Day Six

Good Morning: This is Saturday morning and the students are enjoying their one sleep in morning:

It is 8:30 on Friday night and we just finished a fabulous meal made by team “Hot” of baked potatoes, tofu, bacon, steamed broccoli, and Theresa’s very tasty cake cookies. As I write this, the rest of team “Cold” is finishing cleaning up the kitchen while the others are back at the sleeping quarters showering and journaling. Today was a pretty great day. We woke up, some with more difficulty than others, and headed out the door to the Muni stop. When we arrived at St. Anthony’s we were welcomed by Eddie, our host for the day. We began by playing “The Wage is NOT right,” a spinoff of The Price is Right. We guessed the prices of items based on the cost of living in the Tenderloin. We looked at situations with poorer folks compared to some of the richest in the nation. The person I was worked at Yahoo and had a yearly salary of $360 million. He made over $100,000 an HOUR!! It took some of these people only seconds to make the wage it takes other people in the Tenderloin a whole week. It’s ridiculous if you think about it. Then we were split into groups and three of us went to work at Salvation Army again while the others worked St. Anthony’s Dining Room for a second time. Katie, Jordan, Mr. Shaughnessy and I went to Meals That Heal with Salvation Army. This was the second time for most of us aside from Katie, so we were experts—or so we thought. I went with Mr. Shaughnessy and a man named Robert who had been helping out with the program for quite a while. He had us deliver the meals solo as opposed to together, which was definitely a new experience for us. When we were finished with all of the deliveries, we headed back to the Dining Room and got in line with the other clients waiting for lunch. Lunch was lentils and chicken with salad and melon. It was good, but what was better was the company. I ate with this man named Anthony who I had actually met while delivering food earlier in the day. I found out he had attended Riordan high school of all places! It’s so neat how there are so many people that you meet and who actually remember you. It really is like a little community with everybody looking out for one another. Then we helped out for a while in the staff room, folding napkins for dishing out meals. We met Eddie, a cousin of the member of the staff who came all the way from Milan, Italy to help out. He’s almost from as far as we are! ☺ When we were all back together, we met up with Angelina again and we returned to the meeting room for some role playing. We pretended we were citizens of Pleasantville and that we had an issue with the homeless individuals in our area. Some of us wanted to help the homeless population get back on their feet while others simply wanted them out of our hair. It was all in fun, but it was cool to act in a way that we might not have necessarily agreed with. We were getting pretty into it, taking on the identites of organizations and individuals that would have had a say in the situation. We left St. Anthony’s for the day and returned for a one and a half hour napping time. Then we got a nice surprise of bundles of letters and care packages, which was nice after a long day at the center! Now the day is winding down. Tomorrow we’ll be able to sleep in until at least 9:00. Haha, that’s a change from my normal sleep in time of 1pm! We’ll get to wash our clothes tomorrow and have some variation from the normal schedule since it will be Saturday! See you in 8 days!
-Alessandra Zanassi!!!