San Diego VA Trip Day 3,4,5, and 6 by Santiago Currea

Day 3:

Our third volunteer day was with Habitat for Humanity and we were tasked with helping around a construction site for six different housing units. We all woke up bright and early and were ready to work at 8 am. After a brief introduction, Jared and Sharon split from the group and worked with the nailing team on the second floor on a few of the units. The rest of us grabbed shovels and wheelbarrows and moved collections of dirt from the sides of the house onto a trailer.

For lunch, we all walked together to a nearby plaza that had a few restaurants including the famous In N Out Burger. We split into two groups and some went to a nearby health food restaurant while others dared to try the legendary burger. It was excellent! 

After an extended lunch we continued our work on the house, including some work with nailing, painting and siding. Here is a picture of us in front of the construction site!

Even though it was a long and tiring day, we needed to take advantage of our limited time in San Diego! After a much needed shower, we made our way to nearby Mission Beach. We had a great time enjoying the wonderful California waves as well as a soothing sunset (even though it was a bit cloudy). We split up and ate dinner at a few different spots near the boardwalk and walked a bit before calling it a night and heading home. 

Day 4: 

For our fourth volunteer day, we went to a gardening plot in Balboa Park that was to be cleared for a new tenant. Throughout the morning we worked together to pull up weeds, take down bushes, and clean up the area. 

Using a combination of shovels, pick axes, and loppers, we successfully cleared the plot (ignoring the two extremely stubborn bushes). Here’s a picture of all of us repping the big Blue!

Our contact for the site ever so kindly offered to buy us lunch from a nearby market for all the hard work we had done. While waiting for our lunch to arrive, we sat next to our cleared plot in the beautiful Balboa Park.  Many people passed by us sitting down and gave their thanks to us for clearing the plot and making the area look nicer in general. This is where we noticed how much good we had done for the park. It felt great to see how the work we put in was truly being appreciated by local park goers. 

After lunch we walked to the San Diego Zoo, where we would spend the rest of the afternoon. We took the time to strategize the most efficient route to see absolutely every animal. After a long six hours, we succeeded in seeing every animal, but we were also extremely exhausted from our long day. We all ordered dinner to be delivered or picked up, got back to our hostel, and ate together while reflecting on our day and bonding some more. 

Day 5:

The last volunteer day for the week had us going to a garden behind a nearby elementary school. Throughout the morning, we all completed a variety of tasks, including building an irrigation network, planting numerous fruits and vegetables, and organizing a few shipping containers. 

The garden may simply seem like a convenient local spot to grow food, but Christina (parent volunteer in charge of the garden) let us know that it doubles as one of the few safe spaces in the neighborhood for children to play. A homeless shelter a few blocks over makes it impossible for kids to safely play outside, so this garden is a safe haven for children to learn about farming and to be outside. After working all morning, Christina gave us some of her fresh banana bread and hibiscus to try (they were both excellent). She even let us go home with a few freshly harvested fruits/veggies. We brought home with us a few tiny tomatoes, some passionfruit, and a cucumber. They were all exceptionally delicious!

After getting back home and showering, we walked to a nearby Thai place that claimed to be the “Best Thai in San Diego”. In my opinion it lived up to its expectations! The restaurant was great, and it also served as a great spot to reflect as a group on our amazing VA trip and the wonderful week we had. We went around discussing what we learned and what we wish to take out of our experience. Jared and Sharon had to leave us early, so this would be our last meal together. 

To wrap up our week in San Diego, we walked three blocks south to see the San Diego Padres take on the Philadelphia Phillies at PETCO park. Even though the Padres lost, we had a great time and got to see a great baseball game from the outfield seats! When we got home, we were all tired from a busy day and had early flights, so we went to sleep! 

Day 6:

Matt, Nam, Neal, Sarah, and Hanna all had early flights so they woke up early and headed to the airport around 5 am. Jess and I booked later flights and left the hostel around 10 am. 

Overall: 

This experience was truly life changing. Before coming to San Diego only a few of us knew each other from school, but after a week of volunteering and sightseeing I can gladly say I have built a great group of friends. Alongside making great friends, the satisfaction that volunteering provides is unparalleled. It feels great to go to multiple areas around San Diego and do what’s possible to make the community a better place. Whether it was through gardening, moving furniture, or helping on a construction site, we did what was necessary to make the local area a little better. It was a wonderful experience to volunteer with such great people. Thanks EGL, we all had a blast!

