The employment group took a field trip to Byers Choice. Kate and Dovi took a group of 10 members with them to see factory and Christmas village. The factory was located in Warrington, PA which was about a 30 minute drive from Hedwig House. We got to the factor at around 11am. Kate gave each member a questioner to fill out during the tour of the factory. The questioner was all about Byers Choice and what we saw there. First the group watched a video about how the dolls are made. The video was pretty short, maybe 5 minutes. Then we walked through the village together. In the village we saw hundreds of different kinds of what appeared to be highly sophisticated and detailed dolls. We walked from one room to another through was appeared to be a Christmas village. There were multiple rooms. So of the dolls had baskets, some had hats, some were in their work attire, some where out playing in the snow and some were eating. I also noticed that many of the dolls seemed to be singing. I knew this because their mouths were open and they had song sheets in front of them.

Towards the end of the tour, we saw tons of women working in a very large room working on creating the dolls. The women were not really talking to each other and each had their own work station. They seemed to be very concentrated and focused on details. I noticed that on the right hand side of the room were tons of dolls that were in boxes that were not made yet. Each woman was working on a different doll. Something I noticed also, is that all of the workers were women, there were basically no male workers. I think this is because women are more skilled and talented in the areas of art and detail. I also think that women have more patients for things like this than men do. There were around 50 work stations in the room, and around 50 women working in the room.

The tour ended off with a gift shop where tourist could purchase the dolls they saw in the village. There were many different dolls for sale. Most of the dolls were rather expensive. No one from our group bought any of the dolls. They ranged from about 50 to 100 dollars each. I really enjoyed the village and how it was set up. I was very impressed by how detailed each of the dolls were. I would definitely recommend my friends to go to Byers Choice, and I would certainly go again.

                                                                                              Jon