Expecting too much.

Today, Patricia and I went over to Tri-City Volunteers for our community service hours. Right after school, we waited for my brother to pick us up and bring us over there. In the car, my brother was talking about how he and his friend also volunteered here when he was in high school, and he told us some weird experiences. We were both excited and nervous because we didn't know what to expect since neither of us have been there. Entering the building, we approach a long hallway with a man sitting at one of the windows. "Hi, we're from Washington High School, and uh we were wondering if could get community service hours?"

He looked up and told us to follow him back behind the counter. Behind the counter, we were approached by cubicles for the workers, each filled with someone talking on the phone or working at their desk. He lead us into this cold room filled with food products, workers moving things around and packing things up; me and Patricia assumed that this was the food bank. At this point, we were pretty set on what we were going to do, probably sort foods out and give them to the homeless. But things turned around; a lady walked in and told us to follow her. It looked like she was looking for someone since she turned a corner, peered into a cubicle and said, "...oh, he's not here" and continued walking into a meeting room where we were introduced to other volunteers. The people in the room looked like they were sealing envelopes; me and Patricia, confused, were kind of like, "What are we doing in here?". The lady told us to take a seat and she'll give us paperwork to fill out in a few minutes. We took a seat and we pretty much knew that this is what we were going to do for the rest of the day, unfortunately. We grabbed a box of envelopes, sponges, and a bowl of water to begin the process. The people in the room were all girls; two of them seemed high school students also, and three of them were adults, one was pregnant. The two high school students talked about their school life and the adults talked about their kinds of situations while Patricia and I were kind of quiet and rarely talked because we were focused on our work. I guess we didn't interact with the others because we didn't really know them and it seemed like they were doing their own thing.

Sealing envelopes wasn't all that bad, but doing it for a while was kind of a boring and messy process, in my opinion; my fingers became wrinkly from the water and I made the table sticky (my baaad). We got paperwork asking us information about us and stating some policies that went around there. Time flew by and two more volunteers came in and the lady who greeted us earlier offered us candy and snacks. So far, I finished 2 boxes of sealing envelopes when it was almost 4 o'clock, and everybody began to leave. Finishing up the last ones, we had to sign out, which was confusing because we didn't know where to do it. Apparently, we had to get forms for the lady to sign and after getting it from her, we asked to take a picture. She was really nice about it and we found out that her name was Stephanie. After that, Patricia and I left satisfied and a bit bummed out.

Even though sealing envelopes was all we did, it wasn't the worst thing that we could've done. It was an easy job, but we were both expecting to reach out into the community instead of being stuck inside a room and do office work. We didn't really mind doing this work, so we both decided to come back later this week and see if they have other jobs to give us.