I've written many times about the Root Cellar, an inner city mission in Portland, Maine's Munjoy Hill neighborhood.  They do amazing work with their neighbors, most of whom are immigrants and refugees from Africa.  The Root Cellar provides a dental clinic, English classes, a food bank, youth ministries, and after school care among other ministries.  This is a venue I make sure to bring my students to every school year.  It is an inspiring cross cultural experience, and this week's trip was no different.  

We did the LOL show for their after school program on Monday afternoon.  While my class is predominantly caucasian (13 of 17) our audience had only one white child..  Several of the girls in the audience, including teen volunteers, were clearly Muslim as evidenced by their brightly colored hijabs.  Truely, it was a cross cultural experience.

But I've also learned that, the more different we are from each other, the more we are the same.  Like all children, the younger Root Cellar kids loved the slap stick comedy of the Prodigal Juggler and the upstaging / juggling routine.  The teens in the audience loved the comic-drama of "I Want to Know What Love Is", and everybody loved the rabbit and dove productions.  

The team did great as always (We've not had a bad show in two school years!).  The highlight was Avery's 8th grade solo, in which he juggled a variety of props, finishing with battle axes!  Faith and Caleb did a nice job passing diabolos. Both of their partners were absent, so they had to learn to pass with each other that morning.  Hannah's three ball juggling has gotten better and better, and she fit it into the show nicely.  And if anyone in the audience was daydreaming, Eva's use of a confetti gun to upstage Shaylee brought their attention back! Mary and Luke have worked very hard on their devil sticking recently, and both were able to include more tricks than ever before.

Unfortunately, due to a late start, we had minimal time to interct with the audience after the show, but everyone had a meaningful, enjoyable time nonetheless, as testified to by our debriefing on Tuesday morning.