DC WEEK 1

Hey everyone!

okay this is going to sound very cliche, but i feel like my trip to dc changed who I am, and how i think about the world. It all started the moment we stepped off the train and into the city when i realized i felt like i was in the right place. The feeling continued throughout the week as many of the people who i was on the trip with know. The first day my group along with Gil's group went to Food for Friends which gives food to terminally ill people and their families. I thought that was the greatest place and was convinced there was not another place that could effect me like that. I was wrong. The place where i felt as though i did the most good was at Thrive DC. It was at Thrive where we cooked the food as well as served the food to all of their guests. I ended up going to Thrive twice, once with the whole group to serve dinner to a group of only women, and once with my small group early in the morning (we had to leave the hostel before 8) to make breakfast for a group of people, both men and women. The way that the head chef interacted with both us the volunteers, as well as the men and women we served amazed me. He made all of us feel like we were helping, and we all did something important to help get breakfast underway. And the way he interacted with the people we served, he knew them because many of them came back daily, and he interacted with them. Some people were frustrating and hard to please, but he knew exactly what to do when they came up.
After we went to Thrive that early morning, we went to an all women shelter. This is the place that effected me the most. The women were allowed to leave their belongings at the shelter. So some of the rooms were decorated like ours at home. There were family pictures, stuffed animals, Obama stuff galore, and Bibles in each room. Some rooms I could not even enter because they touched me so much. These people are not all drug addicts and crazies, these people are a lot like you and me, they are just down on their luck right now.

This trip made me think about how fragile our future is. In a matter of moments anyone could be living on the streets, without a job, without money.

--sarah h