Day 5

Sorry this is so late. We didn't have access to the computer all day yesterday, so Jordan recreated his journal entry for yesterday after our work day today...

June 21,2007

Hello everybody, this is Jordan Suero writing on behalf of SF07 for our fifth day on immersion. In the morning it was a little hard getting up. The bathroom was very crowded in the and in addition to that we had to move all of our sleeping bags and duffell bags into the other room because there would be a meeting later on that night. We caught the 71 Limited, so the faster bus, and made it right on time to St. Anthony’s.Our leader for the day was Colleen and she gave us a nice morning talk about budget cuts and where the cities money was being put. She was telling us this because later on in the day we would attend a rally talking about the city and budget spending. After Colleen finished her talk we split into groups to go to either Salvation Army’s program“Meals that Heal” or the San Francisco Adult Day Health Center across the street from Glide Memorial. I went to Salvation Army with Alessandra, Theresa (our co-leader), Rian, Christina, and Audrey, while Bianca, Shag, Katie, and Sumner went to the Adult Day Health Center. After both groups finished our work, we headed back to the dining hall to have lunch. We were in a hurry because we had to be ready to leave at 1:50, but by the time most of us got seated it was already 1:40! And by the way, the lunch served was Moussaka, and it was awesome. Well we ended up making it alright, and after lunch we headed to a program called “Care Through Touch” to hear from Maryanne Finch about how she began this program. It was very touching, she sang us a song to start off, which almost set the room afire with laughter, but we were able to control ourselves and listen to her stories about how she had come to discover that just spending time with homeless people, and especially giving massages, even just hand massages, could mean so much. She gave us a real insight on how the homeless feel when panhandling because she had sat with one for 45 minuites and no one looked at them once. Afterwards we went straight to City Hall where the budget rally was taking place, and it was a very real experience. Team Cold (Jordan, Shag, Christina, Bianca, and Alessandra) had to leave early to finish our shopping so we could make our Eggplant Parmesian, served with a side of pasta cooked in olive oil, needless to say, dinner was awesome. After dinner, we had journal time, and our reflection out in the park since it was the Summer Solstice, but the last thing we did before bed was have a team match of charades, and Team A-Jordan, Rian, Audrey Christina, and Theresa versus Team B- Shag, Bianca, Katie, Sumner and Alessandra. Team A won, by a landslide.