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.