Second Week Shenanigans!

Hello Everybody!

The second week has gone by, surprisingly quick, and a lot has happened so let's get started with what happened on Monday. Monday was not the best day for me because I missed the boat to Camp Harbor View. "So where did you go for the day?" you may be asking. Well, I went to the Children's Museum and it was my first time so I didn't know how things worked over there. The day was more chill and relaxed than I thought it would be with kids and their parents stopping by and checking out what we had. With the minor hiccups like the tent not fully working, which resulted in us just taking it down and dealing with the hot sun, it went by quickly and great.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I was on All Access, with us going to Georges Island. Like last year, I was getting a little tired of going to Spectacle and was excited to go to Georges for the first time. Once again, I have these same feelings, but now toward Georges. However, that doesn't mean that I'm sick of Georges. Tuesday was a typical All Access day with us going to Georges. On Wednesday, it was in the mid 70s so it was very cool which made things very easy. Fishing and going on tours was a lot easier without the sun's heat on my back. Even going into the dark tunnel made me get goose bumps because it was too cold.

One of the shows referenced on the wall (Gravity Falls)

On Thursday, I did a lot more exploring through the fort. After leaving the dark tunnel, I went up a hidden staircase that lead up to the top of the fort. The top of the fort is the best place to have a great view of the most of the Boston Harbor. You could've seen Downtown Boston in the distance, Long and Spectacle island. I decided to explore more on top of the fort. I came across a shed and decided to go in to check it out. Inside you could see that there was the typical writing on the walls. But there was a surprising amount of geeky stuff written on the walls referencing TV shows and a podcast that I never thought would ever be written on the walls of an abandoned shed. Although I wanted to keep on exploring, I had to head back to the dark tunnel.

The shed of top of the fort

On Friday, I headed, once again, to attend the MLK Scholars meeting. This year they decided to make the event a little more exciting. They started out with us (the scholars) getting into five big groups. With our groups, we had to keep a beach ball up in the air and count every time we hit the ball. If the ball hit the ground, we would have to restart everything. There wasn't a prize; it was very energetic and was really fun. Then we had a lot of speakers. Last year, there would be one speaker per meeting, which would mean that there were four speakers through the whole summer. There were at least five speakers in this meeting alone. There was the vice president of John Hancock, the executive director of Camp Harbor View and even Mayor Marty Walsh for speakers at the meeting. This week went by very quick but it was very eventful and I glad that I saw more in what Save the Harbor has to offer and hopefully and this will continue through the summer.

Mayor Marty Walsh at the MLK Scholars Meeting

See you guys on the Harbor!

-Imani Dorsey

The Fourth and Final MLK Meeting

Hello Everyone!

The guest speaker (Tory Bullock)

As we all know, summer is about to end and most of the Save the Harbor staff are heading back to school soon. Since it's about to be the time where instead of waking up at 7 o'clock in the morning, we have to wake up as early as 5:30 in the morning, the MLK Scholars program wanted to end the summer with a bang, thus having the MLK Scholars Talent Show. It was different from the other meeting that were held in the past. Instead of  having it at BU, they held it at the Shubert theater and instead of being assigned to a table, we could sit anywhere  we wanted.

There was a speaker for this meeting and he made things a little more exciting and fun. He talked about how he was an activist and the simple things that we can do to change the world. After he spoke, we moved on to the talent show where kids who are a part of the MLK  Scholar program would show us what kind of talent they have. There was some alright performances, but the ones that stood out to me was when two kids did spoken word. One girl spoke about how she is a Muslim and how people judge her for believing in what she believes in, how she is treated, and how wrong it is for people to do so. Then right after she was on, a boy went to the stage and spoke about the current state of black communities and the violence that goes on around in these communities.

I had a great time at MLK and I got to socialize with the kids at my table, even though most of us were tired, we got through it and I think that's the most important thing that I accomplished this summer.

- Imani

The final Performance of the Talent show that was a dance number  

The chandler hanging above in the theater

Third MLK Scholars Meeting

Hi Everyone!

I just attended the third MLK scholars meeting and instead of being more progressive like the second meeting, it was more like the first meeting, quiet and lazy. The theme for this meeting was being a leader in business and a goal was to make an elevator pitch about a product that would help the community in either education, transportation, heath, or energy. The tables that had the best elevator pitch would get AMC movie tickets. For some reason, most of my table were tired and we barely had time to come up with a product that would help education in schools. We then decided to come up with a tutor robot to help with homework, projects studying for exams and quizzes and to teach new material to students that missed a day. When we had our idea figured out, we called over one of the judges to hear our pitch. Sadly, our pitch wasn't good enough to make it to the semi-finals. Most of my table didn't care much about the movie tickets. We just sat at the table talking about how tired we were. I got to meet one of the members at my table. She went to Boston Arts Academy and is going to Mass Art. For the rest of the time we talked about different techniques in drawing, what organization we worked for, and talked about strengths and weakness for drawing. At the end of the meeting, the table that had an idea about affordable transportation for students in the Boston Public schools won the movie tickets and left the stadium. All in all, the meeting was not that eventful, but at least I got to meet some awesome people.

Banana Peel Fall

Playing football with the Save the
Harbor sports club!

This week in sports we started with Frisbee with our senior harbor educator Jenn and a young group of kids. They kept running everywhere, it was so much fun! Then we went on with a game of football and we gathered some more campers and started to play tag football. The kids were playing really well and they understood the game way better than me, of course. They kept saying line up and I kept asking, "whats line up?" After we played a game of catch using a football. I was surprised that the kids really knew how to throw and catch the ball. I was struggling to catch the ball because they threw it really high, and they are only about 9 or 10 years old!!! WOW.   

Yesterday was seriously one of the best sports day. I was with Jenn, Henry and Jaiden and Jenn showed me how to throw a football correctly. I got it really quickly, maybe I'm not as good as Jaiden but I'm better than Jenn at throwing a football! There was this group of children that wanted to play football with us and Jenn told me to join in so I did. I was playing football like a pro! It was really funny how surprised they were that I could throw the ball far enough and catch it too. I tried tackling Jaiden and even came from behind and tackled Henry, sounds great right?  My head still hurts from the fall! I told Jaiden "Hey I'm going to try tackling you!" So I threw the ball at him and he said, "Okay, you sure you want do that?" I literally said, "It's ok I'm a girl you won't hurt me that bad." So I threw the ball at Jaiden and I ran for him. I CLOSED MY EYES HALF WAY THROUGH! My feet went flying up and my back went down, I thought I blacked out for a minute, I could see stars. I looked like I slipped on a banana peel! I will never try tackling Jaiden again! After my banana peel fall I pretended I wanted to tackle Jadien again but I never did it, I ran instead to Henry and knocked him down from behind. Funniest thing ever in the world, it was the best feeling ever!  

Today at MLK we talked about how we can help our youth to get out of gangs and become more involved with trying to get out of housing and in to a better life for them and their families. Today I learned that I can really make a difference in my community, if we all get involved like we already are doing in MLK. I really look forward going back to MLK in two weeks because it was really interesting and we need more of these programs for youths, and even older kids!

Sincerely,  

Marly Burgos