GO INDIANS!!!!! and...feeling old...

The Immokalee High School football team has WON the Florida State Championship! Woooohhhhooooo! I am so proud :)

Immokalee is where I teach. It is the most amazing town I have ever experienced. You should see it. Bright and early (well, dark and early) on my way in to work at 6:30, about 100 men are riding bikes to work and 300 others are riding buses to work in the fields (think orange trees...yeah, I guess they haven't come up with a system like they have for corn!). Stray dogs hump each other on the sidewalks (well, it's true!) and more than 50% of the signs are written in Spanish (so I really don't know what stores and things Immokalee has!). Every morning I pass a giant truck that is handing out food to middle aged men (men like our fathers) who are so humble I'm sure they barely think of it any more as a handout. I pass two sets of projects and a small community of what I guess some people call houses but look like large 100 year old outhouses, eaten away by mold. I pass a "Friendship House," an after-school program center, a few houses being built by Habitat for Humanity, and children walking to school before the sun has risen so that they can be there to get help with homework, read with tutors and teachers, and eat breakfast.

So when I had my first graders lined up along the sidewalk to give a farewell to those 14-18 year old young men, you can bet I had tears in my eyes. The football players' faces peered out from the buses, a hundred Hispanic and Black and Native American young men that have figured or have been told since they were 3 that they will spend their lives working in the fields when they grow up. They were not shouting or jumping or hooting and hollering. They were just looking out, watching the little kids and the entire city of Immokalee wish them luck. They seemed stunned.

It was a really neat thing. Today Immokalee fans filled the stadium in Gainesville, Florida, and even Trick Daddy was there to cheer on the Indians. And guess who the Indians defeated?

The Cowboys! Hahaha.

Good job, Immokalee!