Blogs from Washington DC

What is it that you avoid noticing in your everyday life? For me, it was homeless people. Throughout my life, whether it was from media or what I was told, I believed that every homeless person was dangerous and used the money they received from donations on the street for drugs and alcohol. Due to this, whenever I went to the city I tended to walk quickly and anxiously by any homeless person and ignore their requests for help. After my week in D.C., I reflect on this mentally and am overwhelmed with sadness and disappointment in myself. Had I took the time to actually interact with a homeless person, my views and perceptions would have been much different. For this, I feel truly fortunate that our last week of service was spent at our nation’s capital doing just that. Through a variety of organizations, I had the opportunity to break rid of assumptions and help homeless people in many ways. My most memorable moment was working for Bread for the Journey; where we prepared lunch for ourselves and a homeless person and then ate with them. I spent about an hour and a half with a man who migrated to America from western Africa in the 80’s. As time flew by I felt all of the negative stereotypes and misconceptions about homeless people drift away and the only thing I was thinking about was how I was sitting on a bench in the park having an ordinary conversation about the weather, driving techniques and college majors with a middle-aged man. In that moment I also observed the amount of people either walk by without noticing or people give me a strange look as to why I was sitting there with a homeless man. As I was leaving, I found my eyes welling up with tears. Why is it that I was born into privilege and at a lesser risk of becoming homeless than this man and thousands of others in D.C. alone? I have been blessed my whole life with opportunity and this man seemed happier than I was with what he had and the hand he was drawn in life. Taking the time to become more connected with the things that I take for granted and tend to avoid has been an eye opening experience for me and I challenge you, the reader to recognize the things that you avoid noticing in your daily life and question why you do, because chances are, you’re avoiding it for a reason that will seem silly once you examine it further.

Harlan Blogs

The walking tour through the Wind Caves in South Dakota was awesome, but our exploration adventure of the Marengo Caves in Indiana took caving to the next level. We were told to wear long pants, long sleeve shirts and shoes that we didn’t mind getting dirty. On the picnic tables where we met our guide rested helmets, head lamps, and emergency packs. Our guide informed us that the average temperature would be 50 degrees, and we would be walking in up to two feet of water at some points. As we walked to the entrance of the cave, I had no idea what to expect. The entry zone was about 4 feet tall, so we hunched over and walked about 50 feet through a gate into the “twilight zone”, the last point in the cave that you can see sunlight. Now things were getting serious as we walked through a small stream into the dark zone. All we could see was what our headlamps would light up, I felt like a true cave explorer. We came to a stop and our guide challenged us on who could get the muddiest. At first I was hesitant until a fellow student smeared a handful of dirt on my face. After that I was determined to win, so I rolled around in the mud like a little kid. I was caked in mud from head to toe. Little did I know that the fun had just begun. We had to army crawl 200 feet through a crevice that was only two feet tall. This made me feel like an explorer who had just discovered the cave. I forgot about the outside world and my imagination went to work. Pretending that we were all explorers in the 1800’s I proceeded on. I convinced myself that every new cave room we entered was a new discovery. At the end of the exploration we emerged back into the sunlight muddy, wet, cold, and tired. But I would do it all over again to get that feeling of adventure back.

Blogs from St. Louis

The energy in the van was high as we pulled up beside the City Seeds. We turned off the radio and headed into the farm surrounded by the bustling city. We started to work, harvesting chard in the cool morning air. The sun got hotter and hotter as we were given more and more jobs to complete. I watered, dead headed, and sprayed a natural insecticide on rows and rows of vegetables and flowers. I looked up from watering azaleas to the St. Louis Arch standing in the distance. Here I was, in the middle of a large city, working on a farm. Somehow, through all the work, I was able to distance myself from the large looming buildings, sirens, and cars whizzing by. I was in a different world; a world of dirt, the occasional bounding rabbit, and small radishes peeping through the earth. I smiled and looked around; everyone was working hard in the midday sun. My peers, the clients, other volunteers, and employees, a group of people so drastically varied and working so well together, one couldn’t help but admire it.

Blogs from Pine Ridge

I gained a wide-range of knowledge while staying on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for a week but what stood out the most to me was the Native Americans sense of generosity. The condition on the reservation is far from perfect. The people living there have very little by our standards; some have no beds, little money, few jobs, and fewer opportunities to better themselves. Through all of the despair they remain to be hopeful and give all that they can to their neighbors. As we worked on houses and delivered bunk beds, the people were always appreciative of our work. Many children on the reservation are not well taken care of due to the high rate of alcoholism, yet many of these children are taken in by grandmothers or neighbors so that they can have a better life. These grandmothers or neighbors who are taking in these children barely have the resources to live on their own but they still take in extra people out of kindness in their hearts. The Native Americans have a true sense of being a community and being a family together which I have rarely ever experienced anywhere else in my life. How often are we, as Americans, willing to take in our neighbor’s child or give something that we have to someone else in need? The Natives sense of giving and being generous in all that they do was truly outstanding.