After School Program Getting Underway...

Well, well… it’s been a while since my last post. We’ve been doing a lot of groundwork trying to get this after school program up and running. In the last two weeks or so we’ve canvassed the local businesses to solicit people for donations and to gauge volunteer interest, gone to a middle school after school program, talked with various volunteer organizations to set up Independent Service Projects (ISPs), and tried to set up the program itself. As of now, we actually don’t have any students attending, which is a little frustrating. We’re working on trying to get into the high school to put up fliers and talk with parents about interest and logistics for the program. One of the big issues that we have to contend with is transportation. Although the high school is only 1 mile from the church, students still need to get there and many of them may not be able to get home at 6 when the program ends. One of the parents we talked to said that this might stop a lot of kids form going, because they might have to walk home by themselves after 6 when it’s dark this time of year. Not such a good idea in Inglewood.

One thing that I have enjoyed immensely is arranging ISPs (I should start an acronym glossary for you guys. We love love love acronyms in NCCC). I’ve been in contact with various organizations, including a marathon event in January, an outreach fair for housing advocacy for people living with HIV/AIDS, the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row, other churches in the New City Parish, and a few other after school program folks. I swear, if I didn’t have this new-fangled iPhone I would never be able to keep all of this straight. It’s saved my butt more than once already. It’s a pretty cool thing to be able to call up an organization, explain what we’re all about, ask about opportunities, handle logistics, schedule a date and then communicate with the sponsor to get the job done. Good training for being a Team Leader next year (maybe…).

I’m settling into AmeriCrops life better each day. I’m pretty solid friends with a few of the people on my team, and I like everyone. We of course get on each other’s nerves and there are miscommunications, but we’re all able to address them and move on pretty quickly. I’ve even adjusted to my elbows and toes pushing up against the metal frame of the cot that I sleep on each night. Let’s just say that they’re not designed for people over about 6 feet tall.

Finally, an entertainment note. Read World War Z by Max Brooks. The premise made me think that this book would be ridiculous. It’s an oral history of the zombie war written 10 years later by a UN investigator who went around collecting peoples’ stories about survival, what went wrong, what went right, and how their lives were affected by the breakdown of society and the undead. Like I said, sounds kind of ridiculous. But the author writes from the point of view of so many people from so many walks of life and political positions that you realize things about society that never would have occurred to you. He gets into human nature and makes you think: “What would I do if zombies really did overrun every major city in the world and humanity was driven almost to the point of extinction?” Also, I’m obsessed with a band called Blind Pilot (more specifically their album “Three Rounds and a Sound”). Just really good songwriting, mellow acoustic guitar, great vocals and interesting arrangements. Definitely worth a listen (Hint, Hint Dad).

Oh ya, Thanksgiving. We served a meal at Angélica Lutheran Church, which is 95% Mexican, many of them undocumented. It was a really great day, with lots of people helping out and a great turnout. We served about 400 meals and I had the opportunity to speak with a lot of people in Spanish. Plus, I got to play with this little kid whose mom seemed thankful to have someone else looking after him. I don't think either of them spoke more than a few words of English. Enjoy the cuteness:

Updates!

11/23/09
These past few days have gone by really fast. First, we’ve been dealing with some interesting changes in our living arrangements. We started out living in the “Fellowship Hall” of the church, which is a pretty big room that has a kitchen and bathroom attached to it. Aside form the challenge of have one toilet for 11 people, having to move everything onto the stage on Monday nights for karate classes, and having a door that leads directly to a shady alley, the living situation as pretty sweet. Well, all day Friday we painted the entire room, which required 2 coats and still didn’t look quite as good as we would have liked. Because of this, we stayed at the parish intern’s house, made dinner with them, and watched a movie. When we came back to the church the next morning, we found that they were using it for food distribution. In the next 30 minutes, people would be able to move around in our living quarters without us there. So, we did a quick venue change and moved into another room affectionately called “the Cave” in which we’re now living.