San Diego Days 0, 1, 2, and 3 by Sharon Sun

Day 0: Everyone trickled in at different times. I was the first to arrive, followed by Jess, Hanna, and Nam, then Matt and Neal, then Jared and Santiago, and finally Sarah. 

Lucky D’s Hostel, located in downtown and a seemingly hodgepodge living space where travelers of all kinds come together, is where we would be staying in for the trip. Despite the broken ceiling fan and lack of AC, we embraced the ambiance and settled down into the place that we would call home for the next week. 

Here is us enjoying our first group meal (minus Sarah who was still struggling with a flight delay at the time).

Day 1: After a long day of traveling, our group was ready to start our first official day together in San Diego. We started the morning with a nice stroll through our surrounding neighborhood and climbed what Google maps named as the “Stairs of Death” and aptly labeled as a gym, but it was all worth it because we got to see this amazing view of the pier from up top.

With Nam keeping us productive, we followed up this trek with a journey to Coronado Island via a speedboat. Here is us at the drop off site, with mainland San Diego in the background. 

We were so excited and busy exploring the beaches and soaking up Southern California culture that we forgot to take any more pictures but here is one of Nam and I after infiltrating the Hotel Coronado’s exclusive pool area 🙂

We were all extremely tired (and unfortunately sunburnt) after swimming in the waves so we couldn’t be happier when dinnertime came around. We knew we wanted to take advantage of the diverse cultures present in San Diego so here is us at a Thai restaurant about to dig in.

Afterwards, we knew that our volunteering assignment would begin the next day, so everyone turned in early, eager to start contributing towards what the volunteer site had for us. 

Day 2: We set off to what would be the furthest volunteering site from our hostel, a community farm/garden where San Diego residents can rent out plots of land and grow their own food for sustainable living. There, with the blistering sun above us, under the friendly eye of an Englishman named Andy, 5 minutes away from the Mexico border wall, we helped clear out plots of people who had abandoned their lots in order to get them ready for new tenants to take over. Some plots had been completely overgrown by thick weeds and others were a treasure trove of miscellaneous items that someone had collected over their time with the community farm. Here are some pictures showing what we dealt with, us hard at work, and where our valiant efforts eventually took us to accomplish.

At the conclusion of our time at the farm, with some of us still reeling from getting sunburnt, we decided an indoor excursion would be best suited for the afternoon, so we decided to head to the San Diego Aquarium. We saw so many fun aquatic creatures like seahorses, tropical fish, sting rays, and so much more. A group favorite was the tide pool sea cucumber which we all got to touch. Here is us in front of a big tank inside the aquarium.

Day 3: Our second volunteer day was with Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore where we helped move donated items around in their storefront. The profit generated from ReStore would go towards getting supplies for building houses that Habitat for Humanity organizes. Slipping seamlessly between Spanish when talking to some customers and English when talking to us, one of the floor managers, Alex, would tell us exactly where he wanted various pieces of furniture and we were there to move it. Here is Neal, Nam, and Santi on the loading deck unpacking a truckload of donated items along with Jess and Sarah using all that they can to pack the garbage can after cleanup.

After ReStore, the group went to tour the USS Midway Museum (the Uber driver that got us there was actually an ex-electrical engineer who served on the Midway back when it was still in commission and had a son who went to the UM Med school!) This was, in my opinion, one of the coolest things we’ve seen so far in San Diego. We could go inside the actual sleeping quarters of those serving aboard the gigantic naval aircraft carrier and see what command central looked like. We could even push the navigation buttons and sit inside different aircrafts on display. Here is Neal and Nam plotting out navigation as well as Hanna, Matt, and Jared checking out a throttle board, and also Jared piloting a small aircraft aboard the ship.

Final Thoughts: The trip as been truly eye-opening and fulfilling. Our group has made some great memories and are learning a lot at the same time. Alongside the fun, some of the darker societal issues were made clear to us too: the prevalence of homeless encampments along city streets and the wealth disparity between neighboring communities but through the darkness, our hearts were warmed by the dedicated and inspiring people working at the volunteer organizations like Andy and Alex. I think we’ll all be taking away more than just fond memories with each other from the trip and I’m excited to see who we’ll meet and what we have in store at our next sites!