Reflecting while in Action
Hi, everyone!
Greetings from Los Angeles. Today was a refreshing day, we got to sleep in (up until around 9 am) and eat breakfast made by the chaperones. They made some delicious french toast with the bread that we got from Homeboy Industries bakery yesterday. By this point in the trip, we have gotten to know each other a bit better. The camaraderie between us is wonderful. The fact that four days ago we were complete strangers from different universities and now we are able to mix within the various carpool rides is amazing (the pillars of the Marianist charism of family spirit and community unites us).
So we jumped in the cars and drove to a park for a community hike. Although we left the house at the same time, there were some stragglers so we were waiting about thirty minutes for the third car to get to the place we were at in the park. Or...were we stalling the hike?? Who knows...anyway, once we got on the trail, everyone was enjoying the view of the city and the exercise. We captured a bunch of memories with the pictures we took on the hike among the beautiful scenery. We had a picnic lunch at the park, a paletero (ice cream man) came by and of course we got ice cream!
We came back home to change clothes and rest, then headed to Union Rescue Mission to serve dinner all together. Some of us had been there before, so the place was familiar and we got to see the people who work there once more. There was a group of soccer players there who would sleep on the roof for the night in order to experience a small portion of how the people on Skid Row live. We have gotten closer this week, and all of us getting on the elevator together was an experience that brought us all closer. Between cutting bread, serving plates, and cracking eggs for the next breakfast, there were many lessons to contemplate on that came up within the actions we were doing. All of us come from different academic backgrounds, so we saw how our academic field could be applied to the mission of the organization.
Some of us ended up having an intense conversation with Phillip, the main chef in the kitchen. He had a rough day because he had to ask one of his workers to take the rest of the day off for coming to work under the influence. We talked about the difference between hurting someone and harming someone. Hurting someone is the consequence of performing an action that results in not the most comfortable outcome for the other person but is also the best thing for the person in the long run (similar to the way when we sometimes do not get our prayers answered in the way that we expected, when life's circumstances are blessings in disguise). Coaches make these sort of choices all the time (and Phillip was able to relate to this because he was a coach!). Harming someone would be to intentionally hurt someone by advising them to do something wrong. Phillip gave us all some good advice, the most memorable of such was to hug our parents once we got back home. La Señora Margarita, who was a worker in the kitchen, asked us to pray with her so we did.
Now we are blogging while doing a cultural immersion into the different types of music that we all listen to by playing youtube videos in the living room. There was line dancing going on in a small space, only a minimal amount of toes got stubbed lol. Hasta luego (goodbye)!
Greetings from Los Angeles. Today was a refreshing day, we got to sleep in (up until around 9 am) and eat breakfast made by the chaperones. They made some delicious french toast with the bread that we got from Homeboy Industries bakery yesterday. By this point in the trip, we have gotten to know each other a bit better. The camaraderie between us is wonderful. The fact that four days ago we were complete strangers from different universities and now we are able to mix within the various carpool rides is amazing (the pillars of the Marianist charism of family spirit and community unites us).
So we jumped in the cars and drove to a park for a community hike. Although we left the house at the same time, there were some stragglers so we were waiting about thirty minutes for the third car to get to the place we were at in the park. Or...were we stalling the hike?? Who knows...anyway, once we got on the trail, everyone was enjoying the view of the city and the exercise. We captured a bunch of memories with the pictures we took on the hike among the beautiful scenery. We had a picnic lunch at the park, a paletero (ice cream man) came by and of course we got ice cream!
We came back home to change clothes and rest, then headed to Union Rescue Mission to serve dinner all together. Some of us had been there before, so the place was familiar and we got to see the people who work there once more. There was a group of soccer players there who would sleep on the roof for the night in order to experience a small portion of how the people on Skid Row live. We have gotten closer this week, and all of us getting on the elevator together was an experience that brought us all closer. Between cutting bread, serving plates, and cracking eggs for the next breakfast, there were many lessons to contemplate on that came up within the actions we were doing. All of us come from different academic backgrounds, so we saw how our academic field could be applied to the mission of the organization.
Some of us ended up having an intense conversation with Phillip, the main chef in the kitchen. He had a rough day because he had to ask one of his workers to take the rest of the day off for coming to work under the influence. We talked about the difference between hurting someone and harming someone. Hurting someone is the consequence of performing an action that results in not the most comfortable outcome for the other person but is also the best thing for the person in the long run (similar to the way when we sometimes do not get our prayers answered in the way that we expected, when life's circumstances are blessings in disguise). Coaches make these sort of choices all the time (and Phillip was able to relate to this because he was a coach!). Harming someone would be to intentionally hurt someone by advising them to do something wrong. Phillip gave us all some good advice, the most memorable of such was to hug our parents once we got back home. La Señora Margarita, who was a worker in the kitchen, asked us to pray with her so we did.
Now we are blogging while doing a cultural immersion into the different types of music that we all listen to by playing youtube videos in the living room. There was line dancing going on in a small space, only a minimal amount of toes got stubbed lol. Hasta luego (goodbye)!
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