Scabies & Animal Babies

I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed. It's been a long time since I have had enough time to blog and I have a lot I want to catch up on.

Let's go back. Way back. To Thanksgiving weekend. Just wanted to share this picture I found of Christine and I paddleboating across the lake:

Now we can skip to Friday the 4th. The pipes running to our trailers froze, and we had no water all day. We couldn't shower, wash our hands, brush our teeth, etc. Not very fun, but things got better that night when we went to the Polk County Christmas Parade. It was definitely entertaining. I have never seen so many ATVs and ORVs in a holiday parade:

Later that night, or possibly the early morning, the county hit a record low temperature of 15 degrees and of course, my trailer also ran out of propane. So we had absolutely no heat during the night. One of my roommates, Michelle, went outside at 4 in the morning to try to switch the valve over to the backup propane tank, however the valve was frozen. It was an all-around miserable night, but we got everything fixed the next day.

Saturday, the whole team went to the Animal Control Center in Mena for ISP (Independent Service Project). Every Corps Member has to complete 80 hours of ISP by the end of the year. That was a lot of fun. The woman that owned the shelter, Tammy, was incredible and all the animals were awesome. We spent the day cleaning cages, grooming animals, organizing nicknacks, and building a roof over some outdoor cages. I found the scruffiest, most adorable kitten who refused to be held, and instead insisted on climbing up my sweatshirt and standing on my shoulders. Since she spent a significant amount of time acting as my own personal parrot while I worked, I decided to call her JJ, short for Jessica Jr. :)

And here's Ashley with her favorite cat:

Ben and Bear:

Kelly and Beans:

Beth and Sally:

We ended up getting 9 hours of service for the day. I now have 16. I have quite a ways to go, but I expect I will also have plenty of opportunity to do more.

After work on Monday, Beth and Nicole went to the doctor's office because Beth has had a rash for weeks and Nicole and seriously inflamed tonsils. The diagnosis? Nicole has strep throat and Beth has Poison Ivy AND a very high chance of scabies. Got that? Need me to repeat it? SCABIES! For those of you who don't know, scabies is a very contagious skin infection caused by a mite. We asked Jim if we could have the day off on Tuesday and work Saturday instead. He said yes, so when we woke up on Tuesday we packed up all of our clothes, sheets, and sleeping bags and headed for the laundromat. We washed everything, which cost an estimated 140 dollars, and put them into plastic bags. When we got home, we scrubbed down our trailers, sprayed all of our mattresses with lice spray, and covered our bodies with this treatment cream that we had prescribed to us. The morning after, we all had to wake up extra early to wash it off in the shower.

Today, shortly after we got to work, I went to pick up a bucket full of tools, and as I did so, the metal square swung back and the corner nailed me right above the lip. It hurt. I bled for about 10 minutes. I came into town today to find some kind of scar-prevention cream because at the moment I have a slight hole in my face. Needless to say I have not been having the best time lately. Things have been stressful and exhausting, but hey, we only have a week left. And tomorrow we get off work early to go to a potluck at the park's Visitor's Center. That should be fun. Or tasty at the very least.

So...that's what I've been up to lately. Cross your fingers that we avoid getting any more diseases, infections, or injuries.

Toodles!

Pictures!

Back again. Found some pictures. Decided to post a bunch from the last few weeks so you can get a better idea of what I have been up to.




A game of cards with some unusual consequences for losing. You will notice that I have both my mouth and my wrists taped:



My first game of ultimate frisbee. I shall have you know that I knocked one of those boys to the ground:

Birthday cards that I found taped to my door the morning of my 19th:



Christina and I monkeying around in our onesies:



Learning how to use a chainsaw:

The team:

One morning, instead of going to work right away, Jim decided that we should make smores:

The ladies of Water 3:

It may not look like much, but this tree was so ridiculously hard to get out of the ground, we just had to get a picture of it. Ashley has bruises to serve as evidence of our struggle:

Thanksgiving in Little Rock

It's Thanksgiving! I am sitting at the breakfast table with a few early risers here at the Water 2 house in Little Rock. We drove here last night to spend turkey day with one of the other teams from our unit that we haven't seen in a couple weeks. I expect this will be a good time, but possibly a little hectic.

