Vacation!

Hey all, I'm writing right now from snoy, cold New Hampshire because, that's right, I'm home for the holidays! To tide you guys over through the new year I'll give a quick update about what the next few weeks will have in store for me and then leave you with some pictures for your viewing pleasure :)

I'm home until the 4th of January at which point I'll head back down south and continue work in Hancock County until January 22nd at which point my unit (the Green unit) and the Silver unit will all meet up in Mississippi for Transition Week. During this week we'll do all sorts of fun things like project debriefs (on the projects we've been completing the past months) as well as project briefings (for the projects we're about to begin). My team hasn't been informed of our next project yet, however, we will hopefully find out before the end of our first week back in Pearlington! We do know, however, that we will be staying in the gulf for our second round and then sometime in March be returning to Sacramento and the Pacific Region.

And now for some pictures!






This picture was taken from outside a restaurant in New Orleans on Thanksgiving morning, the band walked down the street and stopped right out side of the cafe.







From far left to right, Sarah, Abe, Katie and myself at our Americorps NCCC Class 15 Pacific Region induction ceremony.













A San Diego sunset.











Downtown Bay St. Louis is covered with signs like this exclaiming the promise that vacant lots and buildings hold.










This is our dear Gov-y, the Government issue 15-passenger van that belongs to Green 5 :). We take her everywhere!












And, finally, an oldie but a goodie. A snapshot from times past, Green 5 grabbing dinner at a restaurant somewhere in Texas on our road trip from Sacrameto, CA to Hancock County, MS.









take care and happy holidays,
--Walker

Crazy green 5 and the construction olympics!

Welcome to December, everyone! I realized at the end of my post last week that I haven't officially introduced my team yet and what better way to do it than with this fantastic picture I stole from teammate Nancy? We're all dressed to the nines on the morning of our induction in what is referred to lovingly as the "Ameritux". And, without further ado, we have (from Left to Right starting in the back); Nicole from Kingston, NY, Katie from the suburbs of Chicago, Abe from the great city of Minneapolis, Nancy from St. Louis, Sam from Wisconsin, in green is Ben, our fearless leader from Ohio, currently residing in Austin, Sarah a graduate from Coe Brown Academy in New Hampshire, Maria from Connecticut, myself and finally Bailey from Indiana. Such a good looking crew :)
In all seriousness though, my team is really incredible. We all have our moments, of course, and to be realistic, we don't all love every single other person every moment of every day, but we do get along really well and watch out for each other at all times. Our living situation involves all seven girls in one cabin which allows us to become pretty close and spend a lot of time together which is awesome. Nicole spent her day today cutting all of our hair and helping Nancy dye hers. Most nights we spend together watching a movie, reading or even knitting, a hobby I've gotten 6 out of 7 girls hooked on completely. I spent Thanksgiving weekend in New Orleans with other Americorps friends and felt so lonely without my team around me, 24/7!

My team, as I mentioned, is working with the Bay-Waveland affiliate of Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi. We spent the first week on the job doing a blitz build. "Blitz" is Habitat terminology for a build which has a huge concentration of workers on one house for one week working long hours. We got to see two houses go from a floor system and foundation to completely done with the exception of contractor work (putting in tiled floors, carpeting, landscaping etc) in only 5 days. We worked long hours and got to picture the results of our hard work constantly, as the two home owners were around the site for most of the week. We really got to know both Deanna and Lalie and got to hear their surviving the storm stories, got to know their families and really came to care about them and their new homes. The beginning of the week found us working on Lincoln Street at Deanna's house with a fantastic group of volunteers from Michigan and we were thrilled to be able to end the week back on Lincoln St. for the dedication of Deanna's home. It was incredible to get to see the house we had worked so hard on handed over to such a kind, loving and compassionate family. She thanked us profusely, saying how incredible it was for so many young people to leave their homes to help build hers. Heartwarming doesn't even begin to describe how her thanks affected us.
Up above is a picture of myself and Bailey working on building the roof for a shed at a different house this past week. Since the blitz week we've been doing all sorts of odd jobs touching up the 6 or 7 houses that Habitat has going at the moment. We've been painting trim and railings, caulking windows, staining cabinets, hanging insulation and so many other things.


