Expectations

While out exploring last weekend we drove by a methodist church so I decided to give it a shot last sunday. It was a traditional service, which was nice. I enjoy the contemporary, but i also enjoy a good traditional service since that is what i have grown up with. The sermon was on a passage from Isaiah 43:16-25. I have been thinking a lot about it this past week as well. What is it exactly that we expect? What do I expect out of this 10 month experience? I know that God has a purpose for me being here, but this has been one of the harder weeks emotionally, with being frustrated with my team, and some aspects of Americorps, so it has been harder to remember this. In Isaiah 43:19, God says "See I am doing a new thing!" God wants to work in our lives, and to reveal himself to us. By focusing on my frustrations this week, i found myself loosing focus of why I am here, and trusting and knowing that God has a plan through all of this. If we do not expect (by trusting in His word) God to work in our lives, we will never see Him actually working.

I hope some of this makes sense. The library is closing soon, so this is definitly gonna be a short posting. I just wanted to share with you some of what has been on my mind. There is more but unfortunatly i don't have time to write it all. I have a 4 day week this week, then a 4 day weekend, where i am meeting up with my friends in New Orleans, which I am super excited about!! I'll post more soon! (and pics too)
Miss ya'll!!

Road Trippin

I am here! Lafayette Louisiana. We arrived yesterday afternoon.
Here's a quick recap of how the week of traveling went down.

Day 1: Monday- Departure 6AM, Destination: Palm Springs CA

This first part of the drive was down I-5, towards Los Angeles, the same drive we took for our last project. THe fun began when we were just north of L.A. in some town that I don't know the name of, but luckily it was civilization. We were traveling with 2 other teams, so our caravan consisted of 3 12p vans and a uhaul. Gold 3's van decided to break down on the interstate in this suburb of LA. After we picked up the team from that van, we sat at this ghetto shopping strip (like 7 small stores), for a good hour and a half. My team leader stayed with us, while the other 2 waited for the tow truck. We then moved our waiting party to a nearby park for a change of scenery, where we sat for another hour(ish). Eventually the van got towed, and while it was being fixed at the shop, we crammed the other team in our 2 vans and made the final 2 hr drive to Palm Springs, arriving at the hotel around 8:30pm. A few of us walked into "town" (the touristy area) for a little bit, but we were staying a mile away, and it was late, so we didn't see too much of it.

Day 2: Tuesday Departure - 7AM Destination: Tuscon AZ

We originally were going to go to Joshua Tree, but because one of the vans still needed new tires, and apparently it was farther away than expected, we set off for another long day in the car. This actually was one of the shortest driving days, but the scenery was pretty blah. It was cool at first to see desert like conditions, and some moutains, but the excitement went away quickly. We had to do PT at the hotel once we arrived in Tuscon, and then we enjoyed the pool and hot tub, and called it a night early.

Day 3: Wednesday Departure 8:30 AM Destination: Fort Stockton TX

The drive from Tuscon east, was probably the most boring ride I have been on. Sure there were fun moments in the van, but looking at bleak desert for hours on end, just doesn't scream fun. We went through AZ and crossed the southernmost part of New Mexico (We were on I-10 this whole time), and then began our trek across Texas till we reached this small town called Fort Stockton. I haven't really been able to sleep much on youth mission trips over the years, but I definitly slept some in the van all week long. I don't feel like i missed seeing much because the scenery was always the same when i would wake up. It was always fun guessing when the next exit would be too, sometimes 45 miles between places! Talk about the middle of nowhere! Good news though, if you are ever in TX and get hungry, Cracker Barrels have made it to El Paso! This day was double long feeling because we crossed through the mountain time zone and into central time. We all were hurting the next morning when we had to get up at 6AM for PT and our bodies were telling us it was 4AM. Not really my idea of fun.