We spent this weekend kicking around LA and taking in some of the sites. We stopped by the La Brea Tar Pits, hung out at the Grove in Hollywood and spent Sunday at Hermosa Beach. I went for a run down the road along the beach, and it was like running through the album cover from Everything in Transit. Beautiful beach and palm trees to the left, immaculate little beach houses on the right and the mountains out in front.

Today we went to the Loyola Marymount University library to do research on after school programs. That library is shwanky. Brand new iMacs everywhere, flat screen LCDs and little computers outside of the study rooms that display the online reservation information and availability for each room. I spent most of the day posted up the study room reading over a book called “Building Effective After School Programs.” Basically, it was a review of successful and/or promising after school programs with different goals and contexts, as well as methodological advise based on various research literature and a step-by-step guideline for building a program from scratch. It seems like the most challenging parts are going to be finding facilities and qualified tutors/teachers to run the academic portion of the programming. Tuesday we’ll be doing more work along those lines and trying to develop some contacts and partnerships to get this thing going. We also have a few side projects coming down the pipe, including some work with the missions that work on Skid Row. They’re putting on an event called “Project Homeless Connect,” which is basically a fair that helps to put the 82,000 homeless people in Los Angeles in contact with the various service organization, legal advise and medical resources that are available in the area. Exciting stuff!

It’s in interesting experience having almost no privacy at all. I’m living with 10 other people that I really enjoy being with most of the time, but every once in a while alone time is very valuable. I’m finding that sitting and reading a book for 30 minutes feels like a luxury. I guess that’s part of Amerilife, and I’m managing alright so far. I’m really looking forward to having some Americorps friends over for Thanksgiving, then heading up to San Francisco for Nims’ wedding.

First Days in Inglewood

We made it to Inglewood! Green 2 rolled out of Sacramento at 6:15 AM on Monday and arrived at Chapel of Peace Lutheran Church at 2:30 in the afternoon. We started off with a quick meeting with Pastor Brian Eklund, one of the pastors that works with New City Parish, then got settled into our accommodations. We’re staying in a meeting room beneath the preschool facilities that the church rents out to a Head Start program. One of the best parts about the housing situation is that we have tons of space, and there are preschool age kids running around the playground most of the day.
 
Yesterday we had our first full day of orientation. We met with Willa the office manager, Pastor Scott Fritz and Kris, who is a seminarian and intern at the church. We talked with Pastor Brian about the history of Inglewood and the community here. Inglewood was a middle class white neighborhood until the 70s when more African-Americans moved in and most of the white residents left (white flight). Since then more and more Latinos, as well as other immigrant populations, have moved to Inglewood. There are large Belizean, San Salvadorean, Haitian and West African populations in Inglewood as well. In the afternoon we walked around the neighborhood to get a feeling for the community. Several people stopped to talk to us while we were wearing our Americorps uniforms to ask us what we were about, and some were even former Americorps members. One gentleman, named Sam, was an Americorps VISTA member and we recruited him to help troubleshoot the computer lab at the church school.
 
Today we went over to Ascension Lutheran and helped do food distribution at My Friend’s House, a home owned by the church and used for food distribution and nursing services. A bilingual nurse was available, as well as several other volunteers to distribute the food. Abby and I helped get people signed up for the Christmas Children’s Toy Drive that the church was preparing. It was amazing how many people showed up for the food. About 140 people in all showed up, and many of them arrived before 6 AM for distribution that started at 9 AM. It was great getting to talk to people about the toy drive, especially since many of the women that came through were either not comfortable speaking English, or spoke only Spanish. It gave me great satisfaction to be able to communicate with them and help them sign their children up to receive gifts, as well as helping with instructions regarding the food that they were receiving.
 
