19 days in.

I hope you're ready for a long read, because this post is long overdue. The wireless on campus is so overloaded that posting is an ordeal I would rather avoid. There have been so many Ameriventures in the last week though! I'm going to do my best to fill you in. 

First of all, I haven’t said much about my team yet.  I’m part of Blue 1, which is 10 members and one TL strong.  Here’s a group picture:

From right to left, the back row is Kevin, Anne Louise, Jake, Alysssa, me, and Dylan, and the pile in front is Lindsey, Aketheia, Shaunacy, and Lois! Our Team Leader Joey wasn’t there at the time, but I’m sure you’ll see pictures of him later.

This picture was taken right after our team completed our first project together. We had to build a box to put in Mayhem, our 15 pass van. (Yes, we named her Mayhem.) This picture is also a great example of our uniforms. I actually don’t mind them at all. It’s kind of nice not having to think about what to wear every day. It also makes us look pretty official. We have to wear Amerigear anytime we are on duty- even during training and traveling.

Speaking of travelling, we recently returned from a trip to the California Redwoods, where we did some service at a Boys and Girls Club camp called Camp Mendocino.  Apparently the Pacific Region campus and Camp Mendocino have a long-standing relationship. We get to cycle each of the units through to do some teambuilding and training, and they get a workforce willing to help them with whatever they need. The camp has 2,000 acres of land, which is an insane amount to keep maintained. They rely on a lot of volunteer work throughout the year to keep things running smoothly. We were asked to clear out the drainage ditches on the side of the road, so that when it rains the water runs through the ditches instead of washing out the road. Our team cleared out close to a mile of the trench.

We also got to spend about half a day on their climbing wall and high and low rope courses! I have done low ropes a few times, and spent a lot of time on climbing walls, but I’ve never had the opportunity to do high ropes. It was one of the most exhilarating and terrifying experiences of my life. We got harnessed and helmeted, and then the instructors gave us lobster claws, which are huge carabineers that hook on to cables running from tree to tree so that you can go on the elements without danger of falling 15 feet to the ground. After the Giant’s Ladder to get up into the course, the first element that I did was called the Catwalk. It was just a cable running from the main platform to another tree, with two ropes on either side to hold on to. The cable wobbled from side to side as I walked, and when I made it to the other side it took me about five minutes to stop shaking. After that, I was fine! I went across one that was a bunch of swings, and another with ropes hanging down so that as you walked on the cable you had to grab one and then the next like Tarzan. But the best part of the high ropes course was the zip line. It went through the trees and then the view opened up over the river and you could see so far. I would have done it again if I could!

We also decided team positions last week! Basically, every person on the team has a responsibility of some sort throughout the year.  The Environmental Liaison makes sure we are sustainable, the Corps Ambassador Program Representatives (CAPpers) recruit new members in our project communities, the Media Rep writes press releases and documents our work, the Project Outreach Liaison (POL’s) looks for Independent Service Project opportunities, the Peer Helpers act as counselors and mediate conflict within the team, the Physical Training coordinator plans our workouts, the Vehicle, Safety and Tools (VST) Coordinator keeps track of tools and keeps the van in good shape, the Service Learning Initiator (STI) coordinate service learning opportunities on spike, and the Life After AmeriCorps Rep helps everyone helps team members with career development. 

I ended up as…VST. Super exciting, right? I get to check Mayhem’s tire pressure and make sure her oil gets changed! Actually, I don't mind that I got it. I’ll probably learn a lot about cars. And as it turns out, I’m also secondary for Media Rep, which is what I was hoping for. Dylan and I are sharing it. He wants to be a sports writer and I want to be an editor or literary agent, so it was really important to both of us.

We also got specialty roles, and we started the training for that today. The three boys and I are doing chainsaw training. Yikes. We sat through almost eight hours of training today, just going over safety, the parts of a chainsaw, and maintenance. My notebook is covered in notes and diagrams of the proper way to cut down a tree. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be letting the boys take care of any chain sawing that needs doing, but the competitive part of me definitely wants to show them up and be a better sawyer than them.  I’m going out on the field on Thursday so we’ll see how that goes.

Thankfully, we got a chance to get out of the classroom recently- last Saturday was Make a Difference Day! The entire campus went out into the Sacramento community and spent the day doing some hard work. My team went to the Sparrow Community Garden with Blue 2, where we cleared out some empty plots, spread mulch around the outside of the garden, and did some intense weed pulling by the nearby trail. Our project supervisors were a hilarious and incredibly kind old couple who lived in the nearby house. On our lunch break they gave several of us leadership advice, which consisted of them acting like NCCC members who were slacking off while we tried to make them go back to work.

We ended up finishing at the Sparrow Community Garden earlier than expected, so we were asked to help Silver 7 at another project spike, where just about everything was named McKinley. They were at the McKinley Library on McKinley Boulevard, near McKinley park. Crazy, right? They needed some help pulling out some stubborn plants, so Blue 1 got it done!

After Make a Difference Day ended we went back to the dorms, where most people crashed and went to bed. But seven of us decided to do something a little crazy. We went to San Francisco! It was all really last minute. We got our tickets the day before, and didn’t figure out where we were going to stay until about three hours before we got on the bus. I’m not even going to talk about the process of getting to San Fran, because it would take way too long. Suffice it to say that crossing the bay bridge and seeing the city skyline finally spread out in front of us with the sun setting behind it was the most beautiful sight I could have imagined. We had to split up our group of seven into two different hostels. I and four others stayed in the Green Tortoise Hostel. What we didn't realize when we planned the trip is that Halloween is on Wednesday, making last weekend…(drumroll, please)...Halloweekend. And the Green Tortoise just happened to be on the street with all of the clubs. Walking to the hostel was like walking through a zoo, or maybe a circus. Flashing neon signs, an adult movie shop, girls wobbling drunkenly on high heels in their too-tight dresses, men in costumes only they understood, and bouncers with bored eyes waving people through. Its surroundings may have been pretty sketch, but the hostel itself was wonderful. The five of us shared a room with a double bunk bed. Hunter claimed the floor, Ryan and Connor snuggled in the top bunk, and Anne Louise and I took the bottom. We woke up the next morning at 8:00 (sleeping in!), had a slow, lazy breakfast, and met Alyssa and Eric to start our San Fran adventuring. We wandered through Chinatown and Golden Gate Park, went to an observation tower that showed San Fran laid out all around us, ate lunch at a tiny local Thai place with incredible curry, walked partway across the Golden Gate Bridge, and had gelato and sorbet at a place on the waterfront. Then it was back to the greyhound station to catch our ride home. It was a cazy whirlwind weekend, but I had the time of my life.

And finally... everyone has been finding out their first projects. We know ours is in Oregon, but we don't know where yet! Hopefully Joey will tell us in the next couple of days. I'll fill you in as soon as I know!