First Volunteering Experience

Today, February 23rd, 2022, marks my first ever volunteering experience.

A few weeks prior to this date, my brother has been volunteering at “Food Lifeline”, which is a nonprofit organization which allows people of all ages to volunteer and assist them with achieving the goal of donating food to food banks. My brother, Max, had been volunteering numerous days, 2 hours per visit, which sparked curiosity in me.

At Food Lifeline, I met a plethora of kind people ranging from ages 14 to up to 50. It was a genuinely fun experiencing that involved teamwork, with the purpose of putting a stop to hunger. I learned a lot of new skills there, along with a subtle workout-transporting 20-30 pound boxes! Despite this being my first time, I found this experience really fun and plan on continuing it more in the future.

Return of School

September 4th was my first day of in-person school in 1.5 years. Ensuing the isolation we experienced for a year and a half, I didn’t know whether to feel excitement or agitation.

I didn’t know if I could interact with others the way I used to do, whether or not school would be unpleasant with the new Covid-19 restrictions, and if we’re actually easing our way back to our regular lives.

The date is now September 11th, and I had just completed 7 days of school. I experienced various emotions and there were a lot of pros and cons. As for socializing with my friends, it went a lot better than I expected; I expected everyone to be shy and it would be like the first day of pre-school all over again. Also, the school had a completely new schedule, then resulting to me waking up at 6:45 am when prior to that was 7:30. As with P.E, we had to run around the track for 12 minutes. This wasn’t the best experience for me considering I had muscle pain in my legs and I could not run for more than 5 seconds. Adding on, breathing was a major difficulty I fought since I didn’t want to take my mask off due to the risk at stake- students secretly took their masks off.

These factors made me question my return to school with covid-19 and it still does not feel like we’ve resorted back to our normal lives. What I am hoping for the most is to return to amusing activities that I have not touched in years; this includes partying, eating at restaurants, and going to the gym to exercise my favorite pastime- basketball.

Thoughts

With us recently getting vaccinated, we have lots of plans for summer vacation starting on July 29th. I am really excited to go out in public with less worries for the first time in over a year. Before quarantine, the weekends and summer were always full of going out with friends and in public, but I’ve noticed that the weekends are just me sitting around filled with boredom and no new story that follows me throughout the day. Everyday feels like the same now so I am extremely excited for the upcoming vacation.