In the afternoon we went to First Lutheran (another NCP church) and helped with a community meal. Actually, we ended up being served and just eating with the people there because the women that made the food insisted on serving us. She made huge helpings of potato salad, seasoned chicken, homemade refried beans, salad and rice. After eating with the people that came, we talked with the woman who prepared the meal about another ministry that she does. Speaking in Spanish, she told us about how she came into the church and one day saw some migrant workers waiting outside of a Home Depot. She saw how desperate they were for work, and wanted to help them a bit. She started making and distributing burritos for the workers around Inglewood on Thursdays, starting off with about 55 burritos each week and working her way up to 200 burritos currently.
 
In addition to all the community orientation that we’ve been doing, we’re starting to get a better idea of what we’ll be doing and how we’re going to accomplish it. The pastor at First Lutheran Church showed us a room that a volunteer set up for an after school program that fell through when funding dried up. However we end up doing this, we have to make sure that it’s not strongly dependent on grant funding (which comes and goes), and that there is enough community interest to make it sustainable. Whether that means that our role will be to set up an infrastructure and contacts through which others can continue to develop the program or actually putting together a curriculum, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Fortunately, the pastors and staff members here have good knowledge of many of the services around us, and I’ve been able to find several after school programs that I’ll be contacting to learn more about how these kinds of programs get off the ground and how they function once they’re running. This should be interesting!

CTI Conclusion and Project

Well, I know a lot more about my project now. We were given a bunch of paperwork to fill out for our team positions and asked to prepare a briefing for the staff and Support Team Leaders (STLs)about the project. I am the Physical Training Coordinator as well as the Service Learning Initiator, so I get to plan and lead PT as well as look for and organize opportunities to learn about the community and the social issues that our team is addressing.

For our project we'll be working with New City Parish (NCP) in Inglewood, CA. NCP is a coalition of 12 parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran CHurch in America that formed after the civil unrest in 1992 relating to the Rodney King verdict. They decided to come together in order to address the underlying issues of poverty, gang violence, unemployment and racial tension that led to the violence that South Central Los Angeles experienced. They address many issues, but focus mostly on education, employment and poverty. They run after school programs for youth, raise money to pay teachers, purchase computers, run a micro-lending service, hold classes on financial management and run a food bank, among other things. Our team will be working to supplement the after school program for at-risk youth and helping at the food bank as well as fostering community involvement. The after school program is especially Important in this neighborhood because gnag violence is a serious problem, and these programs help give kids the confidence and tools to avoid gang affiliation.

With that said, I'm pretty much done with CTI. Tomorrow we have our induction ceremony and are made official members of NCCC. I'll be driving down to Inglewood with my team on Monday, and then we'll start orientation and work on Tuesday. This is going to be a very challenging project, not only because of the problems that these kids face and the mission of the project, but also because I've never lived in an inner city environment before. Hopefully I can get out there, get involved in the culture, and have a great time getting things done!

