Birthday

My first challenge came today. The little girl I mentor through the Seedling program is turning 9 on Friday. We are allowed to get our mentees small gifts (around $5) for their birthdays and Christmas (if they celebrate it).

I stopped at Target on the way to work with the plan of getting her some metallic color gel pens. Every gel pen I looked at was manufactured overseas. I ended up getting her Bic's version of the Sharpie that comes in nice teal and pink colors and was made in the USA. They are permanent markers, so hopefully she heeded my stern warning to not get them on her clothes or let her little brother get a hold of them (otherwise, a parent is out there cursing my name). I also wanted to get her a nice notebook, but again they were pretty much all made in China, so I ended up with Target's US made multi-color notecards. On the way out I saw the display for cute 8-packs of Crayola (also made in the US) although I thought she might be getting too old for crayons. It turned out that she was most excited about the crayons, so in retrospect I am glad I couldn't get the gel pens I set out to buy.

Not too big of a challenge, but it was fun in a way to have to read the backs of the packages and do some searching. I am an indecisive shopper to begin with, so it makes it easier when there is only one option in a category.

Also, I highly recommend that you try mentoring if it sounds interesting. I have found it to be fun and rewarding (albeit a little unstructured).