Every Monday, some kids from Kimberly High School join Mira and I at Riverview. They're pretty funny and always have something to say and I like to quietly listen to their conversations. Because of the cold weather, we've spent the past few visits working indoors on the clubhouse. The Clubhouse is a small building that's separated into a workroom/office area and a garage. Currently, the garage is being primed and painted. I was put to work painting a wall and Mira started sanding down some mudding on the ceiling. Another boy from Kimberly was working with her and he was pretty cool.
Most of the kids from Kimberly are at Riverview to fulfill a credit to graduate. One thing I've learned quite quickly is that performance in school is in no way an indicator of one's passion for learning. This guy asked me about my name and if it had any ethnic background, to which I explained my dad's Tamil ancestry. He was of Eastern European decent. We ended up talking about Linguistics, a field of study he's interested in possibly pursing in college. He's knows some basic communication of his Slavic language and is really just curious of all languages in general. I said that I'd like to learn Arabic, if any language, in college and he responded by saying he'd self-taught himself some words. He has an app on his phone that gives him an "Arabic word of the day." He likes the variety of words the Arabic language uses and the distinctive writing style (totally in cursive with no equivalent of x,y,or z). He often goes to the library to check out books on linguistics and languages. I'm glad I had that conversation with him.
I also made some progress painting that wall. And managed to keep my clothes paint-free.
All in all, it was a pretty productive day.
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