Yosemite

Yosemite was AMAZING! Dan (another CM) and I planned out the weekend and recruited a group of 13 people to head down for the weekend. On Friday night we stayed at a lodge in El Portal, which is located about 45 minutes from Camp 4 at the base of Yosemite Falls. We all loaded up and drove down around 5, so most of the driving was at night. Heading through Mariposa I got caught in a speed trap and was pulled ove. The officer asked where I was going and if I had been drinking. I gave him the right answers, and then he noticed my NCCC ID in my wallet. A moment of terror turned into a CAPping opportunity, and I gave the officer the whole rap about what Americorps NCCC is and what we were doing. After that he told me to have a nice night and sent me on my way. I love Americorps.
The next morning we got going round 8:30 and got into the campsite a little after 9. It was a first come first served kind of deal, so we had to wait around for a while to get a site as people left. When it’s 35 degrees outside, waiting around for a campsite can be interesting. We eventually got a site, got settled in, and prepared to go on our hike for the day. We settled on Upper Yosemite Falls, which is a 7 mile round trip with 2700 ft of elevation gain. We hiked a long series of switchbacks, around the base of an enormous granite cliff, then up another long series of switchbacks to reach the top of Yosemite Falls.
Although everyone was pretty tired when we got to the top, it was absolutely worth it. The view of Half Dome and the valley from the top was incredible. I’m pretty sure that my dad would have hated it, because you could look out over the ledge at a 2000 ft drop down to the valley floor with basically nothing to stop you from falling. We bouldered around up there for a while, and just sat around enjoying the cold breeze and the great views. Coming back down with all of these friends to whom I felt so close after only a few weeks was a great feeling. I think that that hike will go down as one the great experiences of my adult life.
We arrived back at camp right around sunset and started to get dinner going. Being the broke Americorps members that we are, dinner consisted of chips, salsa, goldfish and hotdogs around a fire. As the night wound down we crawled – freezing our butts off – into the tents. In the morning we got up and “mustered” (a buzzword around campus) to decide what we were going to do for the day. The consensus (another buzzword) was that we should drive to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on our way back to Sacramento. So we all caravanned out of the valley, stopping to take a picture or two at the Valley View pullout, and onward to Hetch Hetchy.
The reservoir is a pretty cool place. From the dam you can see huge granite cliffs and the trickle of waterfalls that gush during the spring and summer. Hetch Hetchy was dammed in the early 20th century to provide clean drinking water to the Bay Area. It provides 85% of the water supply for 2.4 million people in and around San Francisco, and the pipelines that move it are powered completely by gravity. After walking around for a while we headed back to the cars and began the long, windy drive home. Of course, no road trip would complete without introducing two of my fellow corps members to the glory of In-N-Out burger, even if it was in Modesto.
The trip was an overall great experience. Being able to plan and execute a trip with 13 people, having a blast hiking and camping, and getting to spend time with people that I feel so close too even though I’ve hardly known them for a month was very fulfilling. Hopefully I can look back on that weekend when I’m having a hard time in this next year and draw some strength from the enjoyment that I felt.

Day of Service 3

Today we had another Day of Service. We worked with the Sacramento Tree Foundation at a National Wildlife Refuge in Elk Grove. We removed rotten wood, cleared an area of brush about the size of a football field using a brush mower, and laid irrigation line to prepare the area for tree planting. The area is used as a stopping place by many migratory birds, and the environment used to have lots of trees near the lakes. However, with human activity and the introduction of beavers into the area, the trees around the ponds that the birds rest in have mostly disappeared. Another team is going to be coming back tomorrow to finish planting the oaks and cottonwoods that we prepared.

Project Reveal!

Last night we found out what our project is going to be! Our team will be working in Inglewood, CA with New City Parish, a coalition of nine parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), to develop and implement an after school program for kids in the inner city at three different schools. We’ll be living in our own 3 bedroom house in Inglewood and working in schools in the areas as well as in Compton. We’ll be leaving to drive down there on November 16th and ending the project on January 28th, with a break from December 18th to January 4th. As far as the project goes, that’s really all I know. We’ll be doing more research and starting to develop our plan during the next week and then leaving next Monday. It’s kind of crazy to think that CTI is almost over and that I’ll be starting my first project in a little over a week. Awesome!

Camp Mendocino

Camp Mendocino was awesome! Our team saddled up in the vans and headed out to Mendocino. After our 4 hour car drive we arrived at Camp Mendocino and unloaded our things into the open air cabins and started our unit training. We watched a movie and then got some time to talk with our Unit Leader about herself. Little did any of us know, she grew up in Mexico and the jungles of Peru because her parents were both missionaries. She told us all about her pet monkeys, growing up next to a lake in the Amazon, and about her career at Americorps.

Camp Mendocino is run by the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco and hosts 1000+ children every summer for 10 day camps. For the last 10 years, Americorps NCCC teams have been going up there during the fall to do projects that help maintain the buildings and equipment so that they can offer the camp at little or no cost. During our 4 days there we did a project clearing brush form the side of one of the access rodes, but also got to do team-building exercises, a ropes course, sit around the campfire, explore the redwood forest, and do PT at 5:30 AM two of the mornings. It was a great experience, not just because of the natural beauty of Mendocino and the service that we were able to provide, but also as a forum to get to know my teammates a little better. We’ve been together for two weeks now, and I’m starting to feel like I know them. Overall, a pretty cool trip and a nice break from trainings.

