The First Week of Our Second Half of Round 2... We're More Than Halfway Done!

Soo this past week marked the start of the second half of our 7-week project. And with that, we as of now only have 2 and a half weeks left here in the Coachella Valley! How time flies.

My supervisor Jeanine and the Unit Support Leader Maureen came on Tuesday and Wednesday this past week to visit us for their midsite visit. The UL and STL visit all of the teams in the Unit around the middle of the project to see how things are going and see what can be improved for future teams. They first went to Alpaugh, CA, about five hours north of us, then drove down to visit us, then continued on to Agua Caliente, about two hours south of us, and finally ended up in Julian, CA, about thirty minutes from Agua Caliente. Then they drove back up to Sacramento! So it was quite the roadtrip for them!

This past week, we spent most of our time up on the roofs of houses, hammering in nails through the plywood sheets into the trusses to secure them to the roof. It is about 1100 to 1300 nails per roof, so since we worked on 7-8 roofs, we hammered in around 10,000 of those little guys over the course of this past week!! We are getting pretty expert at our hammering, haha.


We also do PT three times a week, and this Friday, we did P90X yoga. It was pretty intense!! My legs are still recovering from some of those warrior poses, haha. But it was fantastic. I can't wait to do it again. :-)

This weekend, some of the women on the team were going to go to San Diego to spend the weekend there. They were so excited... but at the last minute, they weren't able to get a rental car and so ended up staying here in the Coachella Valley for the weekend. It was an EPIC bummer. :-( So as consolation, I treated the team out to some froyo (or frozen yogurt, for those of you not familiar with the team) and that helped to raise the mood a bit.

Yesterday, we went to the Sunday Farmer's Market in La Quinta, an absolutely beautiful area. It's a pretty affluent area with gorgeous residential areas, plentiful shopping opportunities, and gorgeous views of the mountains. It's quite an alarming disparity between La Quinta and Mecca... La Quinta (and neighboring Indian Wells) is one of the most affluent cities in the United States, and Mecca is one of the poorest! And they are only thirty minutes apart. In fact, most of the people in La Quinta have probably never even heard of Mecca. Which, if you've ever done a privilege walk, just reinforces the concept of everyone looking at the privileged and paying little to no attention at the underprivileged.

But anyway. We went to La Quinta and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the Farmer's Market. The weather, as always, was absolutely gorgeous, and there were lots of fresh fruit and vegetable stands. There was even a live musician there playing on the keyboard and singing some 80s songs. I spent an hour there lying on the grass writing letters to other Team Leaders while the people on my team went and got some produce for this upcoming week.

After the Farmer's Market, we went grocery shopping at the WinCo in Indio, and the startling change in demographic once again did not go unnoticed. Whereas in La Quinta, the VAST majority of people walking around are Caucasian and clearly inhabit the upper echelons of the American socioeconomic strati, the people in Indio, Coachella, and Mecca are almost all Hispanic and are from lower income brackets. Why such a correlation between skin color and level of income? Just food for thought.

ANYWAY. Haha enough social justice talk. I guess it just means that I miss all of the social justice conversations we enjoyed (and sometimes didn't enjoy) in SAHE. I wish I had some good old SAHE folks to talk social justice to nowadays!! But alas, I guess I'll have to settle for my team, haha.

Today Maddy, Carly, Kayla and I went to La Quinta again to go on a hike. We hiked a 2.5 mile trail (5 miles total) from this place called "The Cove" to "The Lake." The Cove was really just a parking lot, and unfortunately, while we were expecting a crystal clear lake nestled in a mountain forest (which in retrospect makes no sense at all because that's not what the landscape looks like around here, haha), we discovered that said Lake was really just a glorified reservoir. A little bit of a bummer, but at least we passed by a beautiful golf course on the way. Haha, whereas hiking Ladder Canyon and the Grotto the past few weeks made us feel like we were miles from any other human being, hiking to the Lake made us feel like we never left civilization. If anything, we went from one part of town to another. It was like a walk in the park!!

My favorite part of the hike, though, was running on that golf course. The grass was so lush and green... it felt delightful under my feet!! No wonder people say that golf courses make the best cross country courses!!

Whew, I can tell I am getting really hungry because I can tell my writing is getting really cranky, haha. Dan and I are at Starbucks right using the internet and I came here to look at some Life After AmeriCorps opportunities. I still am not sure what I'm going to do after I finish this term of service as a Team Leader. Lots of opportunities, lots of options. But it's that paralyzingly large number of choices that makes picking only a few so difficult!! At this point, I don't really know what I want to do afterwards, but I think the time has come to devote some significant energy to discerning that important path. :-)

Til next time! I think it's time for Dan and I go to to dinner.

Sitting Here in McDonald's

Haha, so I'm sitting here in McDonald's, munching on my Large Fries and mooching their wireless. Lots happened this past week! We had our midsite visit, a good week of work, and uh yeah that's actually about it haha. I learned a few new tricks with my poi! I also ordered some new ones on the internet... they are glow in the dark LED poi that apparently look quite epic. I was slightly deceived because they cost about 30 pounds which in my mind, was something close to 30 dollars because I for some foolish reason though the pound was the rough equivalent of the Euro. I really doubt I'll be making that mistake again anytime soon!

Right now the superbowl is going on, but I've got lots of work to do that requires the internet, so instead of watching it with the few people on my team who are watching the game over the at the sports bar across the parking lot, I'm sitting here eating my 500 calories of golden fried goodness.

But anyway. Back to work! I'll write more tomorrow when I spend the day at Starbucks. :-)