Mexican Walking Sticks and Poker

It has been a pretty interesting week starting with Cinco de Mayo on Wednesday. I might not be Mexican, but I still like to celebrate the holiday. This year, I went to a celebration downtown with Mexican food, music, and drinks. It was a lot of fun! For only $5, I got 2 soft shell tacos, refried beans, rice, and chips/salsa. Margaritas were only $4, and you can't pass that up on Cinco de Mayo. The music was fun to listen too, and the town's salsa dancing group put on a show as well. It was a little windy, but still lots of fun. It was a great way to celebrate the holiday!

Yesterday (Thursday) was a pretty exciting day as well. First of all, I did my last speeches for the semester! The last unit we did (and are still doing) was celebration speeches. I wrote a tribute, a toast, and gave an award to people in my class. It went very well, and now I'm free! After school, I went to hang out with the little kids, just like every other Thursday since mid-March. This week, we had the kids make their own walking sticks. After finding big sticks for everyone, each kid used a pair of surgical scissors or a sharp rock to scrape off all the bark. We then handed out sand paper to smooth down any rough spots or knots in the sticks. Next week we are going to stain them so each kid will have his/her own walking stick. It got tiring after awhile, but they all had a lot of fun it.

Today I ended up back at school. Normally I am not there on Fridays since I don't have class. However, today there was a poker walk. There were 5 stations set up around campus. At each station, you pick up a card. At the last station, you turn in your 5 cards. The best poker hand wins. The first station was on 4th floor, the last station was on 1st floor, and the others were in between. It involved lots of stairs, so it was good exercise. Which is exactly what I needed because there were ice cream cones available at the last station. I think I worked off the ice cream. Also, you got a free thing at each station. There were sunflower seeds, a can coolie, a squishy stress ball, and a keychain in addition to the ice cream. I didn't win, but I took second place with 2 pair (queens and nines). The winner had a 3 pair of queens. You might be wondering, how is that possible? There aren't 5 queens in one deck. But there were 10 different decks being used, so it technically would have been possible for someone to have a 5 pair. Anyways, it was great exercise and a fun activity to take part in. Now it's time to rest after all those stairs!