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