2011.04.12

Sister to Sister Event

We all remember how hard it was to be a teenage boy or girl. It will make it much easier if more people care about how teenagers feel.

There is a group of people in Ithaca who care about this issue. They put together this event called “Sister2Sister” (sister to sister). The objective is for middle school girls to be able to reach out to others, to find role models and to have a safe place to talk about things that matter to them.

Mimi is a bit younger for that (she won’t be in middle school until next year). But I am glad that I brought her. She actually had a good time. Let’s see some pictures.

The first table Mimi visited was hosted by Cornell Women’s Engineering Club. These girls are all engineering major and will like to reach out to high school girls about opportunities in the fields of science.

They introduced Mimi a simple project — soap making.

You mix the ingredients together and to add dye and fragrant.

Mimi choose the color blue.

This is the finished project (after it’s dried out).

At the next table, you get to write yourself a post card. The postcard will be mailed to you before the school starts. You can say anything you want to yourself at that time.

Mimi wanted to say something encouraging to herself. But I didn’t get to see what she wrote down (and she wont’ tell me). I guess we will wait until September to find out.

Book mark project.

We then went to upstair where a “salon” was set up for girls. You can braid your hair or have your nails done. Mimi choose to do her nails first.

The girl is a Cornell student. She not only did Jordan’s nail, but also chatted with her. They talked about Mimi’s interests, her school, and activities. I can see it’s thrill for Mimi to talk to a big girl this way.

It’s almost like bonding with your big sister.

Then she waited for her turn to have her hair done.

Another big sister from Cornell.

Mimi decided to have her hair braided.

Not sure if she likes it this way…..

By the mid afternoon, Mimi was hungry. There were plenty of snacks and drinks available for grab.

She continued moving on to the next project — healthy eating style introduction. The talked about different options of snack food. There were also “healthy snacks” avilable for girls to grab. You can bag your own snack. (I saw most of the girls used their hand to pack their snack bag…..)

including this one.

The next table talked about diet. They offered a simple project to show girls how much sugar is inside of the drink they consume on a regular basis.

Mimi choose Snaple. According to the calorie calculation,

Snapple contains 12.75 tea spoonful of sugar.

According to Mimi’s measurement, that’s how much sugar you will have if you drink a bottle of snapple. Makes you think twice the next time you grab your drink.

This is a fun table. The girls got to improvise a T-shirt. They offer the very basic “no sew” technique for girls to bring up a new style from an old T shirt.

Mimi was looking for her ideas.

Then she started cutting this T shirt. By cutting and making knobs, this originally “out-of-style” T-Shirt now has a new life. We will show you the finished product at the end of this story.

We only have time to make the final project. Mimi wanted to make a “stress ball”. This is something you can squeeze as hard as you want (and is supposed to help to “release” your stress).

What you need to do is to stuff flour into a double layer balloon. It sounds pretty easy but it is hard, especially when you are dealing with double-layer balloon.