The Kissimme Krew started its journey Friday at 3 p.m. We drove around Columbia to pick up all of our participants, loaded up their bags and peaced out CoMo.
We drove 6.5 hours (turned 8.5) to Nashville, arriving around 11:30 p.m. We stayed overnight in a church (shout out to the Eastwood Crew for giving us a place to stay!) and woke up at 6 a.m. the next day to trek the last 10.5 hours to Kissimmee.
After hitting a lot of traffic, sporadic rain (so much for the Sunshine State amirite?) and coughing up some cash for the tolls, we made it to Kissimmee around 8:30 p.m. Fun fact: Kissimmee is actually pronounced Kiss-uh-mee, with emphasis on the UH. (Contact if you'd like us to send an audio clip. We've all practiced the pronunciation for a few hours.)
The dorm we're staying in has 12 rooms that are all themed and cute, so we each picked a room and settled in. Then we ordered some pizza, and a couple of us drove to Dominoes to pick it up. The minute we walked in the door with the eats, we tore into it and all 3 large pizzas were gone in a solid five minutes.
We then realized we weren't going to have any food for breakfast the next morning, so we decided to take a short trip to Wal-Mart for a few items like cereal, oatmeal and bananas. How naive of us. Little did we know that the Kissimmee Wal-Mart is the busiest (or one of the busiest) Wal-Marts in the U.S.—a fact verified by multiple locals. So our little trip took over an hour, which is funny now, but at 11:45 p.m., it was really kind of not at all funny.
After our trip, we all turned in for a REALLY great night's rest.
We woke up Sunday morning and put on our MABest to head our to Easter church services, for all who wanted to go.
After church, we had to hit up the U.S.'s busiest Wal-Mart again for lunch food, so we took a trip inside and made it out surprisingly fast with lunch food, fixings for a taco dinner and lots of snacks.
We ate a quick lunch of sandwiches and chips and then hopped back into our cars to explore Kissimmee for a few hours before we started our first day of service.
We found this beautiful lakefront park just 15 minutes away that was filled with families grilling out, throwing frisbees and roller blading. There were palm trees scattering the walkway, and the weather was perfect.
We sat by the lake and enjoyed the breeze and the view for a bit, and then it was time to head out to Give Kids the World for our first day of service. Give Kids the World is a 70-acre village that houses families whose kids are using their wish through the Make-A-Wish foundation to go to Disney World.
We hadn't seen the village yet, so we were confused when the GPS was taking us back to our housing site. Turns out, GKTW was just a block down from us the whole time which is simultaneously really cool and high-key embarrassing that we didn't know but whatever. We might take a nice stroll there tomorrow.
We were there with another group, and all of us were working at the dining center that night. We all had different jobs. Some of us were serving the food (the chicken fingers were deffs the most popular), others were helping families carry trays to their tables, and our MVPs of the night—Kelly and Sreed—were cleaning the dishes. Sreed might still have some mashed potaters on her leg but idk.
We also met a Columbia native there, Nancy, who was running Nancy's Kitchen Diner, where a few of us were working. She was so happy to see some fellow Columbians (and a fellow Chillocothean—ayyy Frampton!), and she was so passionate about working for GKTW. We all were pretty much in love with her, and we made sure not to leave without getting a group photo.
Everyone really enjoyed the first day of service. We got to talk to the kids there and their families, and the people we were working with were all so happy and energetic. We head back tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. for a full day of service, so stay tuned for stories.
Until then, enjoy this photo of Sreed's stuffed dog, Boo, eating Swedish fish.
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