The day started off slow, which was nice change in pace for all of us. After many days of waking up early and getting on the road right away, it was nice to have more time to enjoy our morning. A crew chief breakfast was offered as usual, but many brothers decided to take the free time that we had to go downtown and get breakfast from some local places. I am on this trip with two brothers from my chapter in Cincinnati and we took to the time to meet up with another brother who was in Tampa. We went to a place downtown called First Watch for breakfast and it was a great time seeing him.
The place we were staying at is GiGi’s Playhouse. While we were there we noticed that they had a list of supplies that they needed for their facility and during our off day we decided to go to the store and get almost all of the supplies on their list. We thought that it would be a nice gesture since the people at GiGi’s allowed us to stay at their facility for our trip.
Later that day we had a sponsored dinner on the campus of USF where we met fellow brothers from our Zeta Eta chapter. They provided us with a delicious taco dinner, and it was awesome that our own brothers did that to give us a good dinner. We got to talk to a couple of them and enjoy a little bit of USF’s campus student center.
Following dinner, we went back to MacDonald Training Center to attend a dance party. It was a real blast and we all enjoyed every second of it. As soon as we walked into the room, the music was already going, and the clients faces all lit up. I had my own personal experience with a client named Brenda. The day before we really connected and were looking forward to seeing each other again at this party. As soon as we saw each other, she had a smile going ear to ear and we danced together the whole time we were there. It was truly an amazing night and really showed me the impact we are making on the people that we meet. Something that is really neat about MacDonald Training Center is that they have clients who enjoy painting and they can be bought. By the end of the night many brothers bought a painting from the center, myself included, and we almost cleared out their art gallery which is awesome. Today was a relaxing day as well as a great one that helped show why we are doing this trip in the first place.
