Hey Gannon, coming to you from our ABST Washington D.C. trip, this is Leah Huston and Maddy Vergona. 

We are both criminal justice majors on our first ABST trip, and we are so excited to share our day with you. 

Today we woke at 6 a.m., started the day off strong with serving breakfast to the people who struggle with homelessness and poverty. We all split off and did a variety of tasks that needed accomplished around the center. 

Our personal tasks were serving food for breakfast and lunch, sweeping the center, organizing the food pantry, and helping the families with low income shop in the food pantry. 

After we were done with our services, we decided to take a tour of the Capitol. We got to see a lot of the amazing statues, the Rotunda, and we got to watch a video on the history of the capitol. 

After our tour of the Capitol we decided to play a little game of “Chopped.” We got to experience what it was like to have limited resources and a limited amount of time to utilize our resources, much like the people that come through the shelter. I know our experiences are not the exact same, but it was really benefitting to see what it was like using only the resources at hand. A lot of people in this area are struggling deeply with poverty and homelessness, and it is so nice that we are able to give back and help support them during our stay here. 

We chose to come to Washington D.C. for our ABST trip because in our major we will be dealing a lot with people of this nature. I think this will really benefit us for our future career, for our community and ourselves. I know that I have learned a lot on this trip already, and we have only been here for two days. This has taught me so many valuable lessons and to not take anything for granted because you never know where we are going to end up in life. 

We can’t wait to share the rest of our week with you!