Aside from all this hard work, however, we've been able to get some play time in as well by participating in the second ever NCCC Construction Olympics hosted by Dan Reynolds, one of our construction supervisors. The Olympics consist of several events, the first of which involved guessing the lengths of an assortment of pieces of wood. The second event, pictured below on the left was entitled "Perfect Circle" and involved us each cutting, free hand, a 6" diameter circle with a jigsaw. I am proud to say that I placed third in both events :). Dan Reynolds is pictured on the left drawing us a crazy diagram of an x-ray of a wall. Wise words from Dan, "In the construction Olympics there will be only one winner. This means there will be 9 losers, so at least you'll have company."

Hope you all now have a better understanding of what kinds of work my team is doing down in Hancock County! And as a side note, if anyone is looking for a good Christmas gift or wants to see more about the community we're serving in, the local TV station WLOX put out a DVD entitled 'Katrina- South Mississippi's Story' that is really, really powerful. It shows news footage of the area before the storm, during the storm and after the storm. There are also lots of interviews with Hancock County survivors and some personal footage donated by locals. We watched it as a team and what I enjoyed most about it, and, really, what I think I'm taking away from this experience in Mississippi in general, was the profound sense of hope that it finished with. This area is resilient, every time I see a bumper sticker that reads, "Love the Coast-- Here to stay!" it makes me realize that what we're doing here is worthwhile. We're not building homes, these people have a home, they call it the Bay. We're building houses so that they never have to leave their home.

with hope,
--Walker

Appologies, Updates, Mississippi and more!

Okay first things first, I appologize for being such a slacker. I feel like the past few weeks have been just a whirlwind and although I have had the good intentions of updating this several times, my goals never really became a reality. I'm going to give a quick update of the past three (or so..) weeks and then I'll slowly fill in the holes as we go along :).

So far in the month of November I have:
-traveled up and down the Pacific coast of California camping on the beach in San Diego
-eaten sorbet and a fried avocado taco in Austin, Texas
-driven through Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana and Texas
-had a total of 3 soy vanilla lattes at the Mockingbird Cafe in Old Town, Bay St. Louis Mississippi
-watched one Burning Man video about the destruction Katrina wreaked on Mississippi
-participated in the "blitz" build of 2 houses
-painted miles and miles of house trim, moonlight white
-met 5 Americorps State volunteers
-eaten at a Cuban restaurant twice in one week
-used a Port-a-potty all day, every day (give or take a few gas station and restaurant restrooms)
-turned a bunk bed in a cabin with 6 other girls into home
-had coffee at Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter
-spent 8 hours purging old x-ray films from storage at the Hancock County medical center
-really gotten to see southern hospitality at its greatest
-felt like I was a part of something big, important and influential

Whew. Quite a list. To elaborate slightly, I was officially inducted into Americorps NCCC as a member of the Pacific Region on Friday, October 31st and immediately afterwards I packed my bags to celebrate one last weekend with four friends. We drove south down the Pacific coast stopping once to camp an approximate two minute walk from the beach and then making the rest of the way down to San Diego where we camped again after exploring a bit. We then drove the ten hours back north to Sacramento all of us excited to leave the next morning for our first ever Americorps NCCC Spike project!
The Monday morning following our iduction I packed myself into a 15 passenger van with my 8 other team mates and our team leader and we set off, oddly enough, on the same California highway I had just driven in both directions the weekend before. Where were we headed, you ask? Why, the one, the only Pearlington Mississippi! It took us four and a half days, we crossed two time zones and five state lines to get here but we finally reached our destination, the Pearlington Recovery Center. Here, we are working with a Habitat for Humanity affiliate in the Bay St. Louis - Waveland area in Mississippi. Hancock County, the county which our Habitat affiliate serves, was the area hardest hit by Katrina and in Pearlington, where we are living, most of the homes suffered some flooding even during the more recent hurricanes; Gustav and Ike.
Since arriving here on November 7th our team has already put in over 100 hours of with with our project sponsor, Habitat for Humanity, assisting in the building of four or five different houses. I'll give you all a more detailed look into my life here in Mississippi as well as a recap of the past few weeks but, just for tonight, here are a few pictures from my recent adventures!

Some team mates standing on what used to be a pier in Waveland, Mississippi on our first evening in the area. Notice all the pieces of concrete that look like giant pebbles.













To the right is a picture of my bunk bed in our cabin at the Pearlington Recovery Center. We have 11 bunks (as in a bottom AND top bed) in our room and only 7 girls so we have each claimed one for ourselves.


Here is a picture of my team standing in front of 1003 Lincoln Street, one of the houses we worked on during the blitz build last week in which 2 houses were made almost to completetion in 5 days.





