Smile! (8th and final post)

So this is it. My last post about my summer project! Of course, I procrastinated...a lot...but I am glad to be getting it done now! So, in my mind, I am successful. :) When I first started this project, I was pretty excited. I love helping people and making them happy, so I thought this project would be easy! I was right...and wrong. I was right because I knew I would love this project because of the fact that I was making others happy, and that part was easy, the being nice all the time and helping people out. But, I was wrong because it wasn't quite as easy as I thought it was going to be to find places to volunteer. Take Habitat for Humanity for example, I never heard back from them when I emailed and asked what I could do to help. There were other places too that I never got the chance to volunteer at which I really wanted to. However; there were some places and volunteer opportunities that I didn't even consider when i first started this project which I was able to help with. Some of those places included; My church's Vacation Bible School, collecting school supplies and delivering them to Lighthouse, volunteering to help teachers change rooms at Pierce, and quite a few more. I loved this project and I feel 100 percent successful by this last and final week. I feel as though I have made many people happy this summer and that was my goal, to put a smile on someone's face. :) So, now I believe that I have to connect my project to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.



One way that my project relates to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is in the fact that my summer project is also being written about. Just as Barbara Kingsolver wrote about how her family ate only local foods for a year in the form of a book, I am writing about how I tried to make people happy all summer and brighten there day with volunteer work or a simple smile in the form of these blogs. Although her writing was much more detailed and researched, I feel as though my blogs told what my project was about and that was my intent. Barbara Kingsolver's project was on a much larger scale, but my project is pretty similar to hers in one respect: trying to make the world a better place. She did this by only eating local foods, in this way the massive amount of fuels that are normally used to deliver food to your mouth from across the country were conserved; Thus, decreasing the amount of pollution in the air. In my project, I was trying to make the world a better place by brightening it up with a smile. I believe that both of these ways to make the world a better place are equally important and both should be strived for everyday! I know that Barbara Kingsolver's year round project changed her life and her families lives, and I also know that my 8 week project has changed my life. Before this project I knew that I loved to help people and make people happy, but it is through this project that I have realized that helping people is what I want to do with my life. I want to become a teacher and then a missionary and travel overseas and teach the children who have no teachers, and maybe even no schools. This project has helped to show me how I can bring happiness to people with the simplest of things. For example, a smile. :)