Another week at Piers Park!

Welcome back blog readers!

After-speech picture with Charlayne

     This week marks the end of my second week at Piers Park. Despite being occasionally rainy, this week might have been better than last week. We had lots of unique events this week, so everything was new but somehow I never felt lost. I've gotten over the initial awkwardness that comes with not knowing anyone's names, and I look forward to working with my awesome coworkers each week. I'm also learning to look forward to the guest speakers we have at meetings, namely Charlayne Murrell-Smith, the Vice President of external relations and corporate development at the Children's Museum. She was fascinating to listen to, especially when she was talking about how she got where she is today. I got a lot of good advice from her, especially about networking. The hardest part is being the one to walk over and say hi, but it's the most important part, according to her.

Atticus with a crab he caught

     This week seems to be a busy week for aggressive crabs. We started off the week with a huge spider crab, and the kids used the crab's strong legs and reflexes to pick up other crabs in the touch tank. "Crablifting" was a huge hit that day. We were lucky enough to catch a few rock crabs throughout the week, and those were pretty feisty. One of them even hung on to Jordon's lifejacket before dropping back into the tank. One of our groups at Courageous almost skipped fish printing entirely to spend their time at the touch tank.


     We had an interesting event on Wednesday, where we took the Piers Park kids over to Lopresti Park to help Artists for Humanity in creating a "community mural" picture of the park. Each kid got to take a marker and fill in a few sections of the mural, whether it be a few rocks, or part of a tree, or a building in the background. I personally filled in part of the Zakim Bridge in. Afterwards, the kids learned about Harbor trivia and how we can learn more about the harbor from the various groups set up near the mural. The mural was attracting all sorts of bystanders, from parents next to the playground to a community service group picking up trash in the park. It's cool to be part of a shared community experience where everyone gets together to spread awareness about an integral part of our community: the harbor.

Post-mural soccer in the rain

Me with Garret at Lopresti Park

     Friday was also a big change, as we went to the Carson Beach Bash and Splash instead of our normal shift at Piers Park. All of the staff (with the exception of the MLK scholars) helped out to make the event run smoothly. We had fishing, a touch tank (for what we caught fishing), sports, kayaking (run by the Piers Park staff), and face painting. I personally worked at the touch tank, which I think was the luckiest group because we got a tent and didn't really have to get our hands dirty. The majority of the kids who came to our station had never seen a crab in real life before, much less touched and held one. A few were even scared of the hermit crabs, but everyone eventually held at least the hermit crabs.

Song of the week: A Mother Never Rests by Lori McKenna

See you in the next blog!
     ~Colin McRae