VanVu

Van Vu

Sally H. Campbell

SOWK 350

Spring 2009

Entry for March 11th, 2009

We still have an extra roommate. Tung always stays in our room. His room is only used for storing suitcase and taking shower. Today we intended to start at 7:15. However, all five people in our room haven’t woken up until 7:08. We might be so tired that we couldn’t hear any alarm at all. I didn’t sleep until 4:00 am because of waiting for my day’s video to be converted so that I could use it for my reflection. The wireless internet in this motel is so bad that it toke me plentiful of time to search for converter software and download it into my laptop.

We were too late that all the other people have climbed up into the van. I really felt guilty when the other teammates might wait for us. I continued to sleep in the van. It took us 45 minutes to get to the Nashville Rescue Mission due to the crazy traffic jam. This was the last day we worked here. It made me feel like I was going to leave a place where already became so familiar and close to me. The officers here are so enthusiastic and friendly. They considered us as their real colleagues. I was definitely moved by the solicitude of them. The way they treated us and the way they talked about the homeless people let me understand much more about their kind personalities. This center is absolutely full of humanity. That is the main reason that make me longingly remember the days I worked here and actually don’t want to leave.

Today, we continued separating into 3 groups like the previous day: education group, kitchen group and basement group. I still wanted to work in the basement. Our today’s work was organizing the foods, putting them in the boxes according to their types and setting those boxes on the pallets. Teamwork always showed up its maximum work productivity. More than 30 boxes of all kinds were organized only in more than one hour. After that, we separated again into two groups. One group stayed in the food store to help the officers clean up the floor. Another group went to another store and organized the shoes.

11:00 am, we went to the dinning room to have lunch. The foods today were much better than the previous day. However, I still only could eat the pepperoni pizza. I didn’t like the beans at all. After lunch, we came back to our works. In the basement, I had to separate and fold the blankets, the sheets and pillowcases. We were really tired today, maybe just because of the changing weather. I only wanted to sleep and actually slept for half of an hour.

3:30 pm, we went to the dinning room as usual. However, the officers offered us to follow them to another room. It was a really nice one with some big round tables and many trays of foods that we could enjoy them like in a buffet restaurant. I definitely enjoyed this meal and ate a lot. The moment that we left the center, all the officers said thank you with us, blessing us have a nice and safe trip, and hoping that we would come back to the center someday. It was too hard to say goodbye to these people and to this place.

We came back to our motel. Mai and I decided to go to the mall at 7:00 pm. Jesse said that the weather was going to be very bad tomorrow with freezing rain and ice. I hope it’s not too dangerous to drive on the road because we will have a total day off tomorrow to go out and discover about Nashville.