I just got hugged by Spiderman

FIRST DAY OF BEAUTIFUL WEATHER IN NEW YORK CITY!!!! As our fourth day in New York City, and our second day volunteering, this has been, and probably will be the most interesting day yet. We have talked, walked and even danced our way through new experiences and challenges. The day started out fairly normal, getting up and meeting down in one of the rooms at 11am to discuss what the plans were for the day, and how we were getting there. Today was our first day at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, where we would be working with HIV/AIDS residents, or as they called it, the discreet unit. We traveled by bus to the center in East Harlem, right next to Central Park. The Health Care Center is a beautiful, and fairly big, building that treats many disease in the advance stages. It is one of the few clinics that cares for Huntington's Disease patients. When we got to the center around 12:30pm we ate lunch, and then made our way to a room where we would stay for the next 3 hours. Here we talked with a man, Adam, who is the coordinator for volunteer services. He talked with us about the center, its history and residents, as well as some of the people that work at the center, and what their main goal is:

Reflection of Terence Cardinal Cooke Center Mission:
"Life is no less beautiful when accompanied by an illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age."
- Terence Cardinal Cooke

Adam's love and excitement for his job and patients was truly admirable, I know that we all hope to feel the same way as the week and our volunteering progresses, as well as with anymore volunteering we do in the future. As a group we watched a movie on the health center and talked more about the rules and what to expect while volunteering and working with the patients. As we waited for another speaker to come talk to us about his role at the health center, we bonded more over stories, all ranging from roommates peeing on things to interesting animal deaths. You can say we have all really started to connect with each other and have grown quite comfortable as a group. For the last hour of the trip, Thadeus, a man that worked with the residents, spoke to us about his experiences and research. He had quite the insight on life and AIDS. Specializing in mostly substance abuse experiences, Thadeus talked about what he knew well, and also about his opinions on the issue. After the speakers had ended, we rode the bus back to the hostel and quickly changed for the alumni dinner.

The alumni dinner was at a cute, Irish pub in Times Square. Here we met with not just alumni from University of Maryland, but alumni that has been on Alternative Spring Break trips, as well as faculty and staff that had been on the trips. These alumni are now living in New York City, working and taking with them their experiences from these trips. The other ASB group, learning more about immigration in NYC also joined us, many of them which we have not met. The food was great, and we networked with awesome alumni that had so many experiences to share with us. I know that most of us plan to take the experiences we are learning this week on to whatever great things we do with our lives. After the dinner, we went back to the hostel to reflect on the past couple of days, and how we felt about everything that had been going on and what we plan to expect tomorrow. What would have been a 20-30 minute conversation, turned into a 2 hour discussion. As a group, we discussed everything from "bad decisions" relating to AIDS to trust to religion. Not only did we all open up about our opinions and how we felt on all these subjects, but we really gained an understanding of what people find offensive and how we should handle offensive words. We finally finished our discussion and decided to go out into Times Square on the first day of nice weather!

Stepping off the subway onto 50th street, we searched for St. Patrick's Day paraphernalia, and of course ice cream! Walking through Time Square, we stopped and waited, took pictures of everything, and even got Craig a birthday hug from Spiderman!! Since at 12am it officially became Craig's birthday, I had felt obligated to tell that to everyone we ran into, however that came in handy. And soon we found our ice cream.. 8 blocks later, after standing around waiting and many pictures taken, we came across Cold Stone. The line was long and the music was blasting, but we didn't mind, It's New York! The workers kept insisting on we dance, and when the Cha Cha Slide came on, none of us could resist. And soon, we were dancing, well I should say sliding and Cha Chaing, down the line. Not just with ourselves, but with total random strangers as well, it was great, just what New York is all about. And again, I felt it necessary to announce to the guy that is was Craig's birthday, who shouted it across the whole room and embarrassed Craig! And when we came to the register to pay for our ice cream, to our surprise.. they gave us the ice cream for free!! Can you believe it?! A little dancing can go along way. So while Rachita and Killian got their ice cream, Craig requested the cupid shuffle, which we all danced to, in front of the door I might add, for all of New York to watch! Yes, it was quite the scene to be seen. But don't worry, pictures were taken if you missed this exciting part of the trip. And as we left, free water bottles were handed to us for all our hard work of entertaining! Then back to the hostel we went. Playing never have I ever on the subway, and learning some very personal information about each other. The day has been quite the experience, a great one at that. And hopefully the week will bring more, and better experiences we can take home to share with our friends and family! Goodnight! Lots of love, Carly.