Just Another Fun Day at Piers Park...

           On Friday after MLK Karrisha and I trooped over to Piers Park to spend some time with the East Boston YMCA with Ali as our leader. Ali devised an awesome program by assigning each of the junior program assistants to a group of about ten East Boston kids. There were three stations where kids could either go to the dock, play marine themed games on the grass such as Sharks and Minnows or Crab Tag, or head into the tent for some interesting board games like Apples to Apples! But everything was organized so that every individual group would be rotated around each of the various stations so that they wouldn't be plagued with repetitive monotonous activities over and over again.

Miguel holds his first lobster

                                                             
           Along with Candido, we were put in charge of 8 East Boston YMCA kids who were a joy to have. First of all, we had each of the kids introduce themselves using a marine organism that starts with the first letter of their name. After we both started the kids on a game of Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is a fun game where each kid chooses his or her own marine animal to be. Another person (who is Uncle Sam), yells out a specific characteristic and anybody whose animal fits that can cross the river dam. Following an exciting game we switched over to the dock where Candido led a small group out to fish and I led a small group to the crab trap. Surprisingly, there were two small lobsters in the trap. One child named Miguel wanted to hold one so badly that I just had to comply and let him hold one. This made my day because I was able to let one child have a new experience with a lobster and I hope there will be more to come!

                    Yours truly,
                     Vinh Tran