November 17, 2018
Community service day
I went on the bus to umenomiya Takisha bus stop to meet the English teacher from KGN. I was early so we waited for the other 6 volunteers to arrive before walking to the community service senior place. We first introduced ourselves, then sat by some old ladies and helped fold some wet towels they were working on. Then we separated around the room and building talking (all in only Japanese) to the seniors about their lives and what we were doing. They were very sweet. We did a little exercise session with them, some of them in wheelchairs moving their arms to the music. After that, we talked to them more and served them lunch. Then we ate lunch ourselves, in a separate room and joined them again. I will always remember talking to an old lady, we were chatting when the conversation came to a pause. I noticed a shining ring on her finger and mentioned how beautiful it was- and asked if she was married. Her face lit up and she smiled, saying ‘yes’, and we talked about it a bit. She said how she was 23 years old when she got married in Kyoto, at a shrine. She told me about her kimono that she wore on her wedding day. It was nice to see her talking about it and remembering past good memories.
After that, the volunteers and I prepared our songs and sang with a karaoke machine to some elders. We sang two different songs in Japanese, and we moved around the building so we sang 2 songs around 4 or 5 times. Then we said thanks you and what we enjoyed about today. A nice lady came up to us before we left with a bag of omiyage for me and presents of origami for the others. My omiyage was also origami. We then walked out and I took the bus home. (We weren’t allowed to bring our phones with us in the senior center area so I couldn’t get photos with them unfortunately) was
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