Day 4: Thursday Departure 8AM, Destination: Baytown TX

Let me tell you, Texas is one LONG state. The scenery got better a little outside of San Antonio, green grass and trees were a welcome sight! Since we hadn't stopped anywhere else, we stoped in San Antonio for a 2 hour break. We saw the Alamo (cool from a history standpoint, but kinda small). We walked around the riverwalk a bit and ate lunch. 2 hours isn't a whole lot of time, but itw as nice to get out and see a new place. I also had some good bbq at the place we ate, first time since I left home. Apparently out west they don't know what pulled pork is. LOL
We arrived in Baytown, which is east of Houston, around 7ish. I quickly saw that there was a Cracker Barrel on our exit, so myself and a few others enjoyed some good dinner. Billy and myself (he's from TN) were actually the only ones who had eaten there before, so i enjoyed bringing some culture to people's lives.

Day 5: Friday Departure 7AM, Destination: Lafayette LA!

This was our shortest driving day, we arrived in Lafayette around lunch time. We stopped in Lake Charles to unload some extra luggage that belonged to a team that was staying there (some teams flew down last weekend). Unfortunatly we wern't able to see the team, since they were working at their site.
Our house we are staying at is owned by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, so the college is right near us. It kinda reminds me of a cross between a beach house (older) and a cabin at Camp Chesnut Ridge (for those of you non Mebane folks, just imagine a camping cabin). It's definitly nicer housing than some other teams. We have a big field beside us which is going to be great for PT and just playing around. We are all excited since we were stuck in the big city last time.

So that's a quick round up of the past week. It was fun overall. I enjoyed the two teams that were with us, a few of the people on those teams were people i had gotten to know well while i've been here.

We are exploring downtown and other parts of Lafayette today. I have now found the library, which is probably going to be my only internet here. It's not toooo far away, but i don't think it's really walking distance. Hopefully i'll get here once a week, maybe twice, we'll see.
Thanks for the mail, emails and comments, I miss ya'll!!

On the road again. . .

Yes, my heart was broken thursday night, but i am glad they can't hurt me by blowing anymore games this season. That is all I am going to say about this. "I'm moving on . . ."

Tomorrow morning I leave for my five day journey down to Louisiana. I am excited to see the country, but I am not as excited about riding with my team for that long. We got downsized in the van department too, so we only have a 12 passenger van. Very sad. The 12p isn't anywhere near as much fun to drive. Good news though . . . i will have an opportunity to drive the big Uhal!!! That just screams fun, especially if we get to pick our passenger from another team. I think we have to stick with our team though. Oh well!

This past week was definitly NOT what i had imagined it would be, in terms of relaxing. Our portfolio, which is about a 20+ page document each team compiles about their project, was due tuesday, so we were working on that till then. We include things like the history of the community we were living in, details about what our team did, pluses about the project, constructive "even better if's", reflections, etc. Then we had to plan our debriefing, which is a verbalization of a mini version of the portfolio. Thursday we had our briefing for our next project, which i was in charge of making sure everyone got their stuff together for it. I had a problem with one girl on my team, not understanding this is not a joke and not doing her work, but hopefully that won't happen again.

Other than all the work we had to do, and meetings, i did have a great time hanging out with my friends that were back on campus. I am sitting here trying to think of specific things we did, non americorps related, and it's really hard to do. I think my brain is just super fried right now from the packing/cleaning blitz that went on today. We hung out a lot, just talking about our last projects, and other things like Harry Potter (and how much we all love it - # 7 in JULY!!) and music (i'm introducing country to people, who are introducing me to other music), of course March Madness, and all kinds of super cool things. It is because of these things, and many more that I love people here! They are all just as cool as I am!

On Friday 7 of the teams flew down to the gulf, leaving the other 4 of us who are driving down. Those of us here did local projects on Friday. My team gave out smoke detectors to an elderly community trailer park, as a part of a program the Fire Department is doing called Operation Smoke Detector (original i know). They have targeted key communities that they feel are subject to fires, or might not have working detectors. We were done by lunch, but it was fun. I like older people. We pretty much just asked if they had working ones in their homes, and if not we offered to give them the ones we had, and even install them. Don't worry, i wasn't playing with electricity, we used the simple battery ones.