It's been a long time since I have written. I don't even know what I need to catch up on. I guess all there is to do is talk about the project. We leave our trailers at 6:30 every morning and drive about a half hour on the bumpiest road imaginable to get to our worksite. Then, we get to work cutting down trees, pulling up stumps and boulders, and picking and raking the ground into a two-foot wide hiking trail. For the most part, it's a lot of fun, when it's not killing my back. We bury our tools at around 2:00 and arrive back home at about 3:00, then most people pass out until dinner.

Pros and Cons of the project:

Pros:
-Jim, our project sponser, is awesome. He looks like an older, more adorable George Bush. He fought in Vietnam, survived a plane crash, and listens to Kanye West.
-Our team, for the most part, is getting along with eachother very well.
-We have toilets. (One team got stuck camping and has to poop in bags.)

Cons:
-Our trailer does not have a very big water heater, which means that the showers are cold more often than not.
-Our dining table is in the garage and fits about half of the team.
-I have to wake up at 5:30 A.M.
-Cell phone service is not good enough to actually have a vocal conversation with anybody.
-While working, we have to wear bright orange vests to avoid being shot at by hunters. (The vests aren't really a con, I just wanted to throw it in to further divulge to you exactly what kind of town we are living in.)
-Anything worth going to, like the grocery store, laundromat, movie theater, etc. is in the next town over, which is 45 mintues away.

Well, that's all I can think of to talk about right now. I'm sure there's more, but I don't really feel like writing any longer.
Also, I know that many people on my team have taken post-worthy pictures, but until they unpload them onto Facebook or something, I have no way of getting them. But I will do my best to get them soon. I know I haven't put any up here in a while.

Happy Turkey Day!

Move Over Paul Bunyan!

This entry may be lacking in cheesy witicisms. Just a forewarning. I'm a little unprepared. I didn't expect to have internet access til this weekend, but lucky for you, we decided to take a trip down to the library today.

I had quite the interesting experience at the hotel after I signed off last time. I ended up getting locked out of my room because I forgot to grab the key when I left and all of my roommates had fallen asleep by the time I got back. Rather than sleeping out in the hallway, I followed Avi back to his room and snuck into bed with Texas Steve. Creepy much? Needless to say he was very surprised and confused when he saw me there the next morning.

After a very long drive through the rain, we reached our final destination! Suddenly, I found myself in Wickes, Arkansas. I had a bit of a nervous breakdown when I first saw the camper trailer I was going to be sharing with two other girls, but I think I have since warmed up to the idea. Even if the trailer has yet to warm up for me. It has been so cold here! I didn't pack for this! I really hope the sun decides to resurface sometime soon.

Monday was pretty much spent exploring the town with our poject sponser, Jim. Let me just take a second to tell you how much I love Jim. Ok, I'm done. After we got back we had a little classroom lesson about chainsaws. Today, we got to use them! I can officially say that I have cut down a tree!

Well, I suppose that's it for now. I expect to be able to write again this weekend. We are going to run to Walmart and then head back. I am so excited for dinner tonight. It's Taco Tuesday!

Signed,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Lumberjack

Salina, Kansas

Kansas is certainly one place I never expected to be, but here I am. Serving as a waypoint of our trip to Arkansas, Kansas has a lot to offer. A lot of nothing that is. Except the sulfer smell that lingers in a cloud around Applebee's. It's been a fairly long day seeing as we drove for about 9 hours total after spending 45 minutes loading up the car. This morning was a hectic race to the finish as I ran downstairs with my luggage only to discover that out of about 200 people, I was the last one. At least it's comforting to know that some things never change.

I feel like I have about a week's worth of news to divulge, but unfortunately, I can't seem to remember what exactly it is that we have been doing lately. Obviously it wasn't anything particularly stimulating. All I can seem to think about is how excited I am to finally be on Spike and how sad I am to have left a select few people that I have come to feel like I have known forever.

A bittersweet moment, but I imagine this next month will be filled with those.

I didn't plan on having this entry be so brief, but I suppose I am just not in the mood to write anything else. I pretty much said everything I wanted to say.

My next entry wont be for at least a week. I will have no internet connection in Wickes. Oh, and by the way, our trailers aren't going to be 20 minutes away from everything like I thought, they are going to be 45 minutes away! I guess that means no quick trips to the grocery store when we run out of milk. Oh well.

I'm off to go complete one last crossword puzzle with Avi before I go to bed.

Goodnight!

Permanent Teams!

