June 12th- "Weeding Rocks"

By Carita

It's bright and beautiful here in Browning, MT. After breakfast and our morning meetings we headed to our daily assignments.  Suzanne spent the morning "weeding rocks" and in the afternoon she was at the Care Center with Alice filling water balloons and interacting with the residents.

After a rather confusing start, Alice ended up at the Care Center, visiting with one special resident and learning local history, polishing nails with another and helping with bingo. In the afternoon, she and Suzanne played a water balloon game and did crafts with more residents.

Liz, Andrew and Will returned to the Blackfeet Academy assisting with the gardening and cleaning up the medicine wheel. They also helped with planting the first Earthboxes in Montana. They come complete with a box, dirt and watering system. One box has tomatoes, another with beans, and the third with assorted vegetables. Will found a special arrowhead that he was allowed to keep and learned if you take something from the earth you must give something back, he gave back a special, beautiful stone.

Alexander reported that he did typical library things during his day there. Shelving, cataloging and putting puzzles together.

Kelsey played “run around”, taking photographs and reporting for the latest breaking news at the Glacier Reporter (local news paper).

John found he wasn’t needed at maintenance and ended up at Eagle Shields washing windows and cleaning a vestibule area. He enjoyed visiting with Leroy, the custodian, and learned much about his life. In the afternoon John went to CDC where more weeding rocks took place.

Lucia ended up at East Glacier Head Start which is now closed- doing hard physical labor, taking down fences and old playground equipment.

I had the opportunity of getting an in depth look at the homes and lives of Browning senior citizens by helping deliver over 80 meals-on-wheels.  In the afternoon, I went to CDC to assist John with rock pulling.

After dinner of fish, baked beans, macaroni salad, and root beer floats prepared by Maria at Eagle Shields- we concluded our day with a group meeting. Phyllis recapped her various issues of the day. She reported that Suzanne will get to do a presentation on Judaism tomorrow, John will get to meet with two sociology deans from the college and Lucia will get to survey students for a college project she’s doing. 

So ended the second day.