Sorry to be a little late with my blogging but lateness seems to be the theme of my service projects. I had planned on going to Laurel Hill the first week but I unfortunately got mono and was unable to do that. I was fortunately was able to get to DC on wednesday of the second week. when I arrives off the train I met Dr. Gustave at the train station and from there we went to Epiphany Church for the YSOP dinner which was really awesome. I have had other experiences at soup kitchens but I have never gotten as much out of one as I got out of the YSOP dinner. It was really cool to be able to actually interact with the guests we were serving. I was surprised at how engaging everyone was and willing to talk to talk with us and how interesting they were to talk to. I think that it would be really cool if more soup kitchens operated with this model. The next day I joined the red group and went to Food and Friends which is an organization that prepares and delivers meals to people with illnesses that make it hard for them to do that for themselves. They had a really awesome kitchen and we had a lot of fun even though we were not interacting with the people we were serving in the same way as we had the night before. It was interesting to see a different part of what goes into serving a community. That afternoon we went to Community of Hope which is an organization that provided services for entire families which is unique. We worked with kids in their after school program. It was fun to meet the kids and see an entirely different face of homelessness than we had seen at the YSOP dinner.  I think that what struck me the most about this trip was seeing all these different ways that homelessness effects all different types of people. The next day we went to Nth street Village which is an organization that has many resources for homeless women. I was very impressed by the quality and cleanliness of their facilities. This also gave insights into another group of homeless people. Overall I was very pleasantly surprised at the impact this trip had on me in just two days.

-Ruthie