So, my dear blog followers (who have probably given up, considering I’ve been done for about 2 months now), I have finally settled into Colorado and reflected on my year of service enough to write a wrap up. I cannot believe that it was less than a year ago that I was crying into my nachos because I was scared to leave (I knew I would have a good time, but sometimes you just can’t shake anxiety, and Q’doba can be so overwhelming). Its been much less than a year since I was put onto a team of wierdos with whom I eventually fell in love with. Of course any one of us could have not been a part of the team, but so it was that Gold 2 was made up of Alex, Andre, Anthony, Caleb, Ciara, Cormac, Emily, Lily, Mark, Miranda, and myself (and Katt deserves an honorable mention, because all of that tension really worked as a driving force for the rest of us to get closer). We morphed into this wonderful, hysterical, affectionate, simultaneously driven and lazy, generous, sometimes gluttonous, occasionally naughty, always open team that honestly could have moonlighted as a reality TV group.
What better way than to start the year than smushed into a van for 50 hours, setting the tone for lack of personal space and independence that would be hard to find for the next 9 months. But in that van ride we started to learn how to laugh with each other, how to deal with each other in tight spaces, and how to function as Gold 2. I came to depend on everyone, each personality offering a unique facet of friendship to help me get through the struggles of this crazy year. When I came out to Denver I was all by myself, my roommates wouldn’t move in for over 3 weeks, and the couple of people I knew were at other corners of town, I was desperately lonely for Gold 2. I now have roommates and have been able to fill my time with crazy Denver shenanigans, but I am still desperately lonely for my team. I want to share my dumb stories about how I was attacked by my bicycle and the time I had to spend the day in (spandex) bike shorts because I left my work clothes laying on the bed when I took off for work in the morning, but its hard when 10 people are spread across the globe (I’m afraid I can’t call Uganda to talk about how I was stung by a bee and have eaten nothing but burritos for a month). I want to be in the presence of Gold 2 again, and know what everyone is doing day to day, not just the major events of their lives. But I am having a lot of fun in Denver, and I am sure in time I will figure out how to maintain 10 great relationships without being heartbroken everyday by the distance between us all. I will always be nostalgic about the greatness of this last year, but I could not imagine a better, crazier way to spend a year than serving with Gold 2.



*And a note about service (considering that’s what the year was about): I learned that the best thing about service is the people. That’s very broad I know, but it is all about people. In good company you can enjoy any task (well, I don’t know if you ever enjoy sorting through rotten potatoes, but in good company you can laugh about it), and seeing people respond to what you are doing is the greatest reward of all.

winding down

My heart is breaking as yesterday marked the one-month-left point. Unfortunately, I am not so fond of our current project in Salem, Oregon, but I still don't really want this month to pass. The drive up from California was beautiful, the high reaching pine trees in rolling hills with mountains in the background...it really did look like the twilight set, and Salem is cute to. There are beautiful parks and a cute little down town area with a lot of small local businesses to peruse. Portland is just a $13 train ride away, so some of us headed up there for a night to celebrate Pride! We spent some time at the market looking at all the things I wanted to buy, but realized I really had no need for, and then wandered over to the grounds for Pride where we watched a terrible comedian and had a drink before heading to check out the Portland breweries. The evening was very fun, had a lot of laughs with the lgbttqq...community, but my AmeriCorps stamina is quite low, so we headed home and to bed by around 12:30 in the evening. The next day was the Pride Parade downtown which was a lot of fun, a lot of very colorful floats that we watched before seeing an AmeriCorps team that was marching with the Pride Build float for HfH of (the organization that they are working with) so we threw on a t-shirt and hopped into the parade with them. I had a ball waving to people and running back and forth from side to side petting everyone's puppies that they brought to the parade. After the parade we wandered around downtown Portland a little more, stopping in the biggest book store I've ever seen with I think 4 floors, color coded by subject and sectioned into numbers. It was very exciting, but also overwhelming, so I settled for a cup of coffee before heading back to Salem on the evening train. This last weekend we had helped set up for the World Beat Festival, which is a large outdoor even with tents set up with food and merchandise from all over the world, and all kinds of performances going on. Unfortunately we had to work the event, and I ended up sitting outside of the entire thing to count the number of people going into the festival. I was relieved from time to time to get food or use the bathroom, but I always felt like I had to get back right away and didn't get a chance to enjoy too much of the festival, which was a bummer, because it was something I was really looking forward to. The other project of Salem so far was working with the Salem Parks Committee to install some better parking blockades and lay down mulch at a park. The work wasn't too bad, it was nice to be outside, unfortunately sexism is still common place in physical labor, and sometimes its not worth the fight. The thing that is making the project especially difficult to motivate myself for, is actually lack of work. The people we are working with are not quite aware of how much work 11 young people are capable of, so there is a lot of hurry up and wait. It gets frustrating, but like I said, its the last month, so hopefully Gold Two can make the best of it, and enjoy the end together.

