Hey y’all!
Here we are. At the airport, again, two and a half weeks later. Two and a half whirlwind weeks of traveling and learning and building community came to a close yesterday, as we volunteered at United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas to help them build their library. We painted the space that was to be their library (including some wonderfully colorful bookshelves that may have permanently marked us with bright paint), helped organize their books, and read to the kids at the daycare there. Then that was it. We hopped in the cars, and drove six+ hours back to the beginning, back to Birmingham, where we ate at the same restaurant we ate at our first night and slept in the same beds.
We were in the same place, but we were not the same. We were closer to each other, to the communities we briefly interacted with on our trip here, and to the issues of social justice and civil rights that we learned about.
Now the task as we get ready to board the plane and return to the “real world” is to continue to learn and to use what we have already learned in our daily lives. Our job now is to continue the conversation, so this is hardly an end, but rather a beginning.
That’s all for now. This is Emily, signing off.