Fountain Pop

Waking up somewhat early has always been a chore for me, but I find it a little easier when I have a mystery agenda. We woke up a little on the early side to go the Fountain House, which is an organization to help people with mental illnesses transition from the hospitals and institutions to the working world. It was really interesting to see the people in the house. There were a good number that I would not have guessed they had a mental illness until I spoke with them. Like our tour guide, Ben, at first he was very quiet, and when he first started speaking it wasn't noticable that he was recovering from a mental illness, it wasn't until we checked out the culinary unit, when he repeated the same idea of this where people eat that I began to suspect something, and not until he said he lived in a housing development from Fountain House that I realized that he was in fact a member not just a volunteer there. Great experience doing that, but after that, I got a different kind of experience, Cuban food. Just got to say, delicious! Amazing food, they played upbeat music for the duration of our time in the restaurant. All around amazing. Then to round out the day, Anne and I went to play Bingo uptown. It was a lot of fun, there was a hispanic woman next to me who was just a joy to be around. She came in with a very fun attitude towards the game, always playfully taunting the callers. The group leaders for this activity surprised me though. They had been doing bingo for 4 years now, and they gave out dollars to the winners. We found out that money was out of their own pockets. That just flatout amazed me, because bingo is a twice a month activity, so they are using a good amount of their own money for this activity. It just shows you the willingness of the people in the program, because in the economy of today, you don't see many people willingly give out a lot of their money to complete strangers. It's really inspirational to see such a thing.