purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog

[purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog]

Our last day in Atlanta was nothing short of an adventure. We started the morning super early at 6am to head to Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church to help cook and serve breakfast for The Coalition of Immokalee Workers. This group is based in Florida and they petition to encourage restaurants and corporations to refuse buying produce from farms that don’t follow work condition guidelines (access to shade, toilets, water, etc.). We ate breakfast together and shared conversation with the members of the coalition as well as helping clean the kitchen of the church. After breakfast, we headed back to our home base (The Mennonite Church), with a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way, to finish up some of the work we started yesterday. Mara, Kileen, Leora, and Kaitlyn planted strawberries with spoons while McKenzie, Emily, Puneet, Nick, and Sarah washed the entry of the church’s preschool from floor to ceiling. Jeff, Alli, and Maddie built brush fires to clear a pasture for the goats. For lunch, Pastor John had us set up a bonfire to roast hot dogs! The Coalition met us for lunch and we also enjoyed cantaloupe, chips and salsa, potato salad, pasta salad, and s’mores! Following lunch, we rushed off to our final site of the trip, MedShare. This non-profit organization collects donated medical equipment that would usually be thrown away by hospitals. We helped sort feeding/gastrointestinal equipment by sorting based on size and type and boxing like items. During only 2 ½ of work, we managed to finish 83 boxes of equipment ready to be shipped to clinics in countries throughout Africa and Latin America! After finishing our work at MedShare, we decided to reward ourselves with a trip to Sonic for “happy hour” drinks. Today was the warmest and sunniest day of our trip so we enjoyed our slushies and mozzarella sticks outside in the sun! The exhaustion from the week finally hit most of us so we headed back to the church to shower and relax before dinner. Our last dinner with DOOR was baked ziti, garlic bread, salad, and cheesecake. We talked with Chad about our DOOR experience and reflected on the most impactful portions of the trip. We finished out the night with games of Taboo and Signs. McKenzie and Jeff also filmed some testimonials from the trip goers to include in our video so be on the look out for that! We’ll be getting up early tomorrow morning to start the long drive back to West Lafayette. Thanks for keeping up with us this week; we hope you enjoyed reading about the trip as much as we enjoyed experiencing it!!

[purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog]

Today started of just like the rest with a 7am wake up call from Chad. However, we did not leave the Berea Mennonite Church today for our morning service opportunity. Instead, we got to speak with Pastor John about Mennonite culture and his upbringing. Following the introduction to the day, Pastor John assigned various tasks ranging from planting sugar snap peas to cleaning out the refrigerators in the pre-school on the Oakleaf Farm. For example, Jeff & Alli tried to roll barrels up and down a hill for entertainment, but then the cement started oozing out of the barrel. This caused Alli to become more flustered than normal. Throughout the day, we also got to interact with some of the kids that attend the bilingual preschooler hosted by the church! After completing all of the tasks that Pastor John assigned to us, we took an hour to relax and eat lunch. From there, we went to Ponce City Market, which is an old train station that has been renovated into an outdoor/indoor shopping complex with restaurants, stores, and high-end apartments. We enjoyed visiting this common attraction of Atlanta. McKenzie and Jeff inspired a trip to King Pops which is a really delicious and creative dessert bar with interesting popsicle flavors such as grapefruit mint and blackberry banana. McKenzie, Jeff, Puneet, and Kaitlyn also discovered that they could use student discounts at J. Crew and all bought matching flannels on sale! While walking around the market, we also ventured up to The Beltline, which is a renovated train track that has been converted to a walking/biking trail. After finishing up at Ponce City Market, we headed to Mary Mac’s Tea Room for dinner with IU Timmy! Mary Mac’s is a great traditional southern food restaurant where portions are insane and calories don’t matter. Most trip goers enjoyed fried chicken, chicken fried chicken, or chicken pot pie with sides like mashed potatoes, spiced apples, and “Hoppin’ John”. After dinner, the group headed back to the church for a quick game of Taboo and headed to bed! Tomorrow, McKenzie is taking a group to the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store and Jeff is taking a group to Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen in the morning and the entire group will meet up in the afternoon at Truly Living Well!!

 *McKenzie would like an amendment to yesterday’s blog post as well. She failed to mention the fact that as Puneet attempted to take a picture on the CDC sign, he lost his balance and not so gracefully fell to the ground! He walked away without a scratch and everyone else walked away laughing (once we made sure he was okay of course).

[purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog]

On to our second day in Atlanta! This morning started like any other with everyone waking up early (thanks Chad for turning on the lights), grabbing breakfast, and getting coffee at our new favorite coffee shop, Hodgepodge. Then we headed to Books for Africa, which is a non-profit organization that collects donated books and redistributes them to schools and universities throughout Africa. We helped organize the books based on grade level and subject material, such as elementary books, adult non-fiction, and middle school world history. The people we worked with were hilarious. For example, a volunteer named John told Emily and Annie that sorting one book was “easy peezy, lemon squeezy”. Jeff even climbed into one of the empty boxes we had sorted! After volunteering at Books for Africa, we headed to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for our visit and tour. We arrived incredibly early (blame McKenzie) so we hung out in the lobby where Jeff and Leora walked through a photo gallery created by the resident CDC photographer. We met up with IU Timmy at the CDC too! It’s their first year visiting Atlanta for a domestic trip and it was great hearing about their experiences so far and giving some tips from our trip! Then, we moved into a panel discussion with five experts from the CDC, including experts from emergency preparedness, infectious disease, epidemiology, and a “laboratorian”. We learned about their careers in public health and how they have grown into the roles they are currently in. We also got to ask lots of questions about the CDC and public health, which was super helpful for Puneet because we will be going to get his Masters of Public Health after he graduates in May! After an hour long discussion, we moved into the museum tour led by a retired employee of the CDC that had dedicated 22 years of her career to the organization. She explained the history of the CDC beginning with its original formation as a result of the malaria outbreak during the war in the 1940s. Atlanta was chosen at the site for the CDC because there are a lot of mosquitos in the south, which is how malaria is transmitted. We also saw an iron lung, which was used as treatment for polio patients, and the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We ended out tour by trying on biohazard suits! After leaving the CDC, we headed back to the church to grab dinner and decided to venture out for ice cream. Unfortunately, we don’t know how to navigate some of the small side streets with our vans and McKenzie’s van ended up stuck in the parking lot of a very fancy restaurant (whoops). The valets had to help us back out before a charter bus with a flat tire backed into us! Luckily, we made it out and headed to Jake’s to meet the other van for ice cream. We finished our sweet treats and decided we needed a new game so we headed to Target. We decided to pick up Taboo and headed back to the church for a hilarious hour and half long game! Now, we’re heading to bed and are excited to volunteer at the Berea Mennonite Church and Oakleaf Farm tomorrow, where we are staying! Then, we have a free evening so we are planning to check out The Beltline and have dinner with IU Timmy at Mary Mac’s Tea Room! See y’all tomorrow!! 

[purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog]

Our first day of service in Atlanta was filled with so many meaningful experiences! We started our day with an early breakfast, which included Annie, Leora, and Will feeding the goats! One each jumped on Leora’s back! Then, we headed off to our first site, Action Ministries. This site is a beautiful, newly renovated space where women and children can come in for a restaurant-style meal. Today, our trip goers got to serve turkey nachos (which smelled amazing), refried, beans, corn, and a brownie with a choice of sweet tea, water, or coffee. In addition to serving meals, our trip goers had the opportunity to sit down and have conversations with some of the guests. Sarah, Kaitlyn, and Maddie sat with Ms. V, who happened to bring in her guitar and played/sang a song for them. McKenzie recognized a guest from serving at Action Ministries last year and decided to sit with her; turns out Ms. L also remember McKenzie! Having the opportunity to sit and talk with guests helped us remember that the people we are serving have stories and wisdom to pass along and it’s so important to share in conversation together. Our next stop was a new site for Purdue Timmy’s, called The Gateway Center, which is designed to provide services for those struggling with homelessness. However, on the way to the center, McKenzie’s van had quite a hard time finding parking, which meant McKenzie forget something in the van because she was in a hurry. Will came to the rescue and decided to sprint back to the van. His running skills came in handy and we all made it to the site successfully on time! Once at the center, we met the community coordinator, Bec, who began our orientation to the site with a visualization exercise. We discussed some of the judgments we have about those experiencing homelessness and talked about some of the external causes of homelessness. We found that many times, we associate homelessness as a flaw of moral character when really is can be a result of marginalization, lack of healthcare, domestic violence, and lack of mental health care services. We also found that although many of us associated homelessness with older men, women and children of all ages and backgrounds are all affected. Following our orientation, half of the group moved into working in the nail clinic painting/filing nails and giving hand massages. The other half of the group helped Bec organize donations as well as bag and pass out detergent and lotions. Maddie and Alli also passed out blankets to four young girls that weren’t properly dressed for the cold Atlanta weather. The trip goers painting guests’ nails and giving hand massages found that the experience was very intimate and a great time to start meaningful conversations. Even the simplest of services can make someone feel so special and human, such as massaging their hands or asking their name. The experience ended with a personal and inspiring story from Bec and her personal reasons for coming to work at the center. After finishing up our discussion with Bec, we headed back to the church to rest up for a delicious dinner of cheeseburgers (and veggies burgers), homemade fries, salad, and cake. The night ended with more games of mafia as well as a game of fish bowl. Overall, the day was a great learning and insightful experience for all. Our discussion included two members of the DOOR Atlanta board and it was great to hear that our experiences at sites so far have aligned with DOOR’s purpose of inspiring intentional services in all communities. We are excited to continue learning how to serve purposely as opposed to serving as “volunteer tourists”. Tomorrow, we will be visiting Books for Africa in the morning and then heading to the CDC (the Center for Disease Control and Prevention) in the afternoon!

[purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog]

Day one in Atlanta began early when Jeff’s alarm went off at 5:30am because he doesn’t understand Daylight Savings Time. After an exciting breakfast that caused the fire alarm to go off, the group spent the next 45 minutes trying to find Kaitlyn’s phone that she lost. Turns out Jeff hid it in a box in the closet! Once we had the phone, we were off to Hodgepodge coffee shop, where we spent 3 hours drinking delicious hipster coffee and playing the game, Code Names. Will also enjoyed attending the Mennonite service at the church we are staying at. We had lunch at the farm and headed off to the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Snaps to Puneet and Jeff for their parking skills in the very tight parking garage. While waiting outside to pick up our tickets for the museum, we happened to run into a Purdue alumnus who recognized Annie’s Purdue sweatshirt and she insisted on taking a picture with us and talked to us about Timmy! All trip goers agreed that the museum was very impactful in that it provided a holistic view of civil and human rights, including information about Martin Luther King Jr.’s life as well as other supporting members of the civil rights movement. One floor was dedicated to current human rights issues, such as modern slavery, disability rights, women’s rights, and political freedoms around the world. When walking through the Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights exhibit, we came upon an interactive exhibit simulating the lunch counter sit-ins. Using surround sound headphones, viewers were challenged to sit through an audio experience of the violence experience lunch counter sit-in protesters. The trip goers that sat through the exhibit agreed that the simulator evoked intense and realistic emotions. After visiting the museum, we decided to head back to the farm to rest up before dinner. Our chef made a traditional southern dinner of potato salad, bbq chicken, baked beans, and mac and cheese. After dinner, Will spent some time helping Pastor/Farmer John round up some run away goats and feed the sheep. The remainder of the night was spent going on a Target run to pick up some air mattresses and playing the game, Mafia. Tomorrow, we are excited for our first service day visiting Action Ministries and The Gateway Center!

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the museum today: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.” - MLK

[purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog]

The sun peaked behind the bell tower as the crisp morning air encouraged us to depart from Purdue; after multiple cups brimming with espresso, we were ready to venture out to Atlanta. Both vans rang with tunes compiled by all as laughter was shared along the journey (topics of discussion ranged from quahogs [yes, q-u-a-h-o-g-s] to east coast accents, and other get-to-know-each-other type conversations).

We found ourselves in Atlanta 12 hours later, along with three other service groups from different universities and institutions. John, the pastor at Berea Mennonite Church (where we are staying for the week), introduced himself and provided background on the church and its mission. Listed below is an example of a typical day!

7:00-8:00AM: Wake up, get ready, eat breakfast, and pack sack lunches

8:00-8:30AM: Travel time to first site

8:30AM-11:30AM: Serve at first site

11:30AM-12:30PM: Eat lunch

12:30-1:00PM: Travel time to second site

1:00-4:00PM: Serve at second site

4:00-4:30PM: Travel time back to the church

4:30-5:30PM: Chill time before dinner

5:30-7:30PM: Dinner and discussion time; free time; Timmy bonding!!! 

Sleepy eyed and not as mentally prepared for the Daylight Savings time change, most of us elected to turn in early—while some of us decided to get a couple games of cards in. Tomorrow’s schedule is contingent on the weather, but potential activities include the following: The Center for Civil and Human Rights museum, Stone Mountain, The Belt Line (a converted, retired railway that now contains shops, restaurants, etc.), and more Timmy bonding!

[purduetimmydomestictrip2k17-blog]

The Domestic Trip had so much fun at the Timmy Escape Room last week! We didn’t break out but that’s just because we haven’t visited the CDC yet!! Follow this page to keep up with our adventures as we embark for Atlanta, GA tomorrow morning!