已經過了大半個暑假了，除了繼續在家寫地理比賽書籍，兒子決定去湯廚房做義工，幫助需要領救濟餐的人們。湯廚房在離家挺遠的地方，公共汽車單程需要一個半小時，不過怎麽說呢，自己乘車找到工作地點，也是走向獨立生活的一部分。以下是兒子做義工的記錄：

Today was interesting because I went to volunteer at a soup kitchen. It was not a convenient thing by far, as I had to take the bus across all of San Jose, taking about 1.5 hours to get to the soup kitchen. Although I did not know at the time, one person on the bus would be a fellow volunteer and another would be a diner at the soup kitchen. It shows how sometimes you can’t tell how one is doing in life just by looking at them.

The soup kitchen, called Eastside, was actually a community center. When I arrived, there were elderly couples doing some kind of waltz. The work started immediately after I arrived at the center at 3:30 pm. The cook had already finished the main meal of cream of mushroom casserole, the bread rolls, and the chocolate muffins for dessert, but I arrived on time to help with the salad.

The salad wasn’t anything unusual, but I had never tossed a salad from scratch before. I started with lettuce, which I first chopped its tip off and picked off the leaves. After washing the leaves, I cut the lettuce into smaller bits, and put them into the salad. Other ingredients for the salad were tomatoes and eggs, which was cut by me and another volunteer. Washing the cutting boards and plates were passed on to volunteers who came later. Once we were all done it was about time to open up (4:30 pm).

For simplicity, the organizer split us to do duties based on the order that we came, so I was assigned to serve the starch. Little did I know that today we had no starch because it was combined with the main dish, so I ended up pouring the coffee.

When the people came in to eat, I really couldn’t tell them any different from normal people. There was diversity in race and appearance (clothes and belongings), though most people were old. Soon work overwhelmed me. The amount of people who drank a lot of coffee surprised me, as I spent the entire 45 minutes of meal time pouring and refilling coffee for the diners.

Before I knew it the coffee ran out so I joined other people who were done serving on washing the dishes. The process was a hasty one because everyone wanted to go home as soon as possible. I glimpsed the workings of the restaurant dishwasher, where after rinsing food and oil off you would cover it in a big metal cover so the dishes would get rinsed and dried. It was pretty smooth sailing from there to the end.

I am glad that I could have an opportunity to see how soup kitchens operate. The operation is smooth and gets food to grateful people in need, as well as gives me some satisfaction that I made food for hundreds of people. The only problem is that the hours on the bus getting there and back is even more unproductive than sleeping / chatting / playing games or anything else really.