Blog for Ed L.

Edward Lo

Day 1

 



Going into the trip, I did not expect much out of first day except travelling and settling down at the church that we were going to stay at. However, I was totally wrong, as the day was already filled with adventure and surprises. Our first challenge was before we even left the university to go to Union Station. The shuttles we had were a tad too small to fit all of us, so we had to use some of our tetris skills to squeeze everyone and all of our luggage into them. The married shuttle drivers had their bickering of how to get to the station the fastest, but they managed to get us to the station well on time and we were able to all get seats on the bus. As a consequence of leaving early for the bus, everyone was sound asleep on the bus as our driver, the D-man (as so he calls himself), smoothly got us to Manhattan safely and on time.

When we arrived in Manhattan, we got a quick bite to eat, then hopped on the subway to go to the church, which is in Brooklyn. Something that I noticed was that the subway system is much different than the metro we have in D.C. First, they have multiple lines that go to the same stations. This results in less transfer stations compared to the D.C. metro. Another difference is that there are much more New York subway stops and that they are all much further away from each other than in D.C.'s metros. This really highlights the complexity of their subway as they have to serve a larger number of people over a greater distance compared to D.C.

After getting on the subway, one of our members noticed that the subway was expecting some delays due to matainance. Just our luck, the subway would stop serving one stop before the stop we were suppose to get off at. However, the subway offered free shuttle service from the last stop to the station that we wanted to go to. Initially we thought that the two stops were close enough that we could walk to the church. Boy were we wrong. Combined with all of our baggage, the walk to the church was cold and uncomfortable. The walk ended up taking longer than we expected and we regretted not taking the shuttle to save ourselves from the bitter New York weather. However, walking through the streets of Brooklyn was a unque experience. There was a clear distinction between the more city-like and tourist parts of New York, like Manhattan and the suburbs of Brooklyn. There is definately more diversity in Manhattan with Caucasians while in Brooklyn everywhere I looked there were African Americans. The buildings and shops were also different, with Brooklyn having more lower end shops and stores and Manhattan having towering skyscrapers with fancy shops and restaurants. This was something interesting that I would have not experienced and seen if we took the shuttle and did not physically walked through the streets of Brooklyn.

However, the adventure did not stop here. When we arrived at the church, I was midly disappointed at the appearance of it from the outside. The church looked old, small, and could not house all of us. However, when we went in, I realized how enormous it actually was. The rooms we slept in was more than big enough to house all of us and the basement had a fully stocked kitchen and basketball court. The church was very hospitable, and we even discovered that other volunteer groups were staying here as well, including another University of Maryland group.

After all of that travelling, we could not wait to cook and have our first meal here. Fortunately, there was a grocery store right around the corner that sold fresh and cheap produce. We bought all of our groceries and were so excited to go back and cook, but we ran into a problem. Our group leader lost her cell phone somewhere in the shop and we could not find it. We spent another hour in the store trying to find the phone, but to no avail as we could still not find it. However, this obstacle did not prevent us from having the best spring break of our lives. We all went to sleep looking foreward to our first day at Terrece Cardinal Cookie Health Center.