Oh man. There is so much to catch up on. Let's see...Monday I attended a Shelter Simulation workshop where we learned how to prepare for/deal with a variety of problematic scenarios that are bound to arise when running a disaster shelter. Then we all learned how to properly inspect and care for our vans by doing things like check the oil, change a tire, and attach snow chains. I also played a soccer game! It was so fun! A bit dangerous since nobody was wearing cleats and there was still patches of snow on the ground and we played until it got so dark we could no longer see the ball...but still very fun.

Tuesday was spent learning First Aid. We watched several cheesy, ridiculous videos, listened to a screechy, fast-talking, slightly insane woman, practiced CPR on dummies, bandaged eachother up, and took a test to make sure we remembered it all. I am now oficially certified in CPR and First Aid! Hopefully I will never have to use either one...
After that we had another epic soccer game and then after dinner I went to a belly dancing class taught by a fellow CM (Corps Member) which was something different and fun to do.

On Wednesday, we had a full day of Diversity training, which was definitely one of the better trainings. The speakers were both very good and they had plenty of activities/exercises to keep us engaged.

Yesterday, we spent all day hanging out with our Unit. We went bowling for two hours and then headed to this really big park to basically do whatever we wanted. Some people took naps, read, played card games, etc. I spent just about the whole time there playing my first ever game of Ultimate Frisbee. It was extremely fun. I can't wait to play again. Then we came back to campus to find out what our permanent teams were going to look like. We were all sent on a scavenger hunt with different clues. Each clue lead to a location where there was, presumably, a TL (Team Leader) hidden under a blanket or a big sweatshirt and wearing a really creepy mask along with a staff member to hand out more clues. After 5 clues, and 5 team leaders, we were told by the staff member to wait at the location with what we all assumed was our final team. After waiting for quite some time for a phone call, the staff member gave the OK and the TL popped out of her disquise and yelled, "This is it!" causing us all to give a little cheer, followed by, "I have your final clue!" which lead to sighing and groaning. She handed us a clue to one of the locations we had already visited. We all ran our seperate ways. When I got to my location, I found Terrence, one of the TLs, sitting with his disquise off. After everyone filed in, he announced that this was our final team! I'm not sure everyone really believed him at first. We were all waiting to be tricked again, but he was actually telling the truth. I have to admit, I was disappointed at first. There were some people I really bonded with that I was hoping to get on my team that I did not, but my team is filled with great people that I can't wait to get to know better. Plus Terrence is awesome. I have never seen anyone laugh at their own jokes as much as him.

We had a little team meeting where we were told what our first project is going to be. We are traveling to Wickes, Arkansas to do a little Trail Building. Just so you know, Wickes is a town of 120 people! We will be living in trailers about 20 minutes away from everything...should be quite a change. At the meeting we also picked our team roles, like Yearbook Representative, who is responsible for documenting our experiences with endless pictures, or Media Representative, who is responsible for talking to the media. I chose to be the PT Coordinator, who is responsible for, you guessed it, coordinating PT for the team. 45 minutes a day. 3 days a week. For those of you who forgot, PT stands for Physical Training. Should be fun.

So this morning I went to a brief meeting where we just talked about the requirements of the position and discussed different ideas for PT. Then we went outside and did lots of sit-ups, push-ups, squat thrusts, and jumping jacks. Not sure why exactly, but whatever.

I'm pretty much free the rest of the day. While everybody else is going to their different position meetings, I plan to accomplish some high quality relaxing.

So that's what has happened lately! Quite a bit to take in.
I think I will try to digest it all with some junk food and Desperate Housewives.

Halloween Party

Yesterday, everyone was supposed to go to the Air Force Academy to do a ropes course, but sadly, because of the snow, that was made impossible. Instead, we went to a rock climbing gym which ended up being lots of fun. I only wish my hands were tougher and my arms were stronger because I didn't last for as long as I would have liked.

Last night was the halloween party for the University students here and the NCCC members. Luckily, my roomate happened to have tons of brightly colored stuff that I was able to pile together to make a costume:

The party was lots of fun. I was long overdue for some dancing.

We have today off, so I will probably be spending a couple hours in the laundry room. At least I will get some good reading time in.

Snow Day

So, we got new teams on Tuesday. Again. Then we ran the baseline for real this time. I ran it in 14:24, which is not bad. We also had to count how many push-ups and sit-ups we could do in a minute. After that, I honestly don't even remember what we did because the days here somehow manage to go on for about 37 hours and keeping track of things gets pretty difficult.

