Life in the Redwood Forest (Written Wednesday, September 29, 2010)

Okay, so I haven’t been too great at coming up with a blog post each night but I guess I’ll settle for a post every two days, which considering my past track record I think is pretty good, haha.

Tonight is our last night at Camp Mendocino… how time just flew! So as I said in the last post, on Monday we did work with firewood and I got to split some wood with an axe. It was pretty sweet. We also saw a black scorpion at the bottom of the truck bed (I don’t think I wrote about that last time actually haha) and that totally freaked us out and made us paranoid about carrying all of the wood for the rest of the afternoon haha. It made the experience even more enjoyable though!

Yesterday we did trail work with the Gold Unit. It was the same project the Blue and Silver Units did on Monday, and it involved clearing the brush and low hanging branches along a trail since they made hiking the trail overly difficult. It wasn’t particularly difficult, since we in the shade most of the time and there were a bunch of us on the project. The most challenging part, however, was GETTING to the part of the trail where we needed to do work: we had to hike probably a mile and a half UP the trail, and when I saw “up” I mean to say that it was seriously steep!! By the time we got to our actual work site, we were all already hot, sweaty and tired!

The trail work we did involved lopping small low hanging branches and bushes and using handsaws to cut the bigger ones. We always have to be wearing proper PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) at all times on the work site. So for all the work we’ve done here in Camp Mendocino, that means hard hat, safety glasses and work gloves. Combined with our green and khaki uniforms, our PPE make us look pretty legit, haha.

Last night we had a sweet campfire (actually now that I think about it, we’ve had sweet campfires every night so far), toasted marshmallows, and made s’mores. Then some of the other TLs and I went out to a clearing in the woods to stargaze for a while before going to bed.

This morning we didn’t have any PT, so I got to sleep in until 7:30! Let me just say, NEVER thought the day would come when waking up at 7:30am was SLEEPING IN. I legitimately felt GROGGY this morning when I woke up because it was so late! I’ve decided that I really actually enjoy waking up at 5:30 in the morning and doing PT at 6 because it is a GREAT way to start my day! I just need to make sure I get to bed by 10pm haha.

Today we did more trail work, but with the Blue Unit instead of the Gold Unit. I’ve discovered I love trail work because it’s pretty much like hiking, except you’re doing work to make the trail better. The woods here are simply gorgeous, so I don’t mind at all spending all day in them. I remember thinking at one point how awesome it was that right then, I was walking on a trail in the middle of a redwood forest in California!

After work today, some of us TLs went on a short hike to the Big Tree, which is the largest redwood on Camp Mendocino’s property. It takes fourteen people to reach around it! It was a cool hike and I got to have some great chat time with the other TLs. After getting a few pictures by Big Tree we skipped stones on the river right next to it for a while before heading back for dinner.

So… that’s been the trip so far. It’s been great! The Corps Members arrive in just 8 days, and if you ask me, it’s way too soon already. While the other TLs and I have spent pretty much every waking minute of the past 4 weeks together, it just doesn’t seem like it has been long enough at all! The other TLs are a great group and I have really connected with a lot of them. It’s been great!

Tomorrow we will return to Sacramento and return to “normal” life. Then this weekend most of us TLs are headed to Yosemite for an awesome weekend of hiking as one last hurrah before the Corps Members arrive next Thursday!!

Camp Mendocino! (Written Monday, September 27, 2010)

Well, I realize I didn’t post last night, but to my credit, it was a pretty busy day! Yesterday we left Sacramento and drove 4 hours to Camp Mendocino, a camp for the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco. It’s located deep in the woods way north of San Fran (and Sac). It’s actually quite beautiful here… although it can get kinda creepy at night since it seems like horror movies always happen in the woods in the middle of nowhere late at night, haha.

What are we doing here? Well it’s me and the other Team Leaders here at Mendocino, and we are on a “mini-SPIKE” project. SPIKEs are projects that we will go on with our teams this year that take us away from Sacramento. They are usually 6-8 weeks long. Mendocino is a “mini-SPIKE” for us TLs because we are only here for 4 days (until Thursday), and it is a preview of sorts for how real SPIKEs are going to play out.

We got here yesterday and had a big campfire last night with all 35 TLs sitting around it and just hanging out. Oh, and there’s no internet here… so I’m typing this on my laptop on Microsoft Word. There’s limited electricity here, and since we’re staying in open air cabins (which means that there’s no door and no windows… only flimsy mosquito netting over the openings) there is no place for me to plug in my laptop. Or recharge my camera batteries. So we’ll see how this plays out, haha.

Anyway! So we our work here at Mendocino consists of 3 projects: trail maintenance, firewood, and bathroom demolition. We’re organized into our 4 units (Blue, Silver, Gold and Green) and each unit was on a different task. My unit (Green) did firewood today. It was pretty sweet, albeit TIRING. We split wood (I used an axe to split logs for the first time today!), carried the wood over to a wood shed, and then stacked the wood inside the shed. It was a good team activity and we did it all day, so it definitely pushed us physically. The other units did the other two projects, with Blue and Silver doing trail maintenance (which they said was really tiring since the trail was on a steep incline) and Gold doing the bathroom demolition. I think my unit will have a chance to do the other two projects in the coming days so I am excited to get more experience doing this outdoorsy work!