Arriving back on campus Friday was depressing, because all the teams were gone. My room was especially lonely without Heather there! I now know how she felt when I left and there were only 4 teams left on campus for the first project. The flights they were on were all crazy. Some teams were split up on different flights, and they all were on like 5 or 6 flights. The flight that some of my friends were on had a layover in Washington DC. They have had an exciting weekend because their flight was delayed till Monday morning (tomorrow) because of the snow storm in the Northeast. The kicker for them was they couldn't get their luggage, and they were wearing their uniform (cargo shorts, and their gray tshirt). Most of them had to go buy some pants/hoodie so they could sight see over the weekend. I am hoping my week of traveling isn't quite as exciting as theirs. . .although I wouldn't have minded being stuck in D.C. Its been a few years since I visited, but its a cool place.

Today, in between my insane packing/cleaning hours, I got out of Sacramento for a while. We have some old friends of the family, the Gregors, they used to live in Durham when i was younger, who live a little bit outside of Sac. They came and picked me up, and took me up north east of here to Nevada City, and the Empire State Gold Mine National Park. Nevada city was a quaint old little town that reminded me a lot of Boone with the mountains/hills all around and old shops. We had some really good Mexican food as well, which ya'll know i really enjoy. The Gold Mine we visited was cool, it's a national park now, so it has been preserved pretty well. I really enjoyed getting out of here for a bit, and seeing some of the beautiful foothills/rolling hills that are in northern california. I also enjoyed seeing old friends, familiar faces, even if it has been quite a few years since we saw each other!

We have to be up at 6am, so I am going to go crash in my almost empty room (sigh). I'll update this hopefully next weekend when I arrive in Lafayette! I should have some interesting stories after riding in a van for 5 days. I have some books, my crochet, letters, and many more things to entertain me on our journey.
Hope ya'll have a wonderful week!

Transition week

Unfortunatly it has been a while since I have updated, so ya'll know what this means. . . get comfortable. (I will do my best to try to keep the rambling down to a minimum)

In my last posting i think i mentioned that my team was volunteering at a couple different events during my last weekend in L.A. Saturday's independent service project (from now on called ISP) wasn't all that exciting. Hillary Clinton was there speaking, since itw as the kick off for the Keep America Beautiful campaign, but she is not really my favorite politician, so I wasn't super excited. The whole event was a little disorganized in that they didn't inform us really where we were suppose to go or what we were supposed to do, so we didn't get a whole lot of cleaning up done.
Sunday was a lot better. My team (well most of us) helped give out water at the 24 mile water station at the Los Angeles Marathon. There were probably 40 other volunteers giving water out at this station too! Now, i would just like to add that this whole marathon concept is one that is crazy to me. Who would run 26.2 miles on purpose? AND the people that can do it, are amazing to me. We got there about 8 am, and set up our water table, with cups stacked 4 levels high. Since it only takes super human athletes a little over 2 hours to run 24 miles we started to get a slow trickle of runners comming by us. Of course the first men were Kenyans. Good for them. About the 3 hour mark the crowd got a little steadier, but from about the 4 hour mark on the amount of people jogging/walking by us was unreal. There were over 28,000 people running the marathon this year. You can't imagine how trash filled the roads get when people throw their cups down on the ground while they are done w/ the water. You can't sweep or pick them up because of the insane steady stream of people. Some people were so appreciative of us giving out water, it was a lot of fun.
Our last week at the school was much busier than the first four. We painted a mural on 3 of the walls, planted some trees and flowers, and tutored a little more after school. It was a good end to the project. I miss the kids, but i was ready to leave and come back here to Sacramento w/ everyone.