Green 2!

Quite a few things have come together in the last two or three days. On Sunday night, we were called together for dinner. We were told to sit in our pods and then everyone was given pizza ordered by the program, rather than having to cook for ourselves. Then we all got slips of paper with clues written on them. Mine said “Soggy grass in the early morning, Go there, your unit is forming.” That obviously meant the field where we have soggy stretching before PT 4 times a week at 5:30 AM. The clue there led us back toward campus, where our unit TLs jumped out of a dumpster to greet us into Green Unit. We did some “get-to-know-you” type exercises then headed back to the dorms to escape the cold.
​The next day we did a workshop called “Hands of Peace.” My expectations of the workshop, mostly form the name of the thing, was that it would be some touchy-feely lovefest that didn’t really tech us anything. As it turns out, it was the most entertaining, engaging and useful training we’ve had so far. We basically did a series of exercises in which we got to know the new members of our teams and worked on ways in which we can resolve conflicts and develop good listening skills. As simple and redundant as this sounds, I feel that I actually learned some strategies that will help keep our team together. It was also great because we finally got away from policies and NCCC program specific trainings into learning skills that will help us live in close contact with 10 other people.
​Wednesday we had diversity training, which again was much more engaging and useful than I had expected it to be. It was taught by two college professors, and much of it was right up my alley with my background in anthropology. We talked about things like culture, race, ethnicity, discrimination, etc and worked on strategies to intervene when discrimination is taking place or people are making offensive stereotypical statements. We also talked a lot about our own experiences with conflict resolution, how we were raised, and did various exercises that demonstrated how diverse a group we really were. People from all types of family structures, income and education levels, ethnicities, privilege and so forth we in this relatively small group of people. It was a great opportunity to have relative strangers opening up to each other about topics that rarely get discussed and really, actually listening to them. I’m guilty at times of hearing without listening, and it was refreshing to feel myself actually listening rather than figuring out what I was going to say next in response to their comment-in-progress.
​Today we had another workshop on projects. We discussed potential problems that we could have with sponsoring agencies and worked through some scenarios in which conflicts arose. This afternoon those of us who were eligible to drive the 15 passenger vans went out on a drive to get cleared behind the wheel. Those things are awesome. This is a little embarrassing, but with only 4 people in the van it accelerated much more quickly than my car does. Like, a lot faster. We drove all around Carmichael and Citrus Heights before heading back to North highlands and getting clearance to drive this weekend. Only one more day until Mendocino!

Week 2

Wow, this was a long week. Every day this week we had trainings from 8-5 and then made our dinners, ate and cleaned up the kitchens. This week I was certified as an American Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer, First Aid/CPR/AED, and Van Driving, and was trained in a bunch of other areas related to working for NCCC. The days are pretty long, but I'm starting to adjust to getting up at 5 or 6 and going all day. It helps a lot that the people here (both Corps Members and staff) are excited to be here and have great energy.

Yesterday we participated in Make a Difference Day in Sacramento. It's part of Mayor Kevin Johnson's initiative to increase volunteerism in Sacramento and to make it a model city in that respect for the rest of the country. At the beginning of the year he set a goal for 500,000 volunteer hours in 2009, and as of yesterday volunteers had already performed 750,000 hours this year. He has also focused a lot on addressing issues related to homelessness. The entire Corps went to a theater downtown to have a photo taken with the mayor, then we went inside to hear from several panelists about homelessness services in Sacramento.

There are about 4000 people that experience homelessness in Sacramento County every year, and at any one time there are about 2600 people without a home. Of those, only 1400 can be housed by the various shelters in the areas, while donations have fallen and demand for services has increased. We heard form the California Secretary for Volunteers and Service, and workers from Loaves and Fishes and St. John's Women's Shelter. Both of these groups do great work and help to get people the services and education they need to raise their children and to try and get back on their feet.

