05/09/2026
Despite a rainy Saturday morning at the Alpha and Omega Community Center, today has quite encouraging.
When I first arrived, the rain had not yet started, and I checked out our Community Garden. At the beginning of the week, I planted one cherry tomato plant and a Roma tomato plant. I had gotten them at Second Chance Plants over at Harrisburg Ave and Dillerville Rd. I had also put down squares of cardboard for w**d control. Besides, the cardboard is biodegradable. The best news is that I noticed a yellow blossom on one plant.
Yesterday, we had received a computer donation from our special friend Antonio Rivera Suarez . Actually, the computer had been given out before, and the recipient had gotten a new computer and gave it back to Antonio to be used again. Interestingly, I had never considered myself a techie even though I eagerly use technology for teaching English with my students. Nonetheless, I have been learning, and our senior technicians Charlie and David have been patient in encouraging me to do more. Although we don't specifically ask for desktops, we accepted this one from Antonio because we still have 14 families on our Waiting List. We readily accept laptops and All-in-one desktops.
Everything went well as I installed the Linux Mint operating system on the Dell desktop. We had keyboard, mouse, we**am, and speakers (if we don't have, we need to purchase the accessories).
As I finished up the desktop, my student Sol Maria arrived for her tutoring session at 10am. Interestingly, she is the mother of Melissa, whom I have written about in the past. Sol Maria is originally from the Dominican Republic and quite diligent. Her goal is to prepare for the US Citizenship interview. To show how motivated Sol Maria is, I had received a Whatsapp message several weeks ago in the evening. She asked if I had additional vocabulary to send her. I said, "Give me a minute, and I'll send more vocabulary to study". That's my kind of student - asking for more homework.
Today, we were going over vocabulary for the US Citizenship test.
Well, it's early afternoon, and my day at the Alpha and Omega Community Center is almost finished. The rain is finished and our tomato plants are well-watered.
An encouraging day! Blessings for your day as well.
