The second day entailed a lot more hands on work. We worked at La Fondita de Jesus, a boarding home in Santurce, an impoverished section of San Juan. La Fondita offered many free services to its clients, including room, board, clothing, and even art classes, among other things. People could choose to take as many or few services as they liked. We started the day helping the cooks prepare lunch in the kitchen. Many of the cooks were retirees who wanted to something both beneficial and productive with their lives. I was very impressed by the dedication they had to their volunteer jobs. In the kitchen, we chopped vegetables, un-canned meat, and made sandwiches for later consumption. Then, as the kitchen became crowded, I took two students with me to the clothing drive and helped them organize clothing. This was a very interesting experience. There were at times six of us working in a stuffy room that was no more than 10 ft. by 10 ft, and made much smaller by the presence of rolling closets and huge mountains of clothes. In this room, we were put to work hanging up shirts, folding jeans, shorts, and bathing suits, all the time dealing with dwindling counter space and hangers. However, I got to experience exactly how the clothing drive worked. Each person that wanted to use the clothing drive needed to first sign up, write down their size for everything, and then were then only allowed to take one item of clothing (of the right size) at a time. The idea was that the clothing drive workers would help their clients get on their feet, but it was not meant to be their own personal closet. Finally, at the end of the day, I enjoyed a very long conversation with Juan Baptista in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. This guy was very intelligent, very committed to his job, and later gave us a very intimate tour of both new and old San Juan.
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