Last but not least, here is a picture that I love.
Of myself and two team mates, Sarah (who is from Stratford, Nh!) and Katie along with a boy who was selling lemonade, brownies and cookies by the side of the road in Bay St. Louis.














I wish you all an incredible Thanksgiving. With love, lemonade and laughs
--Walker

Lake Tahoe

Alright so I know I just updated and I really don't have much new information to share but I do want to post some pictures from my weekend adventure. Saturday we got off training around 5pm and three of my friends from my floor were planning a camping trip up to Lake Tahoe and asked me if I wanted to fill the fourth seat in the car. It was a great, spur of the moment trip that was unforgettable. Honestly, I can't express the beauty we saw when we pulled in at 10:30pm to the campground and were greeted by the reflection of the moonlight on the water. Where we camped was a two minute walk from the water's edge and just absolutely beautiful. After spending a night eating ginger snaps and talking around a fire we woke up to what we were told was a brisk, 28 degree morning and got breakfast at this tiny place called the Tahoma Aroma and got into a political discussion regarding the recent support from Powell for Obama with the only other customer in the building.
After breakfast we drove to Emerald Bay and did a bit of hiking around the lake and up to some water cascading down rocks. The four of us spent a half an hour just sitting atop a jumble of rocks talking and it was such a serene moment. I told another friend yesterday that it was refreshing seeing something that remained so breathtakingly beautiful and
so natural. There really aren't many other things I can say about our trip so I'll share some pictures we snapped :)















This on the left is a picture of the lake from our campground and on the right is a picture taken from the Emerald Bay area.


Taken from up above the bay is an image of Fannette island. We hiked down to the water's edge and the picture below is of the lake from the beach.












I hope you all have a great rest of the week, I'll think of you while I'm at Mendocino in the red woods tomorrow! :)
love,
--Walker

Push ups to the stars

Welcome to the end of one of the longest weeks of my life, thus far :). This was the first full week we all spent with our teams which was really great, I seem to have a real solid group of individuals to spend the next ten months of my life with which is really encouraging. We spent it mostly in and out of trainings with a few things sticking out in my mind.
Last Sunday two friends and I drove down to San Francisco to visit my aunts Pat and Eileen which was a really, really great trip. Caitlin, a girl from my floor and fellow foodie, and I got connected with Zach, another guy from my floor who was planning on driving down to visit a visiting family member in the area so we hitched a ride with him. Aside from the two hours spent in the car trying to park during what seemed like the busiest day in the history of San Francisco, we enjoyed all of our time in the city. Caitlin and I especially liked getting to visit a great cafe that Pat and Eileen brought us to for dessert. Cafe Gratitude features a raw, vegan cuisine including some delicious desserts which we all sampled and some great coffee drinks which were delicious as well. I highly suggest it and look forward to returning!
One other exciting event that took place this week was the beginning of PT or, Physical Training. We were introduced to PT at 5:30 on Thursday morning by Willie Holmes, the PT coordinator for the entire campus. Willie Holmes is quite an entertaining guy but I'm not sure if even he could make me excited to wake up two hours before the sun does to exercise. Honestly, I am somewhat excited to be doing PT, however I still can't get psyched about the early time frame. Although if I'm going to be hitting up Cafe Gratitude for dessert in the near future, I might appreciate the expertise of Mr. Holmes :).
Thursday, Friday and today, Saturday, were three very long days. We had a training on Thursday called Hands of Peace which lasted from 9am to 4pm and was a lot of team building, active listening and other trainings which really allowed us to learn a lot about the other members of our team and some within our unit. Friday we had Red Cross First Aid certification which lasted from 9am to 4pm as well. The certification will last for a year, however, and we now all know several emergency procedures which, hopefully, we won't need to utilize. Today we sat from 8am to 4 pm in a diversity training session which dealt with team diversity and how our backgrounds and experiences play into things like how we deal with conflict as well as diversity outside of our team on project sites and in the communities we'll be serving. Although all three days were incredibly long they were really great ways to get to know my team as well as think a lot about how my background and my past have influenced me and why I'm here.
Above is a snapshot of the schedule for my team for a few days last week. If you notice from 4:30 to 5:00 on Thursday we had a training called "Mendocino Briefing", this was an information session on the service trip we'll be going on next week. Camp Mendocino , where "campers learn respect for others and themselves while gaining character and leadership skills", is run by Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco and is located in the redwoods! We'll be spending Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning at the camp and do some service work while we're there but also get to do a lot of exciting activities with other members of our unit.
I think I mentioned this the last time I updated but the days here really do feel like they consist of two or even three days. Generally we'll have PT in the mornings then breakfast and then trainings until lunch and those 7 hours feel like a whole day. Then we have more trainings after lunch and then dinner which feels like a whole NEW set of 24 hours. I've been spending my after dinner hours with a group of people who live on the same floor as me and we've all been engaging in exciting activities like talking in the laundry room until 3am, watching episodes of Arrested Development on DVD in the dorm lounges and going to Thai Food at a tiny place across the street. Tomorrow is my day off and I'm planning on using that time to bake some cookies, go into downtown Sacramento to accompany a friend of mine who is getting a tattoo and, most importantly, catching up on much needed sleep. Whew.
I hope you're all doing well, enjoying the last few nice weeks of fall and thinking of me, sitting here in shorts :)
love,
--Walker

