A Beautiful Evening

Tonight was a great night, but let's back track a little since I failed to inform the public about what went on yesterday...

I arrived at the Center for the Child yesterday around 8:30 as usual and headed for the four-year-old classroom. They were busy playing at their various "centers" and having a great start for the day. I was playing with some of the kids at their grocery store center where I was spending a great deal of pretend money on plastic fruits and vegetables and empty boxes of cereal, laundry detergent, and baby wipes. I wanted to see how much the kids knew about different types of foods so I asked one child in particular to identify each fruit for me as I purchased it. However, I was both amused and slightly concerned when one child repeatedly identified each item as..........Egg Salad - in the most honest and adorable four-year-old voice you've ever heard. No matter which item I chose for him to identify, it was always.........Egg Salad. I don't really know what that was about but I had to try my best not to laugh right in the kid's face. It was really funny.

After hanging out with the kids outside for a while, Dr. Hester came to get me and gave me an interesting assignment for the next week. I was to undertake the role of a single mother of two kids (2 and 7 years old) living in Marion, SC with a full-time job at McDonald's Restaurant - a minimum wage job. I had to budget my expenses for an entire year, including child care, transportation, insurance (health, auto, life, etc.), taxes, groceries, and any other necessary expenses. I also had to figure out how I could get to work while making sure my children got to school and daycare safely, for the needed amount of time, and while still receiving quality care and education. So far, I know that I have less that $14,000/year to work with so....yea....this is going to kind of tough but I'm really excited to see how I can make it work. Dr. Hester's intentions are for me to get a good picture of the kind of situation that the "working poor" is in, not only in Marion, but across the country. Single parents are obviously even at more of a disadvantage since there is only one source of income. I'm excited to take on this project and what I'm going to learn from it. I've also started ready Nickel and Dimed and I look forward to incorporating Ehrenreich's experience with my own research and experience at the center.

After work, I came back to the house, took a quick run around the neighborhood, and took a shower before David Oberst and I took a trip to Food Lion to get the ingredients for the meal we're cooking on Friday. We plan on serving Oven-Fried Chicken for the main course and garlic mashed potatoes and green beans as the sides. Sounds yummy right? Hopefully it will turn out well. The rest of the evening was pretty low key....we did a mini ab workout (Khadijah, Alice, and I) and watched the season finale of American Idol...Congratulations Kris!!!!! (just in case he reads this one day....lol).

So now I'll turn to my day today...

This morning I went to meet Ms. Jackie and the Troy-Johnson Intergenerational Learning Center in Mullins. I got a little lost on the way there but it turned out to be a pretty easy place to find so hopefully that won't happen again :) Ms. Jackie seems like she'll be a really great superviser...she and actually her whole family are really involved in the community and try to serve it as much as they can. Ms. Jackie was some of the lowest childcare rates in the area and I was amazed to hear that her hours of operation can last from 4 AM until midnight!!!! She's struggling like many other small business owners but she has a relentless committment to helping those in need in her community and even though I just met her, I can tell that she does a great job. She invited me to the four-year-old class's "graduation" this Saturday morning so I plan on attending that and I'm happy she's already seeing me as a part of the center's family. She's closed on Monday (Memorial Day) but I'll start out there on Tuesday morning and be there for the remainder of the week. The rest of my day was spent back at FMU with the kids there. I talked more with another student/teacher who works at the Center for the Child and is also a student at FMU. She seems really nice and I hope we get to know each other more over the course of the 9 weeks.


After getting back home, Khadijah, Alice, and I watched The View online because we were missing it so much...lol. Then, thanks to the generosity of Dr. Demarco, John Deans, Alice, and I went to Florence to see a benefit symphony performance. A lady in Florence diagnosed with breast cancer has lost her medical insurance and as a result declared medical bankruptcy because she cannot afford to pay for her treatment. As an accomplished flutist and musical director at her church, the local Florence Symphony Orchestra, the Masterworks Choir, the Florence Little Theatre Singers, and other musicians performed at this benefit concert to raise money for this woman and her family. It was a beautiful concert and my very first symphony that I've seen perform! This family is very much loved in their community and I wish her all of the best. The emcee reported at the end of the concert that over $31,000 had been raised for the family so far so hopefully much more will come. It was nice to get up close and personal with small town South Carolina (even though Florence is bigger than Marion) and I'm sure much more of the will come later.

Well that's about all I can do tonight...I'M TIRED!!!! Goodnight :)