Spike, and San Franscico

I would like to start out with some exciting news, that I am sure those of you who aren't cut off from the world know, today I learned that the final Harry Potter book comes out July 21st! I was surprised to find so many Harry Potter fans here, so quite a few of us were super excited at that announcement this morning! Moving on . . .

As usual, a lot has gone on since my last posting. I have been meaning to update this but computers are in high demand here, and there's usually lots going on, so we usually hop on and off pretty quickly so others can use it as well. Today however, i have pretty much all day free. My team had to give our project briefing to the staff people here this morning, to show that we have done some research on our project and know a little about the area and what we will be doing. Of course my teacher/perfectionist presentation mode kicked in and my non serious ADD team and i clashed a little. My team leader is just like me, so she had my back and it all worked out, and went well this morning.

So what is this first project you might be asking? Well, my team is going to west Hollywood for 5 weeks to work in a school. We will be at a newly opened charter school (this is its 2nd year of existence), and we will be tutoring, mentoring, working in the library, and other jobs to help them continue getting started. An Americorps NCCC team from this campus went down there for 2 months early last spring, so the people there are looking forward to having another team (us) back again! We will be staying in a hotel (2-3 rooms) for the first 2 weeks, then in an unfurnished apartment for the final 3 weeks. We are taking cots down there, so it won't be the floor. This housing is actually quite nice compared to some other situations i'll be in, or so i've been told. I'm looking forward to getting down there, and getting started on the project. I've missed being in a classroom since last spring, even though it was older kids, they acted like these K-3rd graders sometimes!

My team is still growing on me, a little each day. Some days are good, others are frustrating, but i guess that's how it goes spending so much time with the same people for so long. Most of my friends are also in similar situations, where they are not really close to anyone on their teams. I think we are going to try to send something back and forth between all of us, since we can send mail between Americorps teams for free. My roommate is staying here in Sacramento, along with 3 other teams, so she'll get to stay in our nice cozy dorm room.

Last weekend we (9 of us) took a short road trip to San Francisco. We rented 2 cars, and hit the road saturday morning. We arrived, and found our 1 & 1/2 star motel that we found on the Internet for a decent rate. It was still too early to check in, so we parked our cars and set off walking. We did some of the touristy things such as Fishermans Warf, and the Ghiradeli square. We did a TON of walking, and decided that we should have been exempt from PT (physical training) one day this week because of all the walking/hills we did over the weekend. Anyways, we made it back to the motel before dinner, and were pleasantly surprised at the quality of our rooms, and we were conveniently next door to each other. We rested our feet for a bit then made our way to Chinatown for dinner. After dinner we continued to venture around downtown, walking till our feet wanted to fall off, then walking some more. I decided that some of those hills needed ropes built in, so you can help pull yourself up them.

Sunday morning we got up and went to Golden Gate Park and walked around a little, then we went to the beach. It was a pretty ordinary beach visit, you know, walking around, throwing a frisbee around a little, till we spotted this big thing floating in the water not too far down the beach. We made our way over to it, and Kevin decided to investigate further. Apparently it was a huge slab of concrete with styrofoam on top. He decided it would make a nice surfboard, and Kathy Ellen soon followed. The frisbee got lost in the waves a couple times, and myself and Sean sacrificed ourselves to save the frisbee in the water. Needless to say the 4 of us had pretty wet pants by the time we were done. Kathy Ellen had her video camera going most of the weekend, so we have tons of funny footage from the beach and the whole weekend.

After we changed our pants we drove up to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a nice day, so the view was beautiful. We pulled off on the side of the road and found a path to walk down to get a good picture of the bridge. Before we went over the bridge though we went back down Lombard st and at some lunch/breakfast for some of us at IHOP. Apparently IHOP has all you can eat pancakes right now, so we took on the challenge of eating as many as possible. Myself and allie did not help, i did the video taping, but 7 of them at 46 pancakes! It was rather impressive. Personally, I was sad to realize they don't have grits out here. They are missing out big time.

Wrapping up our exciting weekend, we went across the bridge and up to the John Muir National Redwood park. It was so beautiful. I've never seen trees as tall as these were. The drive up to the park and back down was amazingly beautiful as well. I've been on mountain roads in NC, but the road was insanely curvy and i've never seen so many mountains with so few trees. We had a pretty crazy weekend so I enjoyed sitting back and admiring God's beautiful creations for a little while.

This past weekend was the first time I felt like I was really away from home. Being on the base here all the time, we havn't been able to see a whole lot of Sacramento, and this became familiar really fast. We pretty much spend all our time in 2 buildings, and an occasional third one. I am sure that next week when we leave for our spikes (our projects away from Sacramento), the homesickness will kick in. I have found a great group of friends that has made this transition so much easier, but of course none of them will be with me in LA. Lately when i've gotten frustrated with my team, and certain aspects of Americorps (flexibility is key. . . but it's taken to the extreme here) I just remind myself why I am here. I am glad that the trainings are done, some of them have been mind-numbingly boring.

Just as an FYI I will not be able to get packages while I am gone. Mail is fine, they'll send that on twice a week, but they won't fedex stuff to me, so i'll get it when I get back. I will have an address there, that you can send stuff, bigger than letters/etc, i'll let you know what that is when i learn what it is.

That's about it for now. I'm not quite sure how often i'll be able to get online when I leave here. I will try to keep ya'll updated as much as possible. I love reading the comments ya'll leave, so thanks to those of you that have left comments! I hope those of you in NC are enjoying the snowy/icy weather. Enjoy your time off work and school!

Here are some pictures from the San Fran trip. Enjoy!!
http://uncg.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061208&l=48a32&id=25000446