This week I attended the volunteer 101 session that Lizbeth teaches at St. Francis in the Foothills. We did an exercise as a group that simulated the journey refugees go through before coming to the United States. Once again my respect for refugees grew, the strength and courage they have to start all over again in a completely foreign country is overwhelming. I left the session with a better understanding of what it means to be a refugee. The harvest this Friday was huge in terms of fruit. We started out at a small lemon tree that was surprisingly easy to harvest. The fruit was so ripe all we had to do was shake the branches and lemons would come tumbling down! Then we travelled to a tangerine tree that was so big it would probably take up my entire dorm room. Annie, Marcella and I worked on this tree for hours, clipping the stems with our shears, climbing up step ladders to reach high fruits, ducking under branches to pick the fruit underneath. I never realized it, but picking fruit is actually a very satisfying job. By the time we left the tree was picked clean, except for some very tall branches, and we had filled up four crates and two bags full of tangerines. I’m hoping the abundance of citrus will continue and we will be able to have large harvests every week.
-Sam
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