 70's the Indian Healthcare system the doctors would often sterilize their patients or blackmail them. For example, after a woman would give birth, the doctor might refuse to give the mother her baby unless she consented to being sterilized. In another case that the woman speaking to us today used, one of her relatives was incorrectly diagnosed twce before they correctly identified his leuchemia. The patient even had to travel to a doctor to fix his "kidney stones," only to discover after arriving that he didn't actually have kidney stones after the doctor told him that he had been incorrectly diagnosed.
4. Drug and alcohol abuse is RIDICULOUS. The counselor told us how she got drunk for the first time when she was 11, and some of the kids here smoke pot as early as 7 years old. It's terrible.
5. Gang violence is terrible as well. Most people join gangs because they need a sense of belonging and a family, and usually don't get that at home. Almost half of the kids on the reservation drop out of high school, and of the ones who go to college, only 15% of them stay past their first semester. This is usually due to family pressures and not having any connections at their college compared to the families at home.

Most of what we've been doing while we've been here is playing with the kids either with board games or in the gym playing basketball. They LOVE basketball. It's super fun, but at the same time I feel like we could be doing more to help their situation, like perhaps teaching them. More updates, as well as facebook pictures are sure to come soon.

Andrea speaks before my actual blog post

Gee wiz, I love my life. I am really looking forward to dinner right now. Oh buddy! Oh what great fun I had this day.What? *giggle* ummm...yes yes. I'm just gonna put that out there. Like while we're chewing, yeah. This is going to be a very interesting entry. I love zebras and everything about them. Have you heard of romney, wait, don't type this. Yeah, Romney from Martel. Have you seen his facebook. They took his password and it's so awful. They're always together though. Ahahahaha,. that is so sad. *giggle* awww. I think they did that a lot. I know Michael Eastwood because he was my screw your roommate date, and Duffy. That would be, yeah. Hehe. That's uh...Dang. Which, you mean suitemate? Aww. Haha, I love zebras and everything about them. I really love that line. I want a transcript of everything I say more often. It's so good. Let's have a conversation Kurt.
You were in the same group for. Well, let me tell you for the sake of overhearers. It was eventful. I actually liked putting away the stuff from the rummage sale. And jumping on the stuff in the dumpster. And basketball I had a lot of fun playing basketball. The two guys who were friends? Oh, that was Wolf and ...uh, RJ. Oh, Coda, yeah. *looks at Alex's blog* You know what's going on right? The table looks so good guys! Mucha comida. I like speaking bad spanish. My social security number is...*long pause* I'm super super hungry.