After the panels, we went out to our respective work projects. We were assigned to a community garden in South Sacramento that needed some work done. Although I was a little disappointed that my pod wasn't learning about homelessness or working with any of the organizations that presented at the panel, I was content to help out with a valuable community resource. Several groups were able to go to Loaves and Fishes to help organize donations and clean kitchens, while learning more about the services that they offer and how they try to meet the needs of homeless people in Sacramento.

We all have today off, but we have a mysterious meeting tonight at 7. Yesterday the TLs that were deployed to American Samoa to give relief aid returned on Friday, and we'll be going to Mendocino next weekend, so the rumor mill has reached the consensus that we'll be placed in permanent teams tonight. Either way, some time in the next week I'll know who I'm spending the next 9 months with and possibly where my first project will be! Exciting stuff.

CTI Continues: First Day of PT

A photo from this weekend for your viewing pleasure.

Wow, today was ridiculously long. My group had our first day of physical training (PT) this morning at 5:30 AM. That meant that I was up at 5 so that I could eat a snack, make my bed, clean the room up, and be on the field ready to go at 5:30. My body doesn't normally do that. We did a warm up and stretch, then started into the testing: pushups, situps, a 1.5 mile run and a sit-and-reach test. I actually did better than I expected in all of these categories, and after the testing I had a whole 45 minutes to shower, get breakfast, make my lunch for the day, then meet up with my group to start the rest of the day. Oh, and I share a kitchen that's about 15 feet wide with 25 other people. It takes a while to get food prepared.

Our training for today was the American Red Cross Disaster Relief course. I was really excited about this to start off with because it's a really important part of the disaster relief that NCCC does. The course was being taught by a 19 year old tech guy who has worked for ARC for some time and has a bunch of certifications already. If he hadn't said anything I would have guessed that he was 25 form the way he handled the class of 150 and the lecture. Unfortunately, the training lasted from 9 AM to 4:30 PM with an hour break for lunch, and involved videos and lots of him reading off of a sheet. Several times people around me fell asleep, and the Team Leaders (TLs) had to lead us in "energizers" to keep interest. Overall, I think I learned a lot about how the Red Cross functions and about what to expect if one of my projects is responding to a disaster.

Afterwards we had focus group that consisted of a representative from each pod (22 in all) talking with one of the program coordinators about how the trainings have been so far. The meeting was a little frustrating because we got off topic a lot, and at times simply complained about things rather than offering suggestions or ideas about how to improve the situations. BY the end of it I was exhausted and ready to go to dinner. One thing that kept me going is that I knew the Red Cross training was good for life, and that tomorrow couldn't possibly be as long or difficult as today was. First Aid/CPR tomorrow! Also, I get to find out if I have tuberculosis! (Wish me luck).

First Service Project

Yesterday we had our very first service project for the year. Thursday and Friday we spent most of the day in meetings about policies, how to program runs, and what to expect in the next 4 weeks of training, so it was great to get outdoors ad start working in the community.

My group started our day off at an elementary school called PS 7 in southern Sacramento. They are a new charter school that's about 95% African-American and has been performing very well compared to other elementary schools in the area over the last few years. As part of Sacramento Community Gardens Day we were helping to prepare their garden for the year. We arrived to find an area of about 4000 square feet full of weeds and dead plants from the previous year's garden. We pulled out all of the old vegetation and put it into compost bins, then tilled the ground with shovels and rakes to get in ready for planting in the coming weeks. It took the 13 of us about 3 hours to complete everything, but it was a great feeling to know that we were helping. A lot of these kids are from very low-income families and don't get proper nutrition. There aren't any god grocery stores in their neighborhood and much of what they eat is frozen or fast food. The idea of the garden is both to show them that they can grow their own food, and to provide families with fresh produce that they grew themselves. It was a great project, and the teacher we were working with had (in my opinion) a great perspective on education and what needs to be done for his kids.