ps. I updated my address on the side bar, whenever you mail me something it must now have listed my team name (Green 5) so that it can get to me faster :)

When it comes to planting trees, Green + SIlver = Gold.

Whew. So much has happened just between Tuesday night when I last updated and today, Saturday. On Wednesday my pod, "Diablo Scorpions", did some grueling hours of training which felt like they lasted forever. It was difficult sitting through three hours of going over policy and learning about tool safety but, honestly, it is all information that we're going to need to know at some point so, might as well suck it up and pay attention :).
After training on Wednesday a few of us went down to Sacramento and walked around for a bit, part of our group stopped off at the Hard Rock, Sacramento but two other girls and I decided to look for something more Sac-town original. We ended up at this great little creperie and I had a salad, the first real, good food I'd had, sadly, in days.
Thursday was a really, really great day and allowed for a much needed change of pace. All of us were feeling slightly antsy at the realization that for the next four weeks we would be sitting listening to lectures when what we really wanted to do was get our hands dirty and do some service. Luckily, that was exactly what my pod got to do! Wednesday we found ourselves strapped into waders, armed with loppers (used for cutting shrubbery and other vegetation) and ready to get muddy and wet. NCCC in Sacramento set up some pods to work with Sacramento Weed Warriors alongside this great guy named Frank, doing invasive species removal. The species we were removing was called armundo, also known as giant reed. And boy is that a proper name. We were hauling some reeds as tall as 20, 25 feet. Frank informed us that this species can sometimes grow up to a foot a day in the summer, when conditions are right. It is an invasive species that came from the eastern world and is somewhat similar in appearance to bamboo. Although the new, green reeds are thriving with life and full of water, the older reeds get very dry and pose a lot of fire danger. Sacramento is a city with a lot of water surrounding it and many residential areas, such as were near our project site, have clusters of giant reed all around them. Pods went on Tuesday and removed an estimated 1600 pounds of vegetation and our group of pods removed an estimated 1700 pounds of vegetaion. It was really great to do something with my pod, we really bonded over the service and I can only imagine how 9 months will affect my team when one day could do so much. Below is a picture that was taken by our pod leader, Erin, on one of my podmates' camera, check out the fancy waders and Ameriwear :)
Speaking of teams, I am now a proud member of team 5 in the green unit! Last night we had a scavenger hunt of sorts which lead us to our team leader, awaiting us in the van, ready to take us to dinner. These folks will be my roommates and so much more for the next ten months. On my team is another girl from New Hampshire who graduated last year from Coe Brown academy as well as someone from Maine who DROVE to Sacramento and a girl who was one of my podmates!
Today we had our first team activity.. planting trees! We worked with the Sacramento Tree Foundation and another green unit team as well as silver unit team to plant 55 trees in an area being developed as a recreational park by a river with picnic tables and areas for families to play games or fish or whatever they would like. It was really great to get to talk to the leaders of the Foundation about all kinds of things. Already I've met such incredible, dedicated people through this program, it is incredible. We learned that Sacramento has the highest number of trees per capita of any city in the world and the foundation is trying to double that number. Their current goal is to plant 5 million trees as a foundation by 2025, that means that every citizen of Sacramento would have to plant 2 trees. It sounds reasonable but, as Zara, one of the woman we worked with mentioned, there are elderly people, babies and disabled people as well as those who "just don't care" that wouldn't be able to plant trees. I really enjoyed being outside, getting dirt under my fingernails and on my uniform and I can't wait to do more projects like it.
Well, I'm off to enjoy my night off and hopefully I'll be heading into San Francisco tomorrow to meet up with the aunts and maybe a friend!
peace, love and trees,
--Walker

Greetings from Sac-town!

