Serve the City: Soup Kitchen

Wow! What an experience that was! I had so so so much fun and I can't wait for next Sunday!!

I spent three hours at the soup kitchen yesterday (11:30 to 14:30) and I was surprised by how much fun I had. 

Right at the beginning, before we opened the doors to the soup kitchen, people were divided up and made responsible for different jobs. Someone asked whether anyone was interested in serving soup (as in actually just putting soup into bowls) and I raised my hand. So, I was paired up with someone who had already been at the soup kitchen before. She was super nice, just like all the other volunteers at the soup kitchen. I already knew some of the people, but I also met loads of new people and made new friends.

I spent the whole three hours serving soup. People came up to the counter where I was and then they told us how much soup they wanted and we put the soup in bowls and gave it to them. Then they took it to the tables and served the soup to the homeless people that came to eat. 

I didn't really get a chance to talk to any of the homeless people, because I was in the kitchen all day. Maybe next time I want to try and actually take the soup to the people, but I also feel that I'm a lot better at serving the soup than I would be at taking it to tables and serving it to the people.

The scariest part of the day was when one of the homeless people had a seizure. I didn't really see it happen, but it was obvious that something was going on and word travelled fast in our little soup kitchen. Someone called the ambulance and one of the adults was taking care of the man who had the seizure. Luckily most of the volunteers remained calm and the situation was taken care of.

We served over 220 bowls of soup. Firstly, that's really really sad, because if you think about it then that just shows how many people need to come to the soup kitchen to get any food at all. However, it's really great that we got to help so many people and hopefully bring smiles to their faces!