Boy, oh Boy! Well, as I cut off the story last time, I better explain immediately about the neighborhood confusion. See, the cranky old neighbor did not realize that there was a group of volunteers staying in the community center, so one evening he decided to try and remove us via the police (actually the county sheriff, Colfax doesn't have a police force). It turns out we were okay by the law to stay there, but then the city got involved because the neighbor really wanted us gone, and some classification this way and that way and different fees to pay, we decided to appease the cranky people and we moved to a cabin in the woods which turned out to be beautiful! It was all made out of wood and very open, and we were situated in the middle of a lush green forest with a small creek flowing right past our house. Once we got settled into our new home the rest of the project went swimmingly..I glazed about a million windows and once in a while was able to join the painting team...The community was super excited about the job that we did, and gave a hearty thanks every time they walked past us. The community continued to bring us dinner and provide entertainment, we had another group come sing for us, we had a few dinners brought to us, and we spent some time watching movies with our sponsor. The best part of this project was going white water rafting. It was an 80 degree day and Otis offered to take us all down the river. Instead of one big raft like i was thinking of we each got individual inflatable kayaks and headed out down the bear river. It was a ton of fun, once i got through my first patch of rapids I felt totally comfortable (mind you we were just ambling along on class 2 river rapids..) but unfortunately at the end of the trip the rapids got a little more intense and i got popped out of my kayak into the 50 degree river water. Fortunately I was so concerned with holding on to the paddle and getting back into the kayak that the temperature didn't phase me. When we did walk back to a cliff to jump in and float down the river, I was much more aware of how cold 50 degree water was. Other than that, we just kept trucking through our project, I already deeply miss the people we worked with, but it is good to be back in Sacramento. Its about 90 degrees here, and I spent yesterday at the pool. Life is not so bad in AmeriCorps...not so bad.

AmeriCorps in Colfax

Life only gets more exciting for Gold 2, now living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas (again). Colfax, California, with a population 1,700 and a city center which they brag is a full 2 square miles might make you think, how dull...but life for Gold 2--whose presence makes a significant impact on the population size--is anything but dull. We have been treated (again) as royalty--except for the guy who called the cops on us (actually the county sheriff, Colfax is too small for a police department). Anyways, I suppose I ought to start closer to the beginning.

Colfax was a short 45 minute drive up the mountain. Our project sponsor, Otis, was waiting to give us a brief tour and warm us up to the "just go with it" feeling this project would carry. We are working (and were living) in the Sierra Vista Community Center of Colfax. The building is awesome, we slept in a couple of the classrooms, there is a basketball court that we get to play around on all the time (I did make one 1/2 court shot, no big deal), a dance studio with free zumba classes available to us (for all of our hard work on the community center), and an industrial kitchen for breakfast lunch and dinner. Mary, an awesome community member comes over in the morning and bakes us scones (well, she bakes them for a coffee shop, but always leaves us a serving). Yeah, the community is well aware of our presence here and brings us all kinds of wonderful baked goods, we've been brought brownies, cakes, pies, muffins, scones, and cookies, you can only treat AmeriCorps so well ;). Several nights now we have set up a projector with excellent speakers to watch a few movies (recently watched "The Gods Must Be Crazy" which is quite a gem from the 80s or whenever). One night, a family been set up a little concert for us. There was some 15 year old wicked good at violin, a 12 year old jamming on bass guitar, and a ten year old drummer, who after just 6 months of practice was not half bad. They played a wonderful set of gems my parents would love...all the embarrassing mountain songs that make me smile because i know them (and the band was really good).

Well, as you can probably tell by reading this my brain is not really in my blog, and having just read how great my preceding blog was, I am a little embarrassed. I will have to get back to you on why the cops were called on us (don't worry, we weren't doing anything illegal, just the town drunk got mad at us). Hopefully (for your sake) I write again soon!

fat ass raccoons!

