Last Day of Service!

       So today was our last day in wonderful Indy. Reflecting on this past week, we're all really happy with how the trip went! Particularly because it was a new trip and none of us knew exactly what to expect, we're really pleased with how perfectly everything ended up working out.
      At this point, we've worked with multiple different community partners. It was very interesting to see how each organization has a different approach and to think about what those differences mean. We certainly gained a lot of perspective through our work with the different community partners.
     We spent our day today at Outside the Box, hanging out with the program participants at their field day! We all loved spending the day at Outside the Box. Their individualized approach was evident, and everyone was so positive and happy. So many smiles :) What I really liked about our day at OTB was that our team split up so one or two AB team members got to spend lunch with a different small group of OTB participants, allowing time to get to know the people in the group, but then after lunch, each AB team member was assigned to a different station of the field day, and because the OTB participants cycled through all of the stations, we all got to interact with all of the OTB participants. It was really great to get to spend time with a lot of different people!

otb.org

    After a long, hot day (that actually felt short!) at OTB, we had some time to relax/nap before our celebratory dinner. We had a wonderful meal at Legends and then spent some time walking around Irvington, which was a really cute neighborhood. After dinner and showers, we had our final reflection, which included--along with the standard method of reflection--paper plate awards (super creative and funny) and reading anonymous notes from our team members which had been written throughout the week. It was a great end to a great week :) There was certainly consensus that this was an amazing trip where we learned a lot, served a lot, and had a lot of fun. We can't wait to engage in post-trip service with the community of people with disabilities around College Park and to educate our peers about the issues surrounding disabilities!

--Jessi