Hi all! I've been here a full 24 hours now, although yesterday felt like it consisted of many more hours than 24. For the next 30 days (more or less) I'll be in Corps Training Institute (or what we Americorps members like to refer to as CTI). By the end of the 30 days I'll have been red cross certified as a disaster relief volunteer as well as have been certified as a van driver and learned lots of other things which I can't even begin to think about, let alone list.

As of right now we have been split up into Pods of around 10 CMs (corps members) with one TL (team leader). These groups are just temporary and will be in place for the next week or two until we are assigned our permanent teams. This morning was the first time we got together as a pod and I feel like in the past 48 hours I've learned so many names and seen so many faces there's no way I could even begin to list them all. I've met folks from all over the US, the majority here are from the Midwest but there's quite a few from the New England area (Massachusetts especially). Today we spent 2 hours doing paperwork to get set up for our physicals next week as well as to get entered into the Red Cross database. It would have been quite boring had it not been for some entertaining members of my pod :). I've met such a diverse group of people here with really unique backgrounds, although I can't remember where everyone is from, I know I've heard some cool stories!

Yesterday we stood in about a hundred lines to complete inprocessing. We got all kinds of exciting things like room keys (and roommates), government ID cards, sleepingbags AND, we were issued our uniforms and damn, do we look good :) Americorps, we've been told, prides itself as an organization in having volunteers that look professional at all times. This means some pretty strict regulations as to what you can and can't do/wear while "repping the A" (representing Americorps). Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures of this sweet uniform soon. Basically it consists of gray t-shirts and long-sleeved shirts with the Americorps NCCC logo on the breast and arm, white polos with the Americorps logo, khaki BDU shorts and pants and black pants. The polo and black pants are refered to as the "Ameritux". We "ameri-" everything. There's even an ameriprom at the close of the year!

I'm off to go take a quick nap before dinner, 3 hours time difference is a lot. A LOT.
love,
--Walker

Some interesting news

Hey all, while I'm anxiously waiting for my flight information here are some things that have caught my attention recently:

Senator Obama at the Service Nation summit, speaking about initiatives to encourage American citizens to participate in national service (including programs like Americorps and other volunteer initiatives).
"Part of what makes America work is the fact that we believe in individual responsibility and self-reliance but we also believe in mutual responsibility.. a sense that we are committed to something larger than ourselves."-- Sen. Obama

The cover story in the most recent issue of Time magazine entitled, "A Time to Serve".

And, this fabulous band. "Sometimes you just can't hold back the river." (yes, their drummer IS a tap dancer. I know. blows my mind too.)

happy browsing :)
--Walker

Three weeks and Counting :)

Hi everyone! I'm sure some of you are slightly confused about what this is so let me explain! In roughly three weeks I will be embarking on an adventure in volunteer work with Americorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) in the Pacific Region based out of Sacramento, California. I will spend five weeks in Sacramento at McClellan Park, 13 miles from the California State Capitol. These first five weeks will be spent training and doing team building work with groups of other volunteers.

After the first five weeks we, myself and roughly 400 other volunteers, will be split up into smaller teams of 12-15 people. I will travel with this team to different areas in the West Coast and Gulf Coast regions (including states like Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Louisiana etc.). We will be deployed to tackle volunteer projects ranging from rebuilding to tutoring to invasive species removal and brush clearing (fire prevention). Each project will last about two months, after which we will return back to base in Sacramento and then be sent to another location to do a project of a different variety for another two months. After completing my year in Americorps I will have completed anywhere from 3-5 projects with my team as well as 80 individual service hours and receive an education award of just over $4,000 dollars.

Instead of sending out mass e-mails and writing letters until my hand falls off I've decided to keep this blog (short for weblog, an online journal of sorts) in order to communicate with all of you fabulous folks :). I also chose to keep a blog like this because when I was doing research into NCCC and trying to get an idea of what life was like for the average corps member I read lots of blogs of past volunteers and it was incredibly helpful so, hopefully, mine will provide that help to some other prospective NCCC volunteer :)

Obviously I'm not in Sacramento yet but if you want to send me a letter so I have something when I arrive you can mail things to:

Walker Dunn, Class 15
AmeriCorps NCCC
3427 Laurel Street
McClellan, CA 95625

love,
Walker