Service is good. Service is very, very good. There is nothing wrong with being charitable. Nothing wrong with volunteer work. If I'm fortunate enough to be walking on two legs then I sure as hell better return Gods' favors by helping out the needy. What kind of person would I be if I simply didn't want to go?
I'll tell you what.
A tired one.
All I'm saying is that when you spend the night like this:
And you wake up to this:
You end up turning out a bit like this:
My attitude gets better, but it didn't start out all that sunshiney.Mom was awake before me. I think she tried to go back to sleep a few times, but she was making frequent trips to the bathroom and told me several times she wasn't feeling well. I responded with a sympathetic "dasdjlhfdhafdjghnfhhhnn."
Starting at seven thirty or so, she began saying, "Maybe we should get up, I'm hungry, we should eat breakfast." I replied with a slightly indignant "afgljafghfghsfkghgsdhfg." The whole point of skipping Devotionals (I still don't know what those are anyway) was so that we could catch up on our sleep. She suggested this several times I lied on my bed fully awake but trying to convince myself that I wasn't, and each time I answered my replies grew more and more annoyed and more and more incomprehensible. We could wait for breakfast. We didn't have to go anywhere until ten.
At about 8:30 mom's alarm went off (she tried to sleep again as well and was about as successful as me) and I had no choice but to drag myself out of bed and dress myself. I wore skinny jeans, faded and marred with those holes that are put in there so you don't have to, and my new shirt I got just from attending Youth Conference. I opted for a small ponytail instead of pigtails today. Rare occurance.
And so we were off. My poor mother was ill before we started this trip, but seemed to get better. Now she was feeling sick again. Which really sucked. I ate a huge breakfast of eggs that seemed to be premade and a various assortment of meats and pancakes (what? I eat like a bullimic pig, don't you judge me) until I was pretty much ready to vomit. We were told we could probably stay at the hotel for our service project instead of going to the Food Bank, but President was like, "Sorry guys, we're going to the food bank." I had to run up and get my tennis shoes so that the bus didn't leave me.
Which, by the way, were nifty city buses, not school buses. I was totally expecting school buses. I was also expecting it to be a ten minute drive. It was a 45 minute one.
Anything before 9PM is just freaking ridiculous. Guess what time I've woken up the past two days? Like 7 AM. Just what the hell is this.
I don't think it's just because of early rising, though, even though I finally understand what the "2:30 feeling" is (hard to understand it when that's the time you wake up). It might have something to do with the fact is that I. Don't. Get. A. Second. To. My. Self. Here. Activities this. Activities that. Get up do this do this eat that do this do this prayer sleep. It's probably best to keep some of us occupied because while we're a big group of Christians and all, we're still a big group of... teenagers.
Even with this justification, I was not happy.
We arrived at the food bank.
I stumbled out of the bus, blearily inspecting my surroundings.
Buildings. Buses. Teenagers. Heat.
Mom, Deena, Anna, their friends, and I went inside.
It smelt like food. Bad food.
We sat at circular tables. They picked random ones and assigned us to random tasks. I didn't hear what we were assigned. We walked downstairs. I blindly followed the trail of children like an obidient ant.
Baby Carrots.
We were assigned packaging baby carrots.
Our equip consisted of the following items:
I'm glad I didn't do anything to dress up or anything, because I saw kids who were wearing their cool emo-goth clothes and equipped with hairnets, they looked miserable.
Actually, we were all miserable
Several of us would scoop frozen baby carrots from this giant vat of them. We'd pour them into plastic bags. Then someone else would set the bag on this scale (there were probably seven of them) and take/add baby carrots until it weighed exactly two pounds. They'd throw extra carrots into this plastic tub set by the scale. Then they'd give it to the person in front of them who would seal the bag. And then they'd set it in a different plastic tub. And then someone else (who didn't have to wear gloves or a hairnet WHY) would grab them, set them in a cardboard box, and disappear mysteriously.
For a while, I scooped the frozen carrots into the baggies. This got very old very quickly.
You see, I do not have a significant amount of muscle, or anything on my upper arms. And using the same arm to scoop the same carrots over and over again quickly wore it out. Eventually I took up mom's offer to do her job, which wasn't exactly assigned but I wasn't complaining. I just helped Deena add and take away carrots from the bag.
I think some guy works at the food center a little too much.
My group (several dozen kids) were just bagging the baby carrots. There were other people doing different things. Someone was packaging SLICED carrots, and some other people were packaging SHREDDED carrots. In total, we were 120 Mormon kids doing volunteer work. It was boring but it felt pretty good to be helping people.
Then this guy began walking through the rooms.
He was a very enthusiastic man.
He would walk in between the scoopers and the weighers and poke us on the shoulders as he passed, making us turn around and go "who wha?" like confused fish. But more noticably he'd walk in and out of the work rooms shouting "CARROTS!!!"
CARROTS!!!
CARROOOOOOOOTSSSSSS!
First we simply stared at him like he was crazy and went back to work. Later, though, we would call CARROTS right back. Like Red Robin, Yum! or something. But this was just "CARROTS? CARROTS!!!"
Also, on the baggies, there was a label. It read "Carrots, Baby."
The guy made a song out of that.
I will never look at carrots the same way again. We sang along.
Well, I've returned home obviously (that's how I wrote and drew most of this) and that was pretty much the highlight of my time at the Food Bank. Which we totally kicked ass at. I don't want to tell you just how many meals we got ready for people to eat because you'd be totally depressed because you're not as awesome.
It turned out to be a good experience. I wasn't thrilled but as I worked I didn't feel like complaining and actually felt good about helping people. I wouldn't mind helping people again like that.
But please don't make me stand for four hours, okay?
This was long. And not as funny. But I had to write it out before Girls' Camp tomorrow.
Sister Dinosaur wants me at her house at 6:30 AM. She is not getting us breakfast. If we want lunch, we have to buy it at Wal-Mart, where we'll be stopping. I have to buy disposable cameras, snacks, and chapstick for myself while I'm there too, but I still kind of hate her for waking me up early when I've been waking up early all weekend.
I look forward to Girls' Camp though... the heat, though.... yeah. Look at my last post. Just yeah. I have a feeling after this, I'm gunna be a little sick of church related activities for a while.
This was an abormally long post. Not all my posts will be this long or stupid. Promise.
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