Thursday, June 18, 2009

How jealous can I make you?

This is where I work:Granite Mountain


Kamikaze Falls, Mt. Tenerife

And this is what I look like doing it:

Soon I'll post a real update, I just wanted to share some of these beautiful sights we've been seeing the past few days!
love and mountains,
--Walker

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Behind.. again.

Hey all! It's only been a few weeks since I last updated but I feel like I have so many exciting things to share! Our last weeks at Cedar Crest were so exciting, we had great weeks at work and jam packed weekends to boot. Our second to last weekend we spent the first day with some of the supervisors from different sites who brought out all of their rock climbing gear, set up ropes and said, "have at it". They spent the entire day showing us the ropes.. no pun intended.. and we climbed well into the evening. After rock climbing we took a bus to Hollywood and spent a day walking the Walk of Fame and seeing the sights.Here's quite a fantastic picture of me in front of Chuck Norris' star on the Walk of Fame (let the Walker Texas Ranger jokes ensue..)
A week after our Hollywood adventures we hiked San Gorgonio which, standing at 11,500 feet high, is the highest point in Southern California. It was a long, long day but the views were so worth it.


















After spending over ten hours hiking we got a few hours of sleep and woke up bright and early to head to Anaheim to visit DisneyLand! We spent 16, magical hours walking around riding every attraction in both DisneyLand and California Adventures. Some of my favorites were Space Mountain and Soaring over California. It was a great day and we had two absolutely fantastic tour guides who were fellow instructors and camp and who visit Disney frequently.













Even our last week was fantastic at Camp! On Thursday before we left, our last night there, the staff hosted and AmeriCorps commencement ceremony in which they even gave us a Certificate of Survival as well as some Inside the Outdoors gear so we can rep science camp every where we go!
Now, it hasn't been ALL fun and games since I last updated, we did finish working at Camp and then headed up to base in Sacramento for transition (which as a reminder consists of lots of meetings and we debrief our last project to staff members and then brief our upcoming one to staff members as well) Once we got to Sacramento we participated in several service projects one on memorial day at a retirement home in downtown Sac which was really memorable. We were present for the flag raising ceremony and got to speak with several veterans of early wars. We did some landscaping for the residents which was really great. The retirement home was actually a place we had worked the last time we were in Sacramento so it was neat to see the progress the area we worked on last time has made. While at transition we also worked at an elementary school carnival in south Sacramento, I got to run the bean bag toss table and hand out prizes to kids. The last project we did was at an Arts Fair which was a really great way to experience a different kind of Sacramento culture. I'm not sure if I've mentioned Independent Service Projects, or ISPs, yet but all Corps Members are required to complete 1700 hours of service in order to graduate from NCCC and qualify for the education award. 80 of those hours must be what NCCC terms ISPs or, projects/days of service which are not with a team's sponsoring organization. We've done some pretty fun things this year as ISPs as have other teams.
k
And now, finally, we're settled at our (insert drum roll) last project! Wowzers. I think i've posted enough for now but I'm going to go to watch Hercules (one of like 50 Disney movies at our housing here in Washington) with my team. I'll leave you, however, with some pictures of our beautiful location to hold you over until later this week when I can update you all on our current project. (Prepare yourself to be jealous

And one that just entertains me,


Take care all,
Walker