"Lock it"

So the day WAS supposed to start at 7:30am, but instead it started at 4:45am. I know...REALLY early. Well the 4:45am wake-up call was from two random strangers in the church telling us that there was going to be a movie filmed in the room we were sleeping in and so therefore we had to move. Well thank goodness Ashley was awake and a bit alert to take care of things. Basically, the random strangers kept insisting that we move at 4:45am to another room, and only because all of us were completely out of it, did we move to the new room. The whole situation was extremely strange and a bit creepy in the moment. Basically, one of the strangers, named Harjit (or his Christian name Nathaniel) told us that we could stay in his room. We thought he was one of the workers, but later did we find that he was a guest just like us. It was quite strange. He kept trying to make small talk about meditating at 4am and where we were from, and honestly all of us just wanted to sleep. The creepiest part was when he decided to sleep in the same room as most of us and he pretty much commanded Sam to close the door. His final statement was "LOCK IT". I think everyone either peed in their pants, prayed, clutched to their cell phone, or just didn't sleep. It was the most bizarre sitatuation. Looking back on the situation, everyone just laughed and joked about the entire thing, but we were a bit concerned as to who this man was. We did end up finding that he was an innocent guest but maybe he was just a bit naive to social etiquette?? Who knows. Anyways, he invited us to meditate with him on Wednesday morning so we are thinking of taking him up on the offer. What a crazy morning. And that's just the beginning.

It's 1:20am right now and I am super super super exhausted. But i will give you a quick list of what we did and explain more tomorrow:

-Taking the Subway to God's Love

-First day at God's Love
-Working in the kitchen (cutting onions--> crying in the process due to the harshness of the onions, packaging)
-Lexie cutting herself with a knife--> Holly and Lexie take a trip to the downtown New York Hospital
-Dayani, Sam, Adriana, Sarah, and Ashley make small talk with the workers and find out ALL ABOUT NY city--> "if dayani wants to live in New York, she should find a rich man to marry"-man from NY
-Dayani, Sarah, Adriana-went to canal street and bargained for perfumes. Someone told me I wasn't Sri Lankan
-Entire group goes to Ground Zero
-Staten Island Ferry ride (for FREE)
-Adriana and Sarah get a caricature drawing made for them while the rest of the group eat pretzels and chill in Battery Park
-Group takes a trip to Chinatown to eat vietnamese food---yummy
-WE end at Times Square
-Entire group has a LONG reflection on what our passions are and also what the death of Osama Bin Laden means to us and what are our thoughts
-Sarah and Dayani go on a run and see people still out and about past midnight
-Everyone takes showers and falls asleep easily
=)

I will elaborate when I have more time =)

Tomorrow: delivering the food we made!!! ahhhh.

XOXO
Dayani and GLWD

Big Lights Will Inspire You, Let's Hear it for New York

Ahh so many things to do and see. New York City is incredible. This morning at 7am, while I was driving to the Ginsberg Center, it still hadn't hit me that I would be going to New York City in a short ten hours. For those who are following this blog and don't know what NASST is about, basically a group of University of Michigan students have been grouped into teams to work in various locations in the United States. The team I am on, God's Love We Deliver (GLWD), is made up of 7 members (Holly, Sam, Adriana, Lexie, Ashley, Sarah, and me), and we are going to be working in New York City with the organization GLWD. We will be working with HIV/AIDS patients by providing them nutritious meals that can be hard to afford due to high health care costs (medications, checkups, screenings, etc). GLWD works with tons of volunteers, dieticians, and has an amazing delivery service (by car and foot). Our team will be making the meals, delivering the food to various boroughs, and learning more about what life is like for a person with HIV/AIDS.

I am personally looking forward to working with the organization. I love to cook and have become more interested in social justice involving health! I also just love cities and can't wait to explore. I think this trip will be very memorable and can't wait for tomorrow.

In terms of the car ride itself, it was definitely a challenge trying to fit everything into the small space in the back of the minivan. We pretty much played tetris with all the bags and most of the leftover stuff got placed on the ground floor or on people (poor Lexie!!). Me, Lexie, and Holly chilled in the back seat and had many deep conversations about life (haha gotta love those). Sam and Ashley were also in the back, reading, chilling, and talking. Sarah and Adriana manned the front seat, manuvering through all the traffice in New York City, Pennsylvania, Jersey, and Ohio (gosh I am thankful for you guys!!!). We also were all very tired and had moments of long sleep, but our Mickey D's run and fresh air definitely got us awake. One of the highlights of the car ride for me was when the song "Empire State of Mind" came on. Even though we were in N. Jersey it was still epic and everyone got pretty excited.

Sam had fun taking pictures of random objects such as my eye, and pretty much everyone had their cameras out when we saw the skyline.

When we arrived at the church, Eugene (the headman) helped us around. The church is gorgeous. It looks really historic with wine red carpets and low lighting. Our room is huge but doesn't have locks. We were a little worried about the safety of our belongings but Eugene says we are in safe hands.

While Sam, Ashley, and Lexie went to park the car, Sarah, Adriana, Holly, and I explored the upper-west side of NYC. We strolled down Broadway and the side streets looking for a good place to eat. We found tons but ended up forgetting where they were. To be efficient in terms of timing (since it was Sunday) and cheap, we found a really cute/good late night restaurant called Cafe 82 and ate there. Late night breakfast dinners are sooooo good (aka Banana belgian waffles topped with whip cream, or goat cheese spinach omelets...mmm).

We are going to be working early tomorrow preparing all the food for delivery! Keep checking for updates about our trip =)

XOXO
Dayani and GLWD

Can I just say I love my team. Everyone has been so enthusiastic

PKRC is off to Texas!

Start time: 7:22 am

Arrival in Memphis, TN: 7:00 pm (8:00 pm Ann Arbor time)

Number of hours driven: 12ish

After clearing up some concerns about the recent weather in the Southern states, we started our journey to TX early in the AM on Saturday, April 30. Car ride consisted of sleeping, some card games, an episode of Glee, I Spy, Hang Man, and reading books. Geraldine, our GPS (named and provided by Devon's grandparents), has been an enormous help thus far, though we have found her to be a bit insistent that we stick to her route and tends to get annoyed with us when we stop for gas or food (first gas stop pictured below).

So far on the drive down we were most surprised by how high the Mississippi River has risen-- at one point, the water had overtaken an entire road. Gas prices are a lot cheaper here-- around 3.65 compared to 4.15 in Ann Arbor and 4.35 in Illinois. Weather has thus far been good, and we've only ran into a little rain and some really cool lightning when we had to cross into Arkansas for a bit before coming into Tennessee.

We stopped for the evening in Memphis, TN at a lovely Sleep Inn. Dinner was at Sonic (which was delicious), and then Meg taught Nicole, Devon, and Ashley how to play Euchre (and refreshed Kelly's memory). A game of B.S. then ensued, pictured below.

We'll start again at 8:00 tomorrow morning (after continental breakfast yay!) and will hopefully arrive at PKRC sometime late-ish tomorrow evening. Total driving time is around 10 hours, but we'll need to stop for things like milk before going to the camp so that might take a bit of time.

I will post again later, hopefully with more pictures! The scenery has not been much different from Michigan thus far (a lot of farmland), so I've not taken too many pictures of that yet.

~ Devon & the PKRC team