Friday 17th of May

Friday 17

Today is the first day we work under the annoying sunshine as well as the last working day of the trip. In the morning, we learned some farming technique with Jason from the Growth Dat Youth Farm at the City Park.  Our main job was basically kill all the weeds that maybe harmful to the lovely lettuce, tomatoes and squash (OMG it sounds like my favorite vegetable combination for a wrap in the Bison). Yipeng had trouble telling the difference between weeds and squash (personally, I really think it requires special talent!) so as an amazing student co-leader I encouraged him not to give up. You know sometimes some words from your teammate would (either) refresh your energy to put more effort into your work (or just destroy your day . . . Like early in the week when I was frustrated and felt like crying about the mudding work I did to cover nail holes in drywall and a peer told me "No crying in the house"). 

Having done some perfect work (one benefit from this trip is that I keep saying nice words to people), we went to the sculpture garden to have lunch. Staff there didn't allow us to eat inside the garden but we found a gat place to eat outside the gate under a huge old live oak tree.  after the picnic, some volunteers toured an international collection of modern and classic sculptures.

In the afternoon, we helped set up the at the Bayou  Boogaloo  festival. Sounds like a fun job right? It turned out to be moving heavy stuff around the river side under 85 degree Fahrenheit for 3 hours! It was a hard work but everything can be accomplished with an awesome team like this! It was also the last time we worked together in this trip so we all did our best. I personally got to know "my mental supervisor" better. She is actually such an amazing person that helped me a lot physically and mentally (except she couldn't be in charge of my new shirt ;). After doing some fruitful work, we came back to Camp Hope to eat and change.

I was responsible for washing dishes and I knew I did a pretty bad job. We were in a rush so I was kinda paying attention to bowls and spoons (since we will have our last breakfast tomorrow with milk and cereal).  Then we loaded up the vans and headed to the festival. Bayou boogaloo was amazing. Good music. Good food. GOOD FRIENDS.

I can't believe today is our last day together. I wanna say thanks to every single person on the team. You guys have made my week awesome. Now packing time and have a good sleep everybody!

Đoàn Nhật Minh, student co-leader