Yesterday we had to go to a safety training session. Which was basically 3 or 4 hours of a guy telling us not to stick our hand in front of a nail gun. I fell asleep towards the end =/

After lunch, we got calls from our TLs (Team Leaders) notifying us that we had the rest of the day off and the day after too because of the snow. I can't believe it! I actually experienced a snow day! We all went a little crazy with snowball fights, sledding, and fort building. It was definitely fun.

This morning I woke up to find a true Winter Wonderland. I never thought I would see so much snow:

Today I am going into Denver with Pat, Tim, and Avi to get something warm to drink and maybe visit a museum. Should be fun.

Tracks, Rakes, & Coffee Cakes

Well, quite a bit has happened since my last post. Where to start? Let's see...Thursday afternoon my unit had it's first PT. We did a couple of different warm-ups and then ran the baseline, which is a mile-and-a-half run around the campus. This is something we do in the beginning of the year, and then whenever we come back for transistion weeks to see if we are able to maintain the same time, or hopefully improve. This time is was really only a practice so we could see what the route was. It was difficult, especically because there are some hills on campus, but I managed to keep running the whole time, which was pretty much my only goal.

Friday, every CM (Corps Member) in NCCC went to a local middle school and built them a track around their field. It was fun, but also very hard on the body. It involved a lot of shoveling dirt and carrying buckets and pounding down the track. It felt really good to finally get out and do something though, and the middle schoolers (who came out to help us for a little while) were very enthusiastic and appreciative.

Saturday was really fun. We went around to the houses of 5 different senior citizens and raked up all the leaves in their front/back/side yards. It was fun working with just my team and doing something that produced significant results almost instantly. One of the old guys even had bags of candy prepared for when we finished. He stood on the porch and threw them to us. Steve took one to the head. I laughed.

After that I got some laundry done and hit the town with Pat and Tim. We found a really cute coffee shop and sat in there for some time just drinking tea and being hip. Later on we took the train back to the bus stop, but since the buses were no longer running that late (something we anticipated, don't worry) we walked the 2 or 3 miles back to campus. Which was fine, until on the last mile or so when it started raining. Not hard, but still. Even with the rain though, it was a very enjoyable night.

Today I am lounging around the dorm in my pjs. We have the day off and I am making every effort possible to do absolutely nothing. So far I have been rather successful.

Ta ta for now.

We're Off To See The Wizard...

This morning I woke up feeling a little extra sleepy. I quickly realized it was because there was no sunshine coming in my window. I sat up, peeked through the blinds and saw this really weird white stuff falling from the sky! What was it that they called it again? Oh yeah, SNOW! I experienced my first snowfall! Yay! Obviously I was a little over-excited, but it was very nice looking:

I even went out and made a couple snowballs. Without gloves. Bad idea.

Anyway, today was super fun...that is, if sitting in a room with 50 other people watching powerpoints for 3 hours is what tickles your fancy. My fancy however, was trying very hard to stay awake. It was definitely important stuff that we were learning, but that didn't really make it any less boring. We had a little fun before the powerpoints started during which time we played AmeriCorps NCCC Jeopardy (my team totally dominated!), but sadly it didn't last very long. The second part was Media Training which is basically just learning how to avoid saying something stupid during an interview. The next part was learning all about projects. How they are chosen, the presentation you make when you finish one, different scenarios you may encounter on a work site, and a whole bunch of stuff I can't remember because it was so tedious. I do, however, remember the acronym for the process of a project. P.A.R.C. which stands for Preparation, Action, Reflection, Celebration. I'm pretty sure we spent about an hour on this alone.

When we finished learning about reflection, we were told that we were going to reflect upon why we joined NCCC. Each team was given a diferent type of presentation to come up with. One team got a song, another got to use playdough, and my team was assigned a skit. You can imagine the groaning that ensued when this was announced, but it ended up being quite enjoyable to come up with (in 10 minutes!) and we totally dominated for the second time today. We did a Wizard of Oz parody in which Dorothy, the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion were all searching for different things. For example, Dorothy wanted to find somewhere she belonged and the lion wanted the courage to step out of his comfort zone. It was amazing. I was a munchkin.

