Journal

Today really felt that I learned a lot while serving. We went with the school to the hospital where poor children who suffer from cancer were being treated free of charge, to have iftar with them. First we met at school at around 1 and started packing the huge amount of food we had brought with us for the kids. We packed around thirty boxes which took us two our and it was amazing to see so many of my peers in high school selflessly participating and working hard. Then we went into the busses and made our way to the hospital. We went up to the floor with the children and started handing out food and drinks and toys. The smile on the face of the children as they were being made me see the importance of serving others and how through a little thing such as a small toy we had made this child’s day. We stayed there for an hour and played with the children. **__Journal 2__** This would be the first day of my project where Adham and I had decided to go to various places and teach kids basic English. I had thought it would be a challenge to communicate with the kids and actually connect so that we could help them not by teaching English, but by showing them that we are their friends and that we really want to help them. This is how it would work, we went along a medical trip that would offer free medical check up on the kids and at the same time, as this was around the time of parliamentary elections the parents would be spoken to about the political situation in Egypt. So first thing we did was play a little game with all of the children to kind of break the ice and to learn their names. Then we set up a huge sheet of white paper for them to paint and draw on and we helped each child write their names in English. I was surprised how easy it was to connect with the children and how happy I felt helping them. We sat with the children and then Adham and I went down to help out at the pharmacy station they had set up. Overall it was a great experience. **__Journal 3__** This is one of my most memorable experiences ever that I will never forget. It was during the events of Mohamed Mahmud Street. My church, which is right behind Tahrir, had been turned into a field hospital due to recent events and my mother went there the first two days to help out with treating the patients. So on the third day I was finally able to convince my mom to go with her because I wanted to be part of what had been happening and I wanted to help the brave youth that risked their lives fighting for the country. My first job there was to help out with organizing the medications, since many people had generously donated medications and they had needed to be organized to create a time efficient system to treat patients, as most of them were suffocating from inhaling to much tear gas and needed to be treated quickly. Although the church was more than 500 meters away from the street, every while we felt the tear gas and it was horrible. My eyes would burn so bad and its like every time I would breathe someone would be pinching my in the throat with a needle. However I must say that it was such an honour to help out there that day. Often patients with rubber bullet wounds would come and I must admit it was such a horrible sight. **__Journal 4__** Last month I joined a group at church to go help out for a day at an orphanage in Mokatam, however the strange thing was that the kids there were my age and older. Some of them were in college already. To me in the beginning I was terribly worried, because I didn’t know how I would interact with them, as they weren’t small children I would play with. Yet still that day was the service learning experience I had most enjoyed all year. We left at 8.30 in the morning and arrived there at 9. First thing we did was having breakfast and play a little game that would help us get to know each other better. Then they said that they would go and play football and joined that group. We split into teams and started playing. During our match I noticed something that changed the whole serving concept for me. I never thought of myself as superior to them but I always felt we were different, which was the reason I would feel uncomfortable before any service trip. However I noticed that there was absolutely no difference between them and me. The only thing was that I was born into a different community, and that’s it. In the end it was just as if were all a big group of friends tat decided to meet up on Friday and play football.
 * __Journal 1__**