I am back from an exhilarating three weeks in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas outside of Fresno. Now let me tell you, people think life is tough being in AmeriCorps, working all the time, living in tents and what not, but believe you me, life is GOOD. Sure I slept on the ground for a few weeks, but we lived on a huge beautiful lake with rolling hills covered in grass and stones to frolic through, or look at with the snow covered mountains easily seen in the distance. The lake was a beautiful clean blue lake, a little chilly, but wonderful for swimming (a weird concept for a Wisconsin kid in April, but it was great) and climbing around. The campground was really nice, and no one was there really except for us. They let us live there for the price of just a little bit of labor, and I really mean just a little bit...we spent a few hours each friday using weed whips and garbage pickers to clean up a few different sites and trails, and otherwise had the day free to go hiking. One day a couple of us packed a lunch and several water bottles and set out on an all day hike around the lake. We found a little cove to jump off some of the rocks (carefully) and swim around in, and on our way back found a water fall flowing down the rocks that we followed. I'm telling you, the west coast is winning me over.
We did do some work too. Tuesday through Saturday we worked with the San Joaquin River Conservancy Parkway and Trust (I probably got the name wrong, there are too many components in the name, but its something like that). We worked at three different sites along the river where they planted oak trees, and other native bushes to try and restore the river bed which will prevent fires as well as somehow benefit the salmon that they are trying to return to the San Joaquin River. Our job was to get rid of the weeds around the new plants so they could get sunlight and nutrients from the soil. We also cleared some paths with the weed whips, and had to work on irrigation.....bleh! It wasn't the worst thing, but the irrigation lines got all jumbled and torn up by tractors and were really frustrating to work with, but it was great to work in the peaceful outdoors (my hair is turning nearly whitish blonde, and i have a great tan...great farmers tan).
In gratitude for our hard work, some of the members of the Trust had us over for a barbeque, which was no average barbeque, it was a feast. They grilled salmon, halibut, and tri-tip (i haven't heard of it but it was some of the best beef I've ever had), and had wonderful salad, and fruit salad, and desserts, i mean, you would think we were royalty the way they fed us, but we're just americorps.
Life in the outdoors brought Gold 2 closer together. Sitting at the campsite all the time, we didn't have much to do but sit around the fire eating s'mores and chatting. We often looked at the stars since we were outside the city with no lights to obscure our view. We went canoeing one windy day which was a lot of fun. We made a bumper boats competition for a while, and just relaxed on the water. Some people, down on their luck, made their way into the water. It was extremely windy and two canoes took hard hits and tipped over submerging three of our members. Tough luck, but at least they laughed about it.
One morning we got up at 5 to climb up the hillside and watch the sunrise...on this exciting endeavor we accidentally followed a skunk for a while that did not want to be followed so he sprayed. Caleb got hit, but just slightly enough that after a few showers and hanging his clothes up for a week, enduring several rain falls, he is odor free (well, skunk free, Gold 2 decided showering while camping was sometimes excusable).
Other creatures we encountered were coyotes that liked to howl very loudly in the early morning hours; a tarantula and a scorpion that we found under our tents when we were packing up; very tame squirrels that even climbed onto someone's boot; fat ass raccoons that were clearly campground raccoons since they were twice the size of normal raccoons, very comfortable approaching people (although never quite as comfortable as the squirrels), and could always be spotted in our garbage cans; and the craziest animal siting/hearing was a wild boar of some variety. I was the last one up at the campsite (mind you this was around 10:30 at night, things were usually this wild at Millerton Lake) and I went to the bathroom after watching one of those fat ass raccoons drink our left over dish water. As I was about to return to our site I heard some crazy squealing and snorting and some some dog-sized creature running in a crazy pattern (like a dog after you give it a bath). I stayed still, scared for my life, until it zig-zagged away from me and i sprinted back to the campsite, hopped in my tent, and then spent the night listening to this beast squealing, and I believe preying on other animals. Even though I had to pee in the middle of the night, i did not get out of my tent until morning time.
Crazy as the animals and adventures were, Gold 2 made it out of the woods and probably 50 starbucks coffees later we are back in Sacramento about to head to Colfax California. Stay tuned for further west coast adventures!