Our afternoon project was at Destiny Church, near Consumnes River College. After lunch we arrived to find a big field covered in low, dead grass and lots of vegetation around the fences. The idea was to remove as much vegetation as possible in order to help them get a community garden going. The soil was actually very good, but was unusable because of how many weeds there were. We got at the weeds with rakes, looking a lot like a chain gang. My Cool Hand Luke jokes didn't really catch on though. After a rousing rendition of American Pie (someone else knew all the words!) some of us moved onto weeding along a fence and found some disgusting insects. I have no idea what these things were, but they were huge, slimy, had long legs, and were terrified of us. The elderly lady directing us told us they called them "ugly bugs." Cute. After sweating in the sun for 3 hours we finished up and they gave us muffins, bagels, orange slices, grapes and juice. It felt like halftime at a recreational soccer game.

Also, because I'm from Sacramento I was nominated to be the "Safety Officer" for the day, which basically meant I got to wear a nifty orange vest, help the driver back up the van, and give directions while we were driving. Best of all, I got to control the AC and music. You guys all know how much I like that.

We arrived back at McClellan and I ran inside to get showered and changed to make it to Emily's wedding in Sacramento. Emily and Jon's ceremony and reception were both beautiful, and I'm very happy that I was able to make it to witness them promising themselves to each other. I wish them many long years of happiness and adventure together. I love you guys!

Day 2

2 down, about 270 to go. Today the Corps was split into three groups. One went on a service project around Sacramento planting trees and doing various garden-related projects, one had physicals and then the rest of the day free, and my group spent 8-5 in lectures on policy, safety, awards, physical training (PT) and several other things. 8 hours sitting in a dark room watching powerpoint slideshows. Ugh. What that means though is that tomorrow we get to go on a project and we have Sunday off. Tired, but having a great time!

In-Processing!

Well, I made it here alright. It turns out that I probably had the shortest drive to get to the campus. Whereas there are people that drove from Minnesota (one guy in only 2 days), Massachusetts, Florida, Ohio and several other places, I drove 20 minutes to get here.

The morning began with 20 people sitting in a conference room waiting to start the in-processing, which basically involved handing over all of our ID documents, getting pictures taken, and getting all of our issued gear. Which is sweet. $100 steel-toed work boots baby! After we finished with our stuff, we were basically free for the rest of the day as more people were picked up from the airport and began to trickle through check-in.

After an afternoon of getting to know people and unpacking we got together for out first meal, which was some tasty (but for some reason controversial) lasagna and BBQ chicken. After dinner the 21 year old crew headed over to the infamous Harvey's Tavern. Apparently the bars had to be divided up between the Corps Members and the Team Leaders in some way, so they took the nice hotel bar and we got the dive. Fine by me. We showed up and there were a few people already there, along with some old, fun, and heavily intoxicated locals. The bar only serves beer, but they've got $3 pints of anything, and there were old autographed Americorps t-shirts hanging from the ceiling. The only weird part of the night was leaving the bar at 10 PM, and having everyone be OK with that. When you have to get up at 6 AM the next morning you tend to peace out early.

Today we got up bright and early for breakfast then met up with our "Pods" in the morning drizzle. Several of the Team Leaders (TLs from here on out - get used to acronyms) were called over to American Samoa to do relief work and won't be back from a few more days, so we're in temporary groups for training. We had a long community meeting in which they told us about Americorps' Mission (Get things done!) and showed us a few skits about how to wear our uniforms and why we should wear our safety equipment. Basically - follow the rules and you'll live. Speaking of staying alive, we had an hour dedicated to being safe in North Highlands. It's a nice neighborhood. A real estate agent might describe it as "up and coming."

During thr afternoon we had a lot of spare time while some people were doing more paperwork, so a few (very few) of us went on a run around campus to check things out. After some more paperwork we were released for dinner. Speed meeting tonight! Hopefully my next post will actually contain some information about the program itself and the training we're doing. Good news