...andddd we're off!! (Saturday March 13)

We left for Atlanta on Saturday, March 13, the first day of spring break. Departure time was supposed to be 8am, but we ran into a few roadblocks. Someone left their wallet, someone needed picked up, someone slept through their alarm and didn't wake up until the trip leaders called them at 8:15 (okay, that last someone was me.) We finally hit the road around 9am-not TOO off schedule. There were 14 of us (including our staff advisor Kim) split into two 12-person vans:

Katie and Jenny (trip leaders)
Matt
Bei
Reni
Tracey
Sam
Jessica (x2)
Keniesha
Arifa
Somrita
...and me (Shannon)

Everyone took turns driving the vans...except me, that is. No one knows this yet (well, now you do), but my parents flipped out when they heard there was a possibility of me driving a 12-person van, and my roommate threatened to call ASB and warn them not to let me drive. (She doesn't trust me because I ran over her foot, although she didn't get hurt) Anyway I'm not THAT bad a driver and I've never actually had an accident, so maybe I'll volunteer on the way back.

Along the way, we made a couple stops for food/gas/bathrooms, including dinner at Cracker Barrel in South Carolina. There is absolutely nothing at a Cracker Barrel that I'd ever want to consume EVER, but fortunately there was a Whole Foods next door and a couple of other girls and I went over to get salads. The biggest challenge for me on this trip is that I'm the world's pickiest eater. You name it and I probably won't eat it, including meat, poultry, milk, yogurt, cheese, and most carbs. That doesn't really leave a lot, especially when you're dining at a homeless shelter in Georgia. So we'll see how that goes.

We arrived at City of Refuge around 10:30pm. City of Refuge is the Christian-affiliated organization that operates the homeless shelter and surrounding facilities, and also serves as a parent organization for other shelters in the area. We would be sleeping in volunteer quarters in a row of wooden or metal bunkbeds with thin mattresses. We had four showers to share between us, of which one was down the hall, and three were in another building. Comfort-wise, it was somewhere between a dorm-room and a campground. Not exactly roughing it, but not exactly Acapulco.

Once we got there, we pretty much just settled down and went to bed. We'd had a long day of driving and we were waking up at 7:30, plus losing an hour of sleep to Daylight Savings Time. We had made good time and arrived safely, with no major traffic, no one left behind at rest stops, and no one letting me behind the wheel, so I would say the first day can be considered a success.