Service is love made visible.
As you might have noticed, I didn't have a blog post last week. That was due to the fact that it was spring break, and I was on an IMPACT trip to South Florida. I want to take my blog post this week to tell you a little about the trip and what I learned. There's no way this is going to cover everything, just so you know.
First, though, here's one of the many pictures of our group (and my computer background):
I'm going to begin by telling you a little about my feelings before I went on this trip. Flat out, I was a skeptic. I didn't really believe in what I had heard about IMPACT, but I wanted something meaningful (and affordable) to do with my spring break. Over the past year or two, I have heard mentioning of IMPACT trips: how people had made great friends and how people had experienced the best spring break ever. I had also heard stories of how people were still meeting with their "families" after graduation. It sounded great, but I didn't buy in.
You see, if you know me, I'm not one to make friends quickly. I take a while to open up - and by a while, I mean way longer than a week. But a week was all I had.
Last Saturday morning at 7am I threw the last bit of my stuff together and wondered what the heck I was doing. I got to Tate at 8:30 still wondering that same thing. I was already exhausted and the trip hadn't even started yet. I sat down in a circle-ish figure with my group. Someone started juggling clementines. It was going to be a good trip.
We loaded the vans and headed out. I would love to write what happened daily, but frankly, I took enough pictures (now on Facebook) to tell the story. So I'll just give a brief run-through of what we did while we were there.
Our first service site was the Fruit and Spice park, aka: The Garden of Eden. I've never seen a place so close to paradise. We had two days of service there working in the pond/lake area. Tubers. Tubers. And more tubers. Papyrus. Toads. Rocks. Water. Lotus. Louise. That pretty much sums it up.
The day between those two days at Fruit and Spice was spent in the Everglades. We did some bush/woody vegetation trimming and got to experience a lot of wildlife. Alligators. Anhinga. Turtles. Fish. Herons. Ibis. Mosquitoes. Beauty. We were there all day, so we got to witness sunset in the Everglades as we ate our dinner (of Little Caesar's, of course). After darkness fell (and after reflection), we went out on a night walk, and heard the sounds of the Everglades at night, including alligators thrashing about.
Our other service site was Elliot Key. We took a boat out to the site (btw, one of the best rides of my life) where we did some trail work and beach clean-up. It was kind of upsetting to realize that trash was just going to come in on the shore again right after we left.
Our last day was spend doing some exploration in Miami - both in the city and on the beach! It was a wonderful way to end the trip. From iguana spotting to playing monkey in the middle, it was great bonding for us all. We ended the trip with a final alumni dinner before heading back to Orlando for the night (and back to Athens the next day).
Looking back on the trip now, I'm not a skeptic. I learned a lot about myself throughout the week. And I made 19 wonderful new friends. I wouldn't have traded the experiences from this past week for anything. But it's something you have to experience before you can truly understand or have an appreciation for it.
Honestly, if one single person had been missing from this trip, it would not have been the same. The diversity of the people made it the perfect trip. I learned so much from the various people (both on the trip and those we encountered) and from the many things we did at the places we visited. Also, note that Florida has some great milkshakes and cinnamon rolls.
Until the next adventure,
Megan
