Wow, it felt like forever since I had made the trek to the kitchen. Between the week off for Thanksgiving and then returning completely sick, it had been a couple weeks for me. I was happy to return and discover that I would once again have the pleasure of preparing dessert. I really have always loved making desserts for any occasion, so I always get excited when that’s my job at Campus Kitchens. This week I worked with another student from the leadership team, Katie. We made cake and frosting. The cake was pretty simple because we made one large cake from two boxes of mix. Using the mix and the instructions was a breeze. The fun part came when we had to make frosting from scratch. We found a reciepe on the back of a bag of confectioner’s suger for chocolate frosting. However, we didn’t have all of the proper ingredients for it so we improvised. It actually turned out amazingly and everyone loved it. Martha said the frosting tasted like hot chocolate frosting, which it kind of did. All the matter was it worked on the cake and would taste good.

I did this, but I guess it never posted it.

      DC was a great experience. i went into it with a very pessimistic outlook on how the trip was going to be. I was going to be missing a football game and reading days. Now that i did it though, I wouldnt have changed the fact that I went. it was such an eye opening experience. I have grown up close to the city and have traveled through it many times, but I have not seen as much as I did firsthand as I did in DC. My favorite part had to be the DC soup kitchen. I had a great time working there. I never thought it would be fun cooking and helping make meals. The last day at the DC central kitchen, I had the privilege of working alongside Ms. Dot. She was great. She taught me how to cut and hold the knife and vegetable properly. I also enjoyed listening to the people talk in DC. Hearing the experiences of those three people struggling to improve their lives really touched me. I really enjoyed the trip and will suggest the class to others that come to the school that I may know.

Today was another high quality food day. they were serving chicken pot pie. IT was the second time we sat and ate with the served. Most are very shy and we saw many new comers this Tuesday. After serving the food and cleaning, eating the food was the best part. We usually do not eat due to my busy schedule, but it is nice and I plan to eat as many times as I can. Jan was not there today so Anne ran the show. She oranized everyone and told everyone what to do. We ate then left the soup kitchen due to other commitments.

Today at the soup kitchen Jan and the crew all pitched in to make hot dogs. hot dogs is the easiest thing to make. It just requires a hot pot of water and buns. They also supplied salad with the hot dogs. We served them and went around and gave seconds.We then served desserts and handed out snacks. Today was on of the first times we ate with the people. It was nice to sit and listen to the people talk. We conversed with some of them and even spoke to one lady who had recently fractured her leg. We cleaned up and were off.

This week was very low key at the homeless shelter. We all just sat at the booths and colored. This was interesting because this is the first time that we all interacted together. Usually we take the kids into another room while the adults do their own thing. Today was different. We all sat in the same room and we colored. We found out that Gary is a huge NASCAR fan, and he spent most of the evening drawing race cars. Mika (Gary's mother) also opened up to us a lot. She talked about Gary and all of the medical issues he has and what the doctors are trying to do to help him. It was nice to see that she trusted us enough to share that information with us. Rosa (the mother of the two little girls) had her baby. She had a little boy and he is adorable. Even though Rosa seemed sleep deprived, she seemed much happier and she seemed to be in a much better mood than she had been in past weeks. Today we did not see Javen or Cee Cee at the shelter.  Although when I asked Emily if they had left but she said that she thought that the kids were at daycare because Cee Cee started working again (she had a baby girl a few weeks ago).

Today at El Centro I worked with Ashley. When I came in to wait for her to finish her snack, one of the staff members stopped the noise to make an announcement. Two of the students there had birthdays last week and they had made them a cake in celebration and continued to sing Happy Birthday. It was really nice to see that they really cared about the kids and even spent the time and effort towards recognizing their birthdays and preparing an extra special snack time treat. They really do function like a small family there. I went though some math homework with Ashley and actually taught her how to write a thesis statement for an essay she was working on. After, we played a math game on the blackboard where we each wrote problems for the other to solve. Whoever solved it first won. Of course, I got the problems such as 543657656 x 4335 and she tackled 45 x 4. It was a lot of fun, for once I really connected with Ashley. We played a trivia game after where we thought of any old random questions to ask each other. I now know that SpongeBob SquarePants lives in Bikini Bottom.

Kate and Emily brought crayons, markers, colored pencils, ornaments, paper, and coloring books to the shelter on Thursday.  The adults colored Christmas ornaments while the kids, Liz, and I colored Christmas pictures and coloring books.  There were only five of the adults there; two were new residents.  Rosa finally had her baby.  He’s an adorable boy with a beautiful name that I wish I could pronounce.  His two older sisters were there as was Gary.  Gary colored every car he could find in the book and had me draw numbers and spoilers on them to make them look like real race cars.  I’m almost positive that he is the biggest NASCAR fan under five years old.  I tried to help the older of the two sisters to color Christmas-themed pictures, but she decided that brown would be the best color to douse stockings, wreaths, and Santa with, so I let her do her own thing.  She seemed unimpressed with my multi-colored, in-the-lines coloring job.  As we were making decorations for the shelter, I wondered if they did anything else on their own to decorate.  Do they get a Christmas tree?  How does Christmas or Hanukah celebration work?  Do the single residents have anyone to celebrate with?  It reinforced the recognition and gratitude I have for my privilege.