Community Service 4/26

For my community service I went to a soup kitchen in Chicago called A Just Harvest. We left at about 2:30 and arrived there at 3:45. We were really early so we stopped somewhere to get food first since the soup kitchen doesn't open until 4:30. I had never been to a soup kitchen before so I did not know what to expect. My thoughts were that everyone was just homeless so they had to get food at a soup kitchen. I was a bit nervous at first because you would think that we were in a bad neighborhood in Chicago and you didn't really know what to expect. But when we arrived there and the main coordinator talked to us about the people coming in I felt safer. She told us that not everyone that comes to a soup kitchen is homeless most of them use all their money from their jobs to pay for their bills and so they had no money left to buy food so they have to come to a soup kitchen to eat.
I was excited and nervous to start. Our first task was to walk up to three different people get their names and engage in conversation with them. None of us knew what to do. We all looked at each other dumbfounded because I sensed all of us felt uncomfortable to do so, but in the end we all pulled through. It was a shock to see how nice everyone was and how happy they were talking to us (and we mainly let them do the talking because we saw how happy it made them).
My job for was putting the food on the plate, well the first part of it. I put the rice and the main course on the plate then passed it down where someone else put the vegetables on the plate. This was also accompanied with a desert place. One perception we all had was that the food might not taste that good but once we saw we were all surprised. The food looked really good and smelled fantastic as well.

Overall, I walked away with a great experience and am really happy that I decided to volunteer at this soup kitchen. Everyone who volunteers there regularly were just really great people around and made everything more comfortable and helped us all feel like we belonged there and didn't treat us any different.