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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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