playing

Ok...so I know, its been a while, but to be fair, there hasn't been a whole lot of service going on in my life lately. There was the 5 day drive home, the 5 days in TAHOE, and then a week of transitioning. Now, I've noticed administration has become a follower of my blog, so I feel I should make an effort to continue talking about AmeriCorps, but with all that adventuring with little to do with AmeriCorps, I just have to write about fun.
Fun. Five days in a car does not necessarily sound like fun. However, as Gold two has grown closer than ever, these five days were a lot more enjoyable than the five days we took getting down to the gulf. Our first night in Fort Worth, TX we tried to have fun by going to the world's LARGEST ho-down. But the ho-down was closed down, so we went back to the hotel and watched TV. We celebrated Cormac's birthday in the van with cookie cake and german chocolate cake and one spoon for ten people to eat the cake...fortunately no one was ill. Our team jew brought Motzas for the road trip which was quite delicious, I tried cactus for the first time which has quite the distinct flavour, and was introduced to jicama, a very enjoyable vegetable. Besides that I ate a lot of fish from Cracker Barrel, an excellent family restaurant at an affordable price (please read with over the top cheesiness). We also made a pit stop at this hole in the grand, this large hole, some might even call it a grand hole, or canyon...you know, the grand canyon. Gee Willikers that was beautiful, I very much enjoyed frollicking around on the stones, and occasionally scaring the crap out of myself and others. I took some really excellent photos that I won't don't anything with until August because I don't have a computer/computer cord.
I was on campus for a brief hour planning on spending an exciting spring break in McClellan when a friend from CTI asked if I wanted to go to Tahoe...I mulled it over, and on a whim said yes. Why not. Its Tahoe. Tahoe was Phenomenal! We rented a cabin up on the mountain. It was covered in snow and pine trees. The cabin had a fire place and a luxurious king size bed that I struggled to get out of because it was so comfortable as compared to the Super 8 beds I had been sleeping in. And the absolute best part was the hot tub, out side on the deck, covered in snow, but comfortably hot so that it seemed normal to be in a swimsuit with snow flurries blowing in your face. Oh and the magic of sitting in a hot tub toasty warm, but your apple juice stays cold the whole time you are in there. And the price, for four nights including all of our food and juice was a mere $110ish. Not too bad for a magical vacation. We also found a deal on ski rentals and lift tickets, so that I rented skis and spent a day on the mountain for just $50. AND...my friend rented a snowboard, and after lunch we switched for a couple of hours. Now, here's the thing...I am not very coordinated, and well, snow boarding requires some kind of talent which I did not pick up in the few hours I spent trying it out. I did however, have a great time tumbling down the mountain in an effort to stay standing on the board.
Tahoe came to an end and I returned to lively adventures in McClellan. I can't say that there is a lot to do here, but I am still quite close with some of the people I haven't seen since November and its been jolly good fun hanging out with everyone on campus. Just the weekend left before we head into the woods!
Watch out for bears!

deodorant.

See, much more prompt than the last blog, although not a lot has changed. Down in Rosewood we have almost completed the two houses we marked the slab for. One of the houses has Presbyterians working on it everyday, affectionately dubbed the presbos, and we thoroughly enjoy working with them, A) because they are nice people, but B) (and be being very very important) the food. Every morning they bring in pots of coffee that we drink, for lunch they provide copious amounts of southern food (like fried chicken, potato salad, red beans and rice), and at the end of the day they send us home with left overs--cookies, fruit, chips, chicken and sandwiches. We sure are going to miss those presbos when the house is done at the end of this week. Next week we start the Greek builds, today I spent the morning marking slab again and something was just not working out we had a ton of different marks and measurements down before we got the right one, now lets hope that we remember which lines are the right ones when we put up the walls.

Just two weeks left in Baton Rouge, and then Gold 2 is moving into the woods. Actually, we have a ton of time off between the end of the project and camping in the woods. See its a five day drive back to Sacramento, and then we have about 4 days of spring break, and after that it is about a week of transition period doing paperwork and briefing for our next project, so it will be quite a while before Gold 2 goes to the woods.

Our next project is split into 2 parts, the first part is in the woods outside of Fresno. We will be working with a state park to remove invasive species and hopefully return vegetation the eco-system. The goal of the project is to provide a healthy outdoor park for residents of Fresno. While we are there we will be camping in some spiffy Ameri-tents. We will cook on a stove, and perhaps over a fire. We will be out of range for the internet for three weeks, and cell phone use will be minimal (we aren't sure about the electricity). We are also not very clear on the shower situation...pack extra deodorant.

The second part of our project is spending four weeks in Colfax, California. A large town of 1500ish, maybe less. We will be living and working at an old community center. There will be a great deal of demolition work, as some of the classrooms are unsuitable for use, and we will also we working on maintainance of the other buildings. We will be living in a building for this part of the project with computer access, but again, the shower situation is still not quite clear. I repeat deodorant.

Anyways...in the meantime I will continue to construct houses in this lovely humidity we are experiencing. Until next time...