Just kidding. Such a thing would be WAY too daunting to even attempt, so I'm not going to!
But it's been forever since I wrote anything in here, and I'm kinda kicking myself for it because so much has happened since the middle of Round 2!!
To start, we're a little over a week from the end of Round 3. That's right, it's been an entire ROUND since I last posted about life on here.
Here's a brief summary of the happenings in my life lately:
- The 2nd half of Round 2 was quite the tumultuous time period! Work was long, life was (unfortunately) terribly dull, leading my team was often like playing parent to a family of 9 19-24 year old children, and I felt so discouraged that each day was a struggle. I debated daily whether or not to up and leave AmeriCorps because I was so miserable at times, but in the end, I stayed. And I'm glad I did.
- Transition (the week between projects) was great. I got to see all of my Team Leader friends (many of whom I had talked to on the phone during Round 2 for support and to commiserate about the struggles of being a Team Leader). I went to San Francisco with two of them the first weekend of transition, and that was absolutely fantastic. Such a great time.
- Round 3 started March 8, and after saying goodbye to all of the other Team Leaders who left for Spike (off-campus projects), I delved into our third project with my team. This Round, we've been working at the Community Collaborative Charter School (CCCS for short), helping to facilitate a service-learning graduation requirement for the seniors and mentor them through everyday interaction. The school is just down the street from campus, so it's a 5-10 minute walk.
- After initial confusion as to what our role working with the students would be, we settled into the project, which consisted of us doing service projects with the students over a 6 week period. Each project was one week long, so we ended up doing 6 different projects: building wood duck boxes, sorting and delivering furniture donations to needy households, doing grounds maintenance for a riding therapy program, building a community garden and painting a mural, weeding the mulched areas at a city park, and spending three days and nights at a camp doing camp and trail work.
- The project has had its ups and downs... we're the first NCCC team the CCCS has ever worked with, so we were figuring out a lot of the kinks and logistical challenges the majority of our time with them. It was a bit frustrating at times because we would show up at the worksite and no students would show up, or we would be ready to work and there would be no tools or no one there to tell us what to do. Some projects were great of course (like the furniture delivery and the community garden), but the bad egg projects somewhat tainted the whole experience.
- This week and next, we're working with the Sacramento City Parks and Recreation Department, weeding various city parks around Sacramento. It's pretty much filler work, but if you can get over the realization of futility you have when you acknowledge the fact that the weeds you're spending hours and hours pulling will grow right back after a few weeks, it can be pretty relaxing. Just pop in some earbuds and tune in to the music and enjoy the sunshine and revel in the beauty of the park after you've just weeded it. Unfortunately my team doesn't see it quite as optimistically as I do, so as the Team Leader I'm forced to deal with their whining and constant "do we HAVE to work a full day today?" (the answer is yes) and "can we just leave work early today?" (the answer is no). Oh the joys of being a Team Leader.
- Our next transition period starts in a week and a half, and I am super excited to see all of the other Team Leaders again! Hooray! I have been absolutely blessed to have some of my favorite TL friends here on campus with me (especially my friend Mikey), and that has been the sole reason I have retained my sanity throughout this Round.
- On May 16, we ship out to Portola, CA for our fourth and FINAL project: working at Grizzly Creek Ranch Camp for the environmental education organization Sierra Nevada Journeys. We'll be spending two months doing camp and trail maintenance and environmentally educating the campers. Should be a good time. And apparently the food is delicious. We'll be treating ourselves to the dining hall delicacies three times a day. Yum yum. :-)
So that is my NCCC update for the moment. Now, that wasn't too bad at all. I'm left wondering now how in the past (almost) three months, I haven't found the twenty minutes to sit down and type an update like this. I guess that will remain a mystery!! Wow, and if I don't update again for three months, I'll be writing the update about the END OF AMERICORPS. That's nuts. According to the countdown calendar on my Dashboard, Graduation is a mere 85 days away! So close! Yet so far!
Other updates in my life:
- I'm training for the San Francisco Marathon! It's happening July 31st and if I don't step up my training it's going to be kicking my butt instead of the other way around. The camp we'll be spending Round 4 at is at 5000 ft and is considerably hilly with 1500 acres of land and tons of hiking trails, so I guess I'm fortunate to be living there, since that's where I'll be doing the most important parts of marathon training. Wish me luck!!
- I spent this past Spring Break down in the monster of a city that is LA, hanging out with my good friend Laura (another TL). Got to tour Venice Beach, spend the afternoon in Hollywood walking the Walk of Fame, driving through Beverly Hills and staring in disbelief at the small palaces that people there call homes, running along the Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beaches, hiking to the Hollywood sign (well, more like hiking to a spot near the Hollywood sign since it's illegal to get close to it), driving down Rodeo Drive, and spending the late afternoon/evening hanging out in Santa Monica.
- After AmeriCorps (and after the SF Marathon), Mikey, Laura and I are taking two and a half weeks to tour 6 different National Parks: Yosemite, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands and the Grand Canyon. In that order! It will be a pretty epic roadtrip, and I'm really excited. It's pretty much what's getting me through AmeriCorps right now, haha.
- And as for Life After AmeriCorps plans... well, my plan is to move back home and chill with the fam, veg out with some video games, and after I'm thoroughly bored from the uneventfulness of my life (which will probably be after about a week), I'll start looking for a part-time job in the area, which would allow me to spend time with the fam (the real reason I'm going home), make money, and have some semblance of purpose in life. And hopefully that will tide me over into a full-time career track job somewhere exciting like Colorado. But that's over a year down the road, and my path changes more often than that. ;-)
So... there it is! Life update. Funnily enough, I actually DID end up doing a 3+ month update. Not really that thorough, but it works. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but the brevity of this post really made it difficult for me to find pictures to accurately represent what was being written about! I'll put pictures up soon, in a different post. With captions. :-D
Ciao for now.
