As we prepare to send our second shipment of books to the Philippines, I've started to think about what sort of effect this will have on the school in Alinunu. I know next to nothing from personal experience about the school, only what I have been told by my parents, and what I've heard from the head teacher and my aunt. The only thing I can do is imagine what life would be like without the exposure to books that I've enjoyed for so long.
For as long as I can remember, I've known how to read. I can't remember learning, I can't remember a time that I haven't been able to read. While my classmates in first grade were reading "Runny the Bunny" 6-page paper books and singing the alphabet, I was reading Mouse and the Motorcycle. I participated in reading contests in second grade, since I read all the time anyways, and I wanted those books they were giving out as prizes.
But I can clearly remember my third grade classroom, and the "reading corner." It was a little area of the room, walled off by bookshelves, with a few beanbag chairs that we could sit on. The only thing I didn't like about that corner was the tacky Spongebob Squarepants chair. Ugh. Even so, whenever I had free time, I would go over to that corner, find a book and, if I was lucky, use the beanbag chairs. The corner was an extremely popular destination, with such a variety of books, that even the professed haters of reading could find something that captured their attention.
Reading has shaped who I am today. Not being a social butterfly, I have not had the constant crowd of friends around me that many other people have managed to find. Yet I was always excited to run off to a little patch of shade with my latest library discovery and escape into a new world.
Stories always have fascinated me. Especially those set somewhere, or some time, other than my own--places with new sights, new sounds, new rules. Normal fiction was tiresome. Who wanted to read about normal life when we live in it every day? I wanted something different. Books give me escape routes, something to distract me, to make me feel better when I'm down. Even today, stress and exhaustion and any other problems will always lead me back to my bookshelf, where I'll pull down a familiar book, and, for a little while, I'm somewhere else.
It was reading all these stories that made me excited to write my first real story for a fifth grade assignment. When I showed it to my classmates, I was surprised at their reactions. "It's so sad!" they said. "How could you write that?" It was then I realized the power of words--that words can change the way people think. It was at that moment that I also realized that people have to write the stories, and I could be one of them, changing the way people thought. Pen(cil)s and paper became my best friends, always toting them along. Since then, I have created my own little worlds, weaving my own ideas into more stories I can escape into. Also, I have discovered that writing is a new way to express myself, and, many times, it is so much easier to use written words to communicate.
How many ideas have I been exposed to because I read? And how many discussions have I gotten into, debating such things as morality, environmental conservation, relativity, and countless other topics? Books have exposed me to such an incredible range of topics, ideas, and allowed me to discover how interesting these things really are.
I can't even imagine what my life would be like without books, without my inspiration source, my education, my escape. Everything I know has been changed because of them.
So, as we send these books off, all I know is that these kids have very few, but they deserve more. I want these books to help change their world the way mine has been changed. I want them to see the world in a new light, to discover all these ideas, these opportunities that are open to them. I want the world to be open to them.
You know what? There's one other way of putting what I want for them. I want them to learn what I have over so many years.
Life is better with books.