Right now most of the other TLs are sitting around a campfire on the womens’ side of camp (our camps are split with the men in one set of cabins on one side of the dining hall, and the women in the other set of cabins on the other side of the dining hall). I was thinking about joining them (right now I’m in the dining hall, where we had dinner a little bit ago), but after talking to a fellow TL who is sitting here at a table with me, I’ve decided I’m going to hang out here in the dining hall for a little bit longer because we both need to work on our ILPs (Individual Learning Plans… it’s definitely been a challenge to learn the myriad 3-letter acronyms ubiquitous in NCCC).

So I think I’m going to call it a night for this post. I’m going to work on my ILP (which basically outlines our goals for the year) and then walk over to join the other TLs by the campfire (although there are 7 of us here in the dining hall, a good fifth of the group).

It’s lights out at 10pm and then curfew at 11pm, to make sure we get a full night’s sleep in order to be up and running (literally) for PT (physical training) tomorrow morning at 6am. And then it’ll be breakfast at 8 and then at 9 it’ll be a long day of more work. I’m guessing tomorrow Green and Gold will be doing the trail work, which I’m pretty excited about. It’s a 2 mile hike uphill to get to the place we’ll be working at, and then we’ll hike back down for lunch at noon and then at 1 hike back up to do more work on the trail. And then hike back down before dinner, which starts at 5pm.

I’ll write more on life here at Camp Mendocino tomorrow! It’s quite beautiful here, and I’ve been taking pictures, so hopefully I’ll be able to include some pictures with these posts when I get back to society and internet. ;-)

Life as a NCCC Team Leader! (the First REAL Post)

Okay, so where do I even start?? Well, maybe I can start off by saying that I am finally in California! Well, I have actually been here for the past 25 days, and let me tell you, they have been 25 SUPER-packed days. It's hard to believe that I only arrived here 3 and a half weeks ago!

I'm one of 35 Team Leaders (TLs) here at the Pacific Region Campus of AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC). All of us left our pre-NCCC lives to come spend 11 months leading a team of 18-24 year olds in some life-changing service work! We'll be doing projects in areas such as Infrastructure Improvement, Environmental and Energy Conservation, Urban and Rural Development, and Disaster Relief (that's the biggie). Each project is about 6 to 8 weeks long, and our projects will be in CA, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY, UT, NV, AK and HI (those last two are more rare though!). We'll be traveling to our project sites via 15-passenger van (or plane for AK and HI) and while on each project, we'll be living in the community in an apartment, community center, church basement, etc. If you've ever been on an Alternative Break (for those of you who are college students), it's pretty similar. Except NCCC is a 10-month experience!

Right now, we're in the latter half of our month of Team Leader Training (TLT). It's a pretty intense process... it's similar to RA Training (which I've been through 4 years of) except it's a bit more hardcore. Here's a typical day for me:

5:30am - Wake up bright and early (well, at least the early part!)
6am - 7am - PT (physical training)
7am - 8am - Shower, eat breakfast, get ready for the day
8am - Noon - Training sessions
Noon - 1pm - Lunch
1pm - 5pm - Training sessions
5pm - 6pm - Change out of uniform into regular clothes and relax a bit (oh yeah, we have to wear uniforms!)
6pm - 7pm - Dinner
7pm - 10pm - Hang out time (which usually means watching a movie, playing board/card games, checking Facebook, reading, or sitting around and chatting... this time is also often used to take care of homework and various TL assignments)
10pm - 5:30am - SLEEP!!

So days are pretty busy, and because I rarely make it to bed right at 10 (it's usually closer to 11 because I like to have a late night snack), my nights tend to be pretty short, but all in all it's been a pretty great experience so far. The other TLs are a pretty awesome bunch, and I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them the past 3 and a half weeks. Even though 5:30 is pretty early, and despite the fact that I never really liked running in the morning, I absolutely LOVE getting up before the sun rises to do PT because it energizes me for the day! Plus I get to watch a beautiful sunrise every single day!

Well, I'm going to bring this post to a close by saying that life out here in California is busy but good right now. There is a TON of stuff I still want to write about, but I'm trying to avoid making this into a book, so I'll just put that stuff in other posts. ;-)

Oh hey there! (a Disclaimer)

Well after wavering back and forth on whether or not I would start a blog, I chose to start one (obviously!). I’ve had mixed success with blogs in the past so I was a bit hesitant to make the commitment this time around, but after consulting several friends and reading the friends’ blogs, I’ve decided that keeping a blog to record this year will be a useful thing for both other people to read as well as for myself to look back on after this year is done. And given my atrociously bad skill at keeping in touch with family and friends who are not physically where I am… I sincerely hope this blog will keep the people in my life aware of what’s going on my side of the country/world even if they aren’t actually there.

I’m thinking I’m going to make the initial commitment of writing for 20 minutes each night, just to make sure I’m capturing a little something every day and also to avoid a lengthy lack of posting, which in the past has led to me putting off posting on my blog knowing that when I DID finally decide to post, it would be a monumental undertaking that would eat up more time than I was willing to spend. And hopefully when I actually write each post I can avoid those super long sentences like the one right before this one. I don’t think many of you would enjoy reading those at all, haha.

So here’s to posting for the next 10ish months. The program goes until July 27, 2011, so if everything goes according to plan (which we all know it never does), this blog will end up as a cherished compilation of 10(ish) months of my experiences, thoughts, perspectives, and feelings. So let’s blow this popsicle stand.