Florida AWB: One of the Best Weeks of Our Lives!

Our trip in Orlando, Florida came to a close today, but what a week it was! We spent our mornings volunteering at the Orlando Day Nursery, each in different aged classrooms ranging from 1-5 year olds. We really emerged ourselves in our classrooms, playing with the kids, taking part in dance time, reading time, play ground time and even lunch time! We really formed a bond with the children at the day care, making it very, very difficult to leave them behind. These children showed us all that we really can handle children and how well we actually do, washing away our previous concerns and replacing them with amazing memories. I even got 3 crayon portraits to take back with me from some of the children in my class! At night we spent our time at Give Kids the World Village doing a variety of activities. We worked at the Gingerbread House helping serve meals, ran the carousel (and even test rode it), worked the pizza hut taking orders and delivering them on a golf cart (so cool!), pampered children at the la ti da spa, manned the pool, ran "Village Idol" (America Idol GKTW style), worked concession stands and even acted as security. We got to see many wish families and talking to them was a rewarding experience. During our free time, we got to go explore the Leu mansion gardens, play mini golf, walk Downtown Disney and even go to MAGIC KINGDOM!!! All these different activities combined with the amazing friendships that we've all made truly made for the trip of a lifetime! AWB 2011, you rocked my world!

Florida: And the trip begins!

We all arrived in Orlando, Florida yesterday and got to explore our surroundings, with a lake right in back of our hostel! Today we started our volunteering by going to the Orlando Day Nursery in the morning and all got to interact and play with different classrooms of toddlers. Wow those kids have lots of energy! After some break time, later in the day we went on a tour of Give Kids the World Village, which was so amazing. Tomorrow we'll go back to the nursery and actually get to start volunteering at GKTW!

AWB Florida Pre-Trip

My fellow AWBers and I will be headed to Orlando, Florida to volunteer at Give Kids the World Village and a day care. Give Kids the World Village focuses on making children with life threatening illnesses dreams come true by providing them and their families with an opportunity to stay at the Village and have a fun, memorable time. Since this trip will potentially be emotionally tough, working with sick children, through our pre-trip meetings we prepared for this by having Rutgers grad student speak to us about grieving and dying, as well as other things. We got to know each other more and more each week with fun ice breakers and we learned our “true colors”! I’m a green! I hope to have a great trip, bonding with everyone and having a truly rewarding and moving volunteer experience. We leave for Orlando in a week and I am so excited to go!