Road Trip adventures, new project joys!

Greetings from 6,500 feet up! Yep, my team is now at Camp Cedar Crest in the San Bernardino mountains. We arrived on Wednesday evening and were immediately welcomed by a fantastic sign and warm smiles from the entire staff. Everyone has been incredibly helpful, welcoming and incredible since we've been here and I, for one, am absolutely psyched to work with these people for the next 5 weeks. But wait-- what took us so long to get here, you ask? Last time I wrote I was somewhere on the road from Baton Rouge to Sacramento and once we got to 'ole Sac-town we had some AmeriCorps business to take care of before we could head out.
We arrived at McClellan on a Friday night and had the whole weekend free, we then had our debrief for our Baton Rouge project. My teammate Sam is great with a video camera and so for both of our debriefs thus far he has made great movies capturing fantastic moments on our projects. I'm trying to figure out how I can share these videos with you-- they're really great! However due to their length and my lack of computer skills that might not happen so.. use your imaginations!
The last day of our transition before our spring break was 'Life After AmeriCorps Day' which consisted of several workshops on things like resume writing, interviewing tips as well as informational sessions on several organizations that our staff thought would spark our interest. One of the organizations I heard about was Bike and Build, something I'm seriously considering taking part in summer 2010, check it out, it seems like a really great way to support Habitat For Humanity, an organization that I obviously think is pretty great.
For my break (a.k.a-- long weekend) I headed south to San Francisco to check out some of my own 'Life After AmeriCorps' plans.. more on that later though, this update would last forever if I tried to explain my future plans at this moment. It was great, however, to get away from Ameri-life for a few days and get to see some family as well as friends. Sometimes I feel as though NCCC is this bubble in which I eat, sleep, breathe AmeriCorps. This life is such a strange way of living that it is nice to get out every once and a while and realize that people do still lead somewhat average lives outside of our 15 passenger van. I must say though, I do find myself excited to be back every time I return.
After break we had our briefing in which we were told that our project is great, basically. And then on Wednesday, we realized that it really, truly is. This week (Weds-Friday) we jumped in and helped out where we could but mostly just got to know the facilities as well as the staff and observed some of the really cool parts of the week. We spent two hours dancing to songs like YMCA, The Cupid Shuffle and Car Wash with the kids and staff on Thursday and I kept turning to my team mate Katie unable to say anything but, "This is our job". Next week we are shadowing an experienced counselor so that we can see them in action and learn on the job. The week after we'll be given our own group of 10-15 5th or 6th graders to lead and instruct for the week! I'll update more on our work next week when I'm more familiar with the program, right now we're just trying to get acclimated to the elevation!!
Since I haven't had time to upload pictures of the camp or the fantastic views yet I'll leave you with some pictures from the road trip we took from Baton Rouge to Sacramento. Just as a reminder our route was Baton Rouge,LA- San Antonio, TX- El Paso, TX- Flagstaff, AZ- Henderson, NV- Sacramento, CA.








The Alamo in San Antonio, Tx! (A Texan friend of mine referred to it as, "his Texan pride
" okay..)














Some really cool trees somewhere between San Antonio and El Paso.


















A shot out the window in Arizona, which I've decided is one of the most beautiful states I've been to.













Highway 10.. we saw a lot of this on our road trip.





















More Arizona.. beautiful, wouldn't you agree?
















5 days in a van with 10 people and we go a little nuts sometimes.. poor Sarah fell asleep and just wanted to stretch out.. and poor Katie was sitting in front of her!












Here's my team mate Abe standing at the Grand Canyon.. he looks so small!
















And here I am at the Grand Canyon! And how excited I look to be there! Really though, this was such a breathtaking place to see.(155)








The Vegas Strip! We found it interesting that in the morning we stopped at one of the most incredible natural features on the continent and then spend the night in the biggest environmental freak show, the city that shouldn't exist, Las Vegas!(251)










Who knew the Hoover Dam was so small?!










That's all for now, take care and wish me luck on my first week working directly with kids all week!
--Walker