Space

When I first started going to Easley, the equipment was falling apart.  It was a rainy day so everyone was inside, right outside the homework room.  As the second hour came around, the children still working on their homework would be distracted by the children playing right outside in the lobby.  The window that connects the rooms didn’t help this at all.  The center had a few table games like foosball and pin pong and some board games like scrabble and chess.   Everything was missing stuff.  The board games were missing pieces and the table games, especially the foosball table, were falling apart.  While I was playing with the children, I was having trouble keeping up with all their rules they had made to get around the lack of proper equipment.  While I was playing foosball I got stuck on the “bad” side, to be honest I don’t think there was a “good” side, which had no backfield (defenders and goalie).   Ping-pong was just as bad, the paddles were all beaten up and had tape on the handles.  This actually reminded me of the pool I work for during the summer.  I know that ping-pong paddles don’t last long when they are for public use.  This last visit I was there was the day after Thanksgiving break.  Like every other time I have been at Easley, it was rainy and wet outside so the children were all playing inside.  Some of the younger girls were coloring quietly with crayons in the corner.  As I investigated further, I say they were coloring in Thanksgiving turkeys.  Now I don’t know if they had chosen to color in turkeys or if that was all there was to color but its now the Christmas seasons, I would expect them to be coloring in Christmas things.  Toward the end of my volunteering, someone invested a lot of money to buy new equipment for Easley, there was a new Ping-Pong table, pool table, air hockey table, and foosball table.  This has added a few more things for the kids to enjoy, the young boys seems to be taken the most advantage of this mystery person’s generosity.