Day 4: Winners and Bubbles

Today was our second day volunteering at TCC, and we all had a fantastic day! We started our morning with a bright and early Taylor Swift wake up from Tiffany. After eating some more Marshmallow Treasures, we got ready, wearing our matching AB shirts, and headed to TCC. After arriving, we had a short meeting with Tom where we continued to learn more about the TCC and the residents. We discussed a number of the complications that some of the HIV/AIDS patients face, including dementia, and how we, as volunteers can best work with residents facing these complications.

For our first activity, we headed to a pool room to play pool and cards with a number of the residents. Some of us had fun facing a few of the residents in a few rounds of pool while the "Winners" and the "Bubbles" faced off in a heated game of Spades. We each continued to make stronger connections with clients we had met the previous day and met some of the other clients of TCC as well.

After a fun lunch where we continued to get each other better through a game of "Would You Rather", we went back to spend more time with the clients. We all participated in a few very intense rounds of "Family Feud" on the Wii. Competition between the two teams was evenly matched, and many of the clients showed us up with their impressive answers. Following "Family Feud", we continued our afternoon of games with "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader" where we were able to make it to the Million Dollar Question as a result of a collective effort. We left TCC yesterday with the news that karaoke has been added to the agenda for Thursday's birthday party which we are all extremely excited for.

After a quick photo shoot in Central Park, we headed back to the church hungry and ready for the highly anticipated Taco Tuesday which certainly lived up to its hype (shoutout to Sanyukta and Ashley :)).

We ended the night with a meaningful reflection on the meanings of service and learning and how these concepts fuse together for our "service learning" trip. To emphasize the importance of service, education, and reflection, we performed skits exploring what an AB trip would look like without each of these components. We are all looking forward to spending more time at TCC the rest of this week. :)

- Lexi and Gretchen

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Day 7: Dawn of the Final Day

Nidhi and Alan here! We went to TCC in the morning as usual, though it was bittersweet knowing that it was going to be our last day, and that we would have to say our farewells to the residents there. That being said, the day proceeded as previous ones had, and we spent the morning and afternoon playing cards, dominoes, and pool, in our respective groups. Some of us went to Shabbat service with Mr. Rosenberg, sang some songs, and learned about Hebrew culture. We had Nick's pizza for lunch! We grabbed a slice of that drippy 'za, if you know what we're saying here now. We were all presented with tokens of appreciation, the TCC gift bag deluxe containing a certificate, a water bottle, some hand sanitizer, and some sweet shades. We had some gifts of our own in kind, and we hope that the Testudo we presented to Tom will hang on the walls of TCC for years to come, symbolizing our ongoing partnership. We also wrote cards for Tom, as well as Father Derby, who was so kind as to

Day 1: We Made it to NYC!

We braved the wintry mix and rain at NYC, lugging all our luggage and sleeping gear to our humble abode for the week at the Church of St. Edward the Martyr. We had a mighty sleepy bus ride up to NYC, with our gleeful participants exhausted just thinking of the week about to come. We were graciously welcomed by Father Derby at St. Edward's Church, the oldest church on the block in this Harlem community. Established in 1883, the church partners with the next-door New York Common Pantry, which distributes 3 million meals per year, from sandwiches to hot meals for the families in this neighborhood. Conveniently, St. Edward's is located just 3 blocks from our community partner at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center! We are thankful for Father William and the Church's generosity in providing lodging for us over this week. Group photo credits go to Father Derby, who was slightly overwhelmed by the high-tech phone camera options: "Oh my goodness I was trying

Day 6: Birthdays and Alumni!

Hey peeps! Its Nikita and Rania saying hello! Today was a pretty eventful day, but we’ll get into that a bit later. Per the usual, we all arose at 8:30 am to Tiff jamming to Bohemian Rhapsody (but we weren’t as enthusiastic to the song like we normally are). Then, we all got ready and feasted on Lucky Charms, coffee, apples, peanut butter, and granola bars. We always try to get out by 10 am, but we’re such a big group that its always impossible (we run on college student time!). A few of us got caught playing with Charlie, our resident AB pupper who is the cutest floof of fluff ever! Next stop: TCC! Today, we had a fun birthday party scheduled in the afternoon, but the morning was up to us. Most of us headed to the 7th floor, where we played dominoes, Spades, and other card games. To be honest, most of us have become dominoes and Spades champs at this point! We saw of a familiar faces and reunited with people we hadn’t seen since the beginning of the week! Then, it w

UMD Alternative Breaks NYC - HIV/AIDS 2017

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