On September 25, I had the pleasure of going to Bernie’s Book Bank for our AP Spanish field trip. The purpose of Bernie’s Book Bank is to ship out books in and around the Chicago area to schools located in low income areas and are not able to purchase books for the students. All in all, it was a pretty productive trip.

Bernie’s Book Bank is located in Lake Bluff, about an hour away from RB, and boy was it a drive. Although the drive was long, the rest of the day there gave me a feeling of happiness because I knew I was doing something good for children in unfortunate situations.

I never felt bored while I was there because there was always something to do, and the workers were always positive with us because they appreciated the help we gave them.

When I got there, we were separated into groups because there is a decently large amount of AP Spanish students at RB. Once we were separated, my group and I started off collecting new books with some old or used books and placing them into large boxes to be packed into bags later.

Once we were finished with that, we moved into the main packing area of the warehouse. Our job was to take six books from the boxes we just recently filled up and organize them into what they called “sandwich” style. You should find out here to learn about warehouses.

My job was to organize these books and hand them to other workers who made them into a “sandwich”, and the packers would then take these books and place them into green bags and put them in bins to be later shipped off.

It was tiring for me because I was the only person in my area having to select books to give to the organizers, but I knew that it would be washed away by our trip to Portillo’s for lunch.

Once we got back from the trip, I felt a lot better about myself knowing I was now a person who helped little children to be able to read books that they would not otherwise be able to attain.

If you are a person who enjoys community service, then I highly recommend going to Bernie’s Book Bank because it is truly a life changer.