All but two teams are back on campus for transition this week. It was so much fun to see everyone arrive back on campus. Each time a van came back people ran outside screaming and hugging everyone. It was great. We have a pretty easy week other than the big portfolio, briefing and debriefing we have to do. My team is ahead of things so we get a little free time. I have LOVED being back with my roommate and other friends. It has/is definitly rejuvinating me.

So now the information you all have been waiting for. . . where in the U.S. will Sarah be next??
(drumroll please. . . .)

Lafayette Louisiana. We are working with a United Way organization down there. From what we have been told we are going to be working on a house that is in the process of being rebuilt, so we will be doing drywalling, flooring, cabinets, etc. Some of which I have done before, so i will be able to use the mad skills i have learned over the years. Apparently the culture down in Lafayette and of course other parts of Louisiana is a huge part of the communities, so i am really looking forward to learning more about that area and exploring the new cultures. I will hopefully know a little more information later this week. Oh yeah, i forgot to mention. . . my team is driving down to Louisiana, we are looking forward to our road trip. It is going to take us 5 days to get down there. . .thats A LOT of time in a van with my team, but it will be ok!

Today was an adventure for me. I have never given blood but decided to while the blood mobile was here, since I am saving the world and all this year. The first snag came when I almost didn't pass the iron test. That ended up ok so i layed down in the chair, and they stuck the needle in me. My only other experience with giving any amount of blood was for my allergies, and it came out extremely slow. I was pleasantly surprised when the first half of the bag filled rather quickly. Then it slowed down a lot. . . thats when the fun began. Those of you that have known me for a while, know that I have a history of passing out (not a lot, but it's happened at random times). My bag was almost full when i started to feel extremely nauseaus and overheated. I didn't actually pass out but i wasn't able to finish, becuase I couldn't get cooled down. So sad to say I am a reject. . well my blood that is. I now have a killer battle bruise where the needle was. Maybe i'll try to give blood again, but not any time soon!


I am gonna go now, i have been online for a rediculous amount of time tonight uploading pictures and working on this. I will update again later this week!

Enjoy the pictures!! (just copy and paste the link, for some reason it's not letting me put it on here so you can click it)
Part 1: http://uncg.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062812&l=6e19d&id=25000446

Part 2: http://uncg.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067244&l=8e7fc&id=25000446

Gone to Carolina in my mind!

Just a quick hello to let ya'll know I am doing good. We have been busy at the school we are working at, and doing some independent service projects on the weekends. We started tutoring a few kids in the afterschool program last week and this week, so that has been fun working with kids different than the ones in my kindergarten class. This weekend we are participating in "Keep LA beautiful" on Saturday (cleaning up areas along the marathon route i guess) and then handing out water on Sunday at the 24th mile of the marathon! I am excited about Sunday's!

We leave LA on Friday of next week, and will go back to Sacramento for no longer than a week. I should find out this weekend (or by mid next week) what and where my next project will be, so you can look forward to hearing about that in my next posting. I am excited about getting down to the gulf. However, right now I am more excited about getting back to Sacramento and seeing (almost) everyone again. Two teams are already in the gulf, so we will see them in April for our long weekend break. The base in Sac. became another comfort zone for me, so here in LA i have definitly felt out of place. I like my team (most of the time! haha) but they definitly aren't my group of friends that are all on other teams.

Some days I feel like October is a long time away, other days, not so much. I am looking forward to what is ahead, so i know this feeling will pass. Last Sunday John and Sherene Min (and nicholas!) were in LA, for business so they took me to brunch. It was so nice to see a familiar face from home.
Thanks for the mail that I have gotten so far! I am trying to get caught up with my writing back list. I am going to wait till I get back to Sacramento to put pictures up, so you have to wait another week. Lo siento. (i'm sorry). =)

Duke fans (and anti-UNC fans), cheer the boys on hard for me on Sunday. I am not going to be able to watch the game because of the Marathon. I debated skipping it, but it is 8 hours that I can't pass up. Missing it will build character right??

GO DUKE!!!! =)

I hope everyone has a great week/weekend!