We ended up skipping our first day of P.T. (Physical Training) because of the snow. Instead we "played a game" in which we all got an oddly shaped piece of paper with our name on it and something on the back. We then had to find all the people whose pieces fit with ours and when we got all of them together the "something on the back" read the name of our new team. I am now in Water 3. So I have a new team AGAIN! It's crazy, but I guess they really want to shuffle everyone around before settling on permant teams.

So today had a lot of boring parts, but some definite laughs too. A bunch of us are going to play some more games tonight. I can't wait!

Until next time!

New Teams!

It feels like a long time since I have written! Let's see, Saturday night I went out with a couple girls and explored downtown Denver a bit. I slept in on Sunday, then took the lightrail into Denver again with Danielle, on which we encountered a group of middle-aged women dressed in black and green with big witch hats on their way to see Wicked for the third time. They were pretty entertaining. They had the soundtrack playing over a set of portable speakers and were singing and laughing just about as loud as possible.

After running a couple errands, we came back, recruited some people and played board games for about 4 hours staight. It was probably the most fun I have had so far.

Yesterday morning we got new teams! While I was sad too see my old team go, I am quite happy with my new team and can't wait to get to know everyone better. We then piled into the vans and drove for nearly 3 hours to Rocky Mountain National Park for a hike with the whole Water Unit! (The drive was only supposed to take 2 hours, but there was some kind of fire and we had to take a detour. It's too bad our firefighters haven't been trained yet!) Here are a couple of pictures from the hike:

This morning we sat through a short lecture on Driver Safety. Then we piled into the van again only this time one of the team members hopped into the front seat. Those of us who wanted to be certified as drivers took turns driving for about a half hour each with our Unit Leader Allen in the passenger seat. Allen threatened that if we did something wrong he would hit us in the "A", meaning the AmeriCorps logo on the sleeve of our t-shirts. Driving the van was actually kind of fun, however Allen smacked me in the arm three times for talking to the passengers. Hehe. But when I was done he said I drove very well, so that's good.

I guess it's time for dinner again. Maybe tomorrow I will get a chance to practice my disaster relief skills on my room =/

Wish me luck!

Red Rock

My team got a new member today. Apparently he just found out that he was accepted on Wednesday. It must have been tough to have only a couple days to prepare! We all went on a short tour of the campus, which you would think we would have done on the first or second day, but oh well. After that, we drove down to what I guess could be considered the inner-city and practiced what is called "Community Mapping" which is basically identifying what could be improved in a certain area and what resources they currently have.

Since we didn't have to be back to campus for a couple hours, we decided to drive up to Red Rocks which was pretty cool:

After lunch and a little relaxing, we drove 45 minutes to go get our physicals, which was pretty painless.

All in all, another fairly uneventful day, but I suppose things will be like this for a little while until we actually start some community work. However, I am planning on going out tonight since we have a free day tomorrow and I can actually sleep in. I found a little group of under-agers that I can stick with when the old farts ditch us for the bars. So that should be fun.

Gotta go shower and get ready. Later!

Day 2

Well it's Day 2 of my AmeriCorps adventure. Yesterday was extremely long and tiring, but I made quite a few friends which was really nice. It feels like I have already been here for a week.

Today we are getting our uniforms, which is about the highlight of the day unfortunately. Things are starting out pretty slow, but I'm sure it will get better once training actually starts.

Anyway, I'm off to lunch. I just wanted to write a quick update.

Until next time!

5 Days Left!

Welcome to my blog! This is the first entry of the first blog I have ever written, it's 1:24 in the morning, and I am drinking decaf, so please bear with me.

Now that I have less than a week until I leave the anxiety is starting to kick in. While I am extremely excited to get off my over-sleeping, Netflix-abusing keister, I am also more nervous than I can explain. However I have one less thing to be nervous about...I got my itinerary! At last I know when and from what airport I am actually leaving for Denver. This news is good and bad. Good because I finally know what my plans are and I can tell my mother so she stops freaking out, bad because my flight is at 7:50 A.M. and I am not a morning person. Which is something I imagine will be changing very soon. I can't imagine AmeriCorps will ever let me sleep in til 10:00.

Well, I suppose that's it for now. All I will be doing in between now and my departure is trying to find a magic spell that I can use to make everything I want to bring with me actually fit into my suitcase. Wish me luck! I promise my future entries will be more exciting once I have actually arrived.