Today we all went to the Bordeaux site together in the morning. Again, it was extremely friendly, inviting, and fun. We played some more Wii Bowling, watched them play card games which we didn’t join because it looked like they took it pretty seriously, and listened to some more stories. The highlight of the morning was Margaret dancing to the blues music that was playing. It was truly inspirational just how full of energy and life she was. Jean Wilson talked to us about the power of music. Her true passion was music as she was well aware of the healing and relaxing powers of music. Seeing someone with so much passion and happiness greatly affected me. Velma told me about how she went to Walgreens to develop pictures; the price increased and the man working there advised her to buy a digital camera for $20-25. Velma said she didn’t have that kind of money, which reminded me of how much these elderly members were in need. Before lunch, someone from AmeriCorps came to lead chair exercises. As some of the members were not able to walk very well, chair exercises are a great way for them to stay more active. Some of the chair exercises were surprisingly strenuous.
One thing I noticed was the difference of mood and attitude between the Bordeaux and Knowles sites. At the Bordeaux site we were always playing around and having a good time. Jean Wilson never really had us do any manual work; we had to force her to put us to work. She mentioned that she wanted to clean out the storage closet so we started to clean it out ourselves. We moved most of the boxes out of the closet to free up some space. Other than that, the only manual work we did was helping to serve the food.
In the afternoon we all went back to the Knowles center to continue sorting out and organizing fabric for “The Big Stitch Event”. Again, this manual work was in contrast to the face to face interactions we had with elderly members earlier in the morning. Deborah had us prepare goodie bags for the event then she had us measure fabric. She wanted to know how long each piece of fabric was so she could price them accordingly. Although this work was boring, we were all still glad to help in any way we could and knew it was for a good cause. We made it fun by playing music, dancing, and joking around.
After the Knowles center we walked around downtown and went to the Symphony Center. The downtown is very lively with lots of lights and the Symphony Center was beautiful. Afterwards we went to the Lighthouse Church dinner as we were invited by Larry, our host. The church was just across the street from where we were staying. We met a woman at the dinner who was from Wichita, KS. This was cool because I am also from Wichita, KS. It was awesome to see so many connections to Kansas. Pretty much every day we met people who had some sort of connection to Kansas.
-Yasser Hassan
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