Quaker's Meeting Has Begun...

This morning Alleigh, Norah, Mollie, Neva and I went to a Quaker Meeting at 10am in New Orleans. It was most of our first experience with something of that sort, except for Neva, who grew up Quaker. We arrived at the building (which was also a Methodist Church) and were the first ones there. There ended up only being 15 of us total, and we sat in chairs in a circle in a small room in silence and meditated for an hour. After the hour was up, the Clerk, Mack, asked if anyone wanted to share what they had been meditating about and we also went around the room and introduced ourselves. Most of the people there (about 12 of the 15) were from other states, which I found pretty interesting. A few girls were students at Tulane University and some other people were locals. After the meeting we chatted with some of the other people there and told them all about AmeriCorps, because they were curious and they thought that what we were doing was really cool. They also told us about some places we should visit in the area. It was a really refreshing experience, because being here, in a team-based program is fun, but there is little to no alone time where it is silent. It was nice to have an hour to actually think about life and reflect for a bit. After the meeting we ventured around the cute little neighborhood and found a coffee shop, which is actually harder than you would think! There are hardly any coffee places down south, very different from the north where there is a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks on every corner! We decided that Quaker Meeting and coffee would be a fun Sunday tradition we want to start doing, a nice and relaxing way to end the weekend. Maybe we can even convince some of the boys on the team to come with us next time?!