Sunday in Bethel

After a sleep in, we all gathered in dining hall to eat lunch and start our day of talking about personal wellness. We got into three groups: the Spice Girls, The Backstreet Boys, and N*Sync. We spend some time getting to know the people in our groups a bit better. We were also serenaded with renditions of 90s pop songs.

After these warm-ups, we regrouped to have a discussion about how tobacco and nicotine affect the body and how "big tobacco" works on advertising to gain new customers. At the end of the presentation, the students were asked to come up with their own advertisements encouraging healthy living and personal choice.

Ja Min and Mirina working on their ads.

The students came up with some great advertisements. Some were funny. Some had clever puns. One even managed to quote The Tempest!

From there we were split back into our Pop Groups, and had sessions on Sex education, Drug and Alcohol education and Nutrition. I think everyone learned quite a bit today about personal choices and taking care of our bodies.

N*Sync in a session.

After dinner we shifted gears slightly and talked about our plans for tomorrow. We will be working on 7 different community service projects from helping on a local farm to learning about the Somali community in Lewiston and then working with young Somali children in some after school programs tutoring and doing arts and crafts.

After the students had the opportunity to sign up for service projects, we watched a documentary about high school life called American Teen.

Our final event of the night was snacks. WHOOPIE PIES! The student learned what they would be doing tomorrow and we broke up into groups to go over last minute instructions and needs for the project.

The class watching the Olympics and eating whoopie pies.

Tomorrow will be an early morning and a long day of lending about 120 helping hands.