Urban Plunge: By Olivia

Hey everyone, its Olivia. Earlier this evening we were all surprised when our CSM leaders told us what they had in store for dinner. Instead of our usual dinner, we did this thing called "Urban Plunge". They divided us into three groups and gave each group a location. My groups location was Franklin Square with Justin, James, Nicole, and Kathryn. Each group is given a certain amount of money per person. In our group five dollars was given to each person. With only our five dollars we were suppost to travel to our destination by any means, buy dinner for our selves and buy dinner for a homeless person.

I'm going to describe our wonderful adventure. We all started at Union Station, a central rail hub and homeless hotspot. To conserve money my group decided to walk to Franklin Square instead of riding the bus. Franklin Square was about 1.5 miles away but on the good side it saved us six dollars in bus fare. Upon reaching the square we found a McDonald's. We ordered off the dollar menu for ourselves and we also bought some burgers for two men who were at the square. After we had eaten we had to figure out how to get back to Union Station. No one wanted to walk after walking there and we didn't have enough money to ride the bus. We decided to go

panhandling outside Metro Center Subway station. So Kathryn, Nicole, and I started a little singing trio. We sang for about thirty minutes. During this time we made two dollars. We were very satisfied with our success and with our money we had enough to get back by useing the metro. We arrived at Union Station twenty minutes early and a little money to spare. With the time left we went to McDonald's again and bought another burger and we went out in front of Union Station and gave it to a nice woman named Jessie.

It was very interesting exchanging stories with everyone once it was all over. Today was great, from the urban plunge I learned how blessed we are because we get three meals everyday and a roof over our head at night.