Everything is Awesome

BOWLED OVER: So today was the event we've been working on for days/weeks now. Billed as "Empty Bowls," it was a luncheon to educate about hunger and homelessness, celebrate students' efforts to learn about and help combat those problems, and donate to help the causes.

Where to start? It's a 'first annual' event, which means it's inherently fraught with a fair amount of worry and question marks. 

But I have to say, wow, did the community at the kids' learning center turn out in a BIG way. There were multiple people (kids and parents and grandparents) there early to help set up, and they worked nonstop for hours, finishing one task and then asking what else they could take on. Awesome!

We asked people to bring in pots of soup for the event. Oh my gosh, the pots just kept coming and coming and coming. It was amazing. Overwhelming - in the good way! There were at least 20 different, huge pots of home-cooked soups on hand. We had more than twice the number we were expecting. Awesome!

From Thai coconut to savory goat meat to loaded baked potato soup, for one glorious hour, I can say without a doubt we had the best smelling school cafeteria in America. It was an international smorgasbord. Awesome!

While people were enjoying the smorgasbord, CJ and Annabelle and many other kids took turns at the microphone sharing thing they've learned about homelessness and the hunger in America and around the globe. 

There were over 100 hungry guests, but we had leftovers nonetheless. Dedicated to a no-waste event, the generous and talented people bringing soup donated their leftovers to those in need. They were carefully bagged up into Ziplocs and the kids and I had the privilege of delivering them to "Tent City 5," at the foot of the hill where we live. 

We swung by the encampment on our way home and found the site manager. We told him about our event today, and let him know that we had some homemade soup we’d love to share. I was honestly just expecting our stop to be an exploratory mission - testing the waters to see if they'd accept homemade soup and if we needed to deliver it hot, cold or ??? However, the manager was absolutely THRILLED at the prospect and wanted it all right then and there. 

In all, the community's talented and generous chefs donated about 12 gallons of soup and a big box full of rolls and loaves of bread.  When we left him, Tent City’s manager was beaming, a toothless grin, holding a heavy box full of amazing soups and saying, “It smells so good!”

Awesome!

I have a couple of photos on my camera, but its battery is dead, and so is mine, so until tomorrow, I leave you with this song - one of the tunes we played today at the event.

https://youtu.be/jQY_QL_wvQU