Last week, my middle school juggling team, LOL, speant an afternoon at the Lewiston, Maine, Root Cellar.  This inner city mission is in Maine's second largest city, set in a low income neighborhood.  Their clientelle are primarily African immigrants and refugees.    This show, for their after school care program,  is always among our favorites in a year, as we get time to play with the Root Cellar kids before we do our show. 

After we set up our stage, the kids began to arrive, so we went to the park adjacent to the Root Cellar for a time of free play.  Toby played basketball with a group of older kids, Elo, Andrew and Cooper played soccer with another group, Hadley and Shaylee jumped rope with some of the girls, and Eva and Sunny blew bubbles for some of the youngest ones.  Me, I just took lots of pictures for our year end slide show on our upcoming awards night. 

After a good amount of sunshine and exercise, the Root Cellar staff rounded up their kids for a snack break.  We went into the 'big room' to warm up and set up a few last minute props.  Then it was show time.

By now, the RC kids saw the WCA kids as their friends, so there was lots of cheering as each one was introduced.  Elsa once again was superb with juggling three basketballs, and Hadley and I did our passing routine better than any other show this year. (This was especially satisfying since she had just gotten in at 1:00 the previous morning from a mission trip to Biloxi, Mississippi.)  We had also changed around some roles, and everyone rose to the occaision.  Sunny wanted so much to be a rock in "Wise and Foolish Builders".  She was eager to show that she was every bit as strong as the boys who had spend the better part of the year having Eva stand on their backs.  She definitely proved herself!  Cooper did the bubbles to balls trick for the first time, and he did better than anyone has done that trick in years.

I love taking my students to the Root Cellar for the cross cultural experience, and the even bigger lesson that we are a lot more similar than we are different.  It is an experience they will not soon forget!