Some may think I'm a thrift maniac, and they may be right. I don't know where this comes from, but I can't stand any kind of waste and always try to give trash a second chance.

Last September, I started teaching art and crafts to migrant workers' children living in my area. On Saturday, the middle school students come to my place, and we have great fun recycling into wonderful creations old material that would otherwise be trashed.

With plastic bottle caps, we made nice lanterns; with cigarette packs, a large poster saying, "Please, let us breathe"; with pieces of cotton, we created marvelous dolls; while strips of magazine pages and beads became elegant necklaces. I made five nice handbags from unusable jeans.