Community Service

Wilshire/The Pond Assisted living
Supervisor: Alice 2245437054

I did 5 hours on may 18 and may 19

My community service experience was very interesting actually. I met many different people who were so happy when i came into the room and also they were very thankful that i helped them with something. I began my community service hours by sorting DVD and VHS movies, their were actually about 500 and i sorted them alphabetically that was rough. After finishing that, i asked them if i could interact with the elderly more, in which i began to do. I played Wii bowling with them, played poker, baked, ran a sing-a-long, and played a game "you be the judge" in which they read court cases and they explain what they would have done. You be the judge was the most interesting for me because it was cool to see how they felt about certain ideal in which i had a totally different view because of the age difference. For one of the cases a boy was expelled from school for wearing an American flag upside down. This boy brought this case all the way to the supreme court. The elderly explained that that was the right thing to do, to expel the boy from school, because some of them being war veterans and all. Then one of the war vets asked me my opinion and i explain that it was our right to wear what we want as long as its not of illegal things or actions, and this is how our school did it. Some agreed and some didn't but during the ten or so cases it was interesting seeing the different views of the elderly and how it differed from my own views. Also when i was leaving The Ponds i saw a man that i knew from poker walking out to his car with a walker with his wife. I asked them if they needed help and at first the wife said no were fine in a firm voice like she didn't want help from me. But then i saw the man and i said "remember me from poker" and he said o yes yes and i explained to the wife that we played poker so then she let me help him into the car and to put the walker into the trunk. Then the wife reached into her pocket and pulled 10 dollars and held it out to me. I respectfully declined. I thought this was very interesting that the wife thought that i needed something from her to help them out. She probably felt like a teen asking to help the elderly was irregular and they needed something in return. This is probably because teens don't always respect the elderly and they feel like they need to repay those teens who are nice enough to help, but that's not the case. Everyone at The Ponds was very nice, respectful, and wanted the help from the community. I will be coming back soon to visit the the great people i met and shared stories with.