And so the bubble bursts...

As Julie mentioned yesterday (aren't you impressed 2 blogs in a row!!), our usual Monday class was replaced today with a trip to the Low Country Food Bank. It was a glorious change from our normal morning routine! We slept past 8:00 and parked in an almost empty parking lot! I even had time to fry an egg while Julie watched the Today show. Life's simple pleasures.

Around 9:30, Karen met Julie and I at our apartment and we set off to the food bank. I was under the impression it was just a short drive into neighboring West Ashley. As we drove further and further, eyes pealed for Azalea Street, I began to smell the paper mill. If you've never smelled a paper mill, I would not encourage you to seek out the experience. When I told mom it was the worst smell I had ever encountered she replied, "Yes, second only to a chicken farm." I'll take her word for it. Overcast days in Charleston often blow in a hint of wet paper smell, but as we drove it became overpowering. We were not on James Island anymore, nor were we in West Ashely. We had crossed into North Charleston.


It wasn't just the smell that alerted us to our arival. The whole atmosphere was different. Trendy restaurants and historic homes were replaced with Church's chicken and cookie cutter, cement block homes painted in faded pastels. Groups of men mingled on front porches or at the edge of the road. It was suddenly so clear that not everyone in Charleston "lives on vancation" as I so often feel I do. There is an entrie segment of the population that lives their lives hidden from the cobblestone streets and waterfront homes. They have easier access to Church's chicken and the Lil' Cricket gas station than Subway and Publix. It sounds sterotypical, but this morning it was blatant.

As I sat at the Low Coutry Food Bank listening to the nutrition director talk about the number of underserved residents in the 10 coastal counties, and her dream to one day end hunger and shut down the foodbank, using the space as a community center, I felt a bit like that frog analogy. You know the one? You put a frog in a pot of boiling water and he jumps out, but you put a frog in luke warm water and he sits there warm and happy until he croaks. It occurred to me that I first fell in love with nutrition because I was outraged at the correlation between poverty and obesity. I was determined to change things. Lately, I feel like I've lost that zeal. Who knows what life holds, but today I decided I certainly don't ever want to wake up to find myself cozy in a pot of boiling water.