Day Four—The Week Continues…

Brought to you by Emily Ward

Another long and exhausting day is behind us. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy (almost) every minute of it! This much exhaustion only comes with the satisfaction of hard work.

            Hugo led us off to work today. (Carla was sick.) He left us at MANNA with a day pass for the bus so we could tour the city without him. Working the food counter was much the same as yesterday, but today we recognized faces. We all made a point to try our hardest to welcome the people without discrimination. The gratitude and appreciation is amazing. No matter how bad their day, week, year, life is going, they still have the compassion and love to thank us. It really astounds me how hard their life is and how they still have a good attitude. Several people made conversation with us and asked us where we were from. They were amazed when we answered that we had traveled from Illinois.

            At the nursing home, it was BINGO day. Many more residents came down to participate in the popular game. The boys played bingo with the residents and got a kick out of their excited reactions from winners. Meanwhile, Tracy had a heated discussion with an African American man, with whom she felt, had they been anywhere else, they probably would never have talked. They covered topics of “children these days,” gay marriage, and politics, all of which they had different viewpoints on. However, at the end of the day, he asked her if she would be back tomorrow, and was excited to find out she would be.

            During the late afternoon, our entire group headed to the market that our group had been to yesterday. We spent about an hour there, shopping and exploring. Jessica bought her first pair of dangly earrings, which she put in later tonight. It was very exciting, because this was the first time she had taken out the ones that she was pierced with!

            It was our turn to cook dinner tonight. We had hamburgers, boca burgers and hotdogs, with watermelon, lemonade, chips, and cookies. After cooking 52 burgers and 36 hotdogs, we served our wonderful meal.

            Our speaker tonight was a Salsa staff member named Marie. She helped us explore our judgments and discriminations towards the Hispanic ethnicity. First, we started out by breaking into small groups and writing down words that came to mind when we heard the word Latino or Latina. The groups shared their lists and we then discussed the different stereotypes. Then, each youth group told the others about the racial diversity in their cities. It was interesting hearing the backgrounds and cultures of the other kids here this week. We talked about, as white people, how we feel like a minority here in San Antonio. It is strange for everyone here to hear people speaking Spanish all around you and not being able to understand what they are saying. Hopefully, we will be able to use the discussion we had this evening and transfer it into our everyday lives.

Four days down, four more to go. As for right now, it’s sleep time. Good night!

Day 4 Photos

On to Day 5