FLOTUS at the CAFB

That's the super undercover spy way of saying... First Lady of the United States at the Capital Area Food Bank (I actually got an email titled "FLOTUS at the CAFB). And it's true! She came in April, and I had to hold my tongue for about a month, knowing that she would be coming. I knew this wasn't out of the realm of possibility when I came to the Food Bank and saw pictures of the last 4? presidents visiting, plus Morgan Freeman and some other celebrities. I guess this is because we are the main food bank in the district and we serve so many large and small agencies. I could only hope that the president would visit in his first year in office (while I'm here!). On his hundredth day in office, Mrs. Obama invited over 100 congressional spouses to participate in a service event at the CAFB.

We prepared for weeks. It was my job to create a display about our department that will be used for years to come, but that can also be changed easily. I laminated and velcroed on the pictures and captions so that they can be changed in the future. I also arranged flowers in 2 watering cans. (tangent: I'm starting to wonder if these people think I'm too eager to please because every time we do a project and they ask "who knows how to paint?" I'll say, "I do! I worked as a painter for a few years." When we needed to arrange flowers, I said, "I'll do it! I worked at a flower shop for a few years." My coworker asked me to babysit, and I said, "Don't worry, I know how to do the Heimlich, first aide, and CPR for babies. I was a lifeguard for a few years." Do they think I'm lying? I mean, I'm only 24. Of course, I was a lifeguard and painter in the summers, and the flower shop was my after school job in high school, but they don't know that. Oh right, I can also say I'm a certified English teacher. It's a whole thing with our generation and how we get to do so many different things...)

Here's the display:
You can sorta see the thing I made (on the easel). I wish I had a better picture of it. There's also a grow box on the floor with various herbs and lettuces (to make it pretty and farm-y).

The ladies you see there are my coworkers. Here up close are Jody, Susan, and I.
By some lucky, amazing feat, all current and past AmeriCorps volunteers got to help bag the groceries that the congressional spouses and the first lady were putting together for kids. First she gave a speech about service.

(Here she is with the lady from Feeding America, Dr. Jill Biden, and our CEO, Lynn Brantley.) Then she went through the line with a bag, collecting goodies. I was handing out bags. The media were on a platform right behind me, so this next picture is basically where I was standing, only I was closer to the ground.
When she leaned in to get a bag, she touched my finger!

Here's another nice picture of her going through the line:

At one point she doled out the goodies to people going through the line:
At the end we got about two seconds to stand in a huge group with her for a picture. We were sad that she didn't address us as a group, but I guess we had to work pretty hard even to get a picture.
We gave her a few presents - CAFB t-shirts for her and the girls, books for the girls, etc. My department also gave her a grow box (like the one at our table) from the kids at our garden in Southeast. The kids decorated tags that said "oregano," "basil," etc, which I laminated and taped to little metal stakes. I also painted the sides of the box with vines. She liked the gift a lot and spoke to Miss Hannah Hawkins who runs the Children of Mine Center where we have our garden. It sounds like she wants to visit! Maybe this time I'll actually get to say something to her. :)

This experience was so interesting for many reasons. For one, we learned that the secret service is really hard to work with. For a long time we knew what day she was coming, but up until the day itself, we didn't know what time exactly. They changed the plan every few hours and made random requests at the last minute. I wonder if they're really that disorganized, or if they intentionally try to keep people confused so that they can't plan anything disruptive. It was also SO much work to get ready for this event. We had to give the secret service all of our names & social security numbers so that they could do background checks, we re-arranged the whole warehouse, set up all these displays, had special t-shirts made... It was ridiculous. On the day of, we all had to leave the building for an undisclosed amount of time so that security could make a sweep. When we came back in, we walked through a metal detector. Once we were downstairs, we weren't allowed to go back upstairs. There was so much planning and craziness that it's hard for me to imagine that the White House staff plans outings like this every day, sometimes even multiple times a day! I mean, we were in contact with them for weeks working out the details.

Another interesting insight I got from this experience was into the Capital Area Food Bank and how we work. It happened like this: all of the gifts for the Obamas had to be in Lynn's (CEO) office a few days ahead of time so that secret service could look them over (or something). We put the grow box in there, but we still had to add the tags and paint the sides. So the day before, I go into the office, lay down newspapers and kind of lay down on the floor to paint the sides of the box. Lynn's in her office and so is a guy named Grant. Grant is either a volunteer or an employee, and he's been with the CAFB since the beginning when it started with Lynn, him, Father Brake, and a couple of other old-timers. He's wrapping the other presents. We haven't spoken before, and he starts asking me questions about myself. We start chatting, and he's really easy to talk to, and really interested in my life. Every once in awhile, Father Brake comes in, and I hear them chat about details about The Visit. They're super casual, and it's funny to hear them talk so candidly. But this is how our office is! I mean, I - a volunteer - can just waltz into the CEO's office and say "what's up, Lynn?" I can also lay on the floor, painting something, chatting it up with the founders of the Food Bank. The world of the non-profit is so interesting!