Its up to you

Listen up, my droogies; heres a couple orders of business.

First: i got my mailing address: all of you should send me things!

Lee Forrest
Americorps NCCC
Class XVI / Silver 6
3427 Laurel St.
McClellan, CA 95652

I'll throw it up on a permanent sidebar so you don't forget.

Second: Tomorow we leave for our first spike. Actually its more of a mini-spike, since its only 4 days long. But I'll be out of touch for the whole time. So don't feel bad...I'm not ignoring you! We'll be going to Camp Mendacino, a summer camp for lower income kids. It's about four hours north of Sacramento, in the redwood forests surrounding Fort Bragg. Look it up on Google Maps. On one hand, Im gonna be freezing my ass off, but on the other hand, it will be nice to get away from this place for a few days. Plus: redwoods!

Alright, Im off to scrounge together a Halloween costume.

Tortoise and Hare

A woman in Western Samoa has been having visions of the future. Apparently she accurately predicted the coming of the last tsunami and earthquake that struck the islands, with such details as severity and date.

She's predicted another tsunami will strike the island in the next 24 hours. So...if another tsunami strikes Samoa by tomorrow, I'll be pretty freaked out. And you guys should probably be, too.

Don't you feel small?

I noticed that all the stores around here are just named for what's inside them. Just from campus I can see "the Waffle shop," "Kitchen Furniture," "the Music Store," "Russian Restaurant," and "Delicious Burgers." Down the road a bit is "Groceries," "Cheap Cigarettes," and "Hardware."

Don't people around here have any creativity? Props to the Vietnamese place across the streeet for putting a little effort into their name.

Jokes about finding this place have already been done.

the tide rushes in

What an awesome day.

We went to downtown Sacramento for its first annual "Make a Difference Day." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a huge supporter of volunteerism, as is Sacramento's mayor Kevin Johnson, who we met today. If you recall, California is one of the worst hit states in the economic crisis, and made the news a while back when tent cities were popping up all over due to the increased homeless population.

After a spiffy ceremony in a Sacramento theater featuring Arnold's Secretary of Service and Volunteering, Karen Baker (old Arnold is the only governor so far to create a position in his cabinet for this. What a guy!) as well as the first decent coffee I've had since leaving NY, we set off for Quinn Cotteges. This is a community of low income housing for recovering homeless people. To get in, they have to show actual attempts at improving their life, and the Cotteges will help them find their way. Its a great organization and we were all excited to help them clean up their kitchens and community gardens.

Lunch break at Quinn Cotteges

Today's work was a breath of fresh air. I'm feeling homesick, and all these moronic, unnecessary training sessions were making me wonder why I even came out here. But days like this remind me of all the important work that still needs to be done, and that soon I'll be doing the work I set out here to do.

Can you find me?

How is it we are here?

Turns out, the white strands are gossamer. Its woven by orb spiders, and they leave their eggs in it. The web floats off, taking the baby spideys with it for dispersal upon landing. Great, so now we have flying baby spider balls drifting over our heads.

(Don't worry, I think the baby spiders actually leave the webs in early summer. These ones are just the leftovers. But still.)

Nap time now.

Question

OK, somebody please tell me: what the hell are these weird thick white strands I see floating randomly through the air? They are sticky and really gross if they touch you. Somebody said they are spider webs. WHAT KIND OF SPIDER MAKES WEBS THAT THICK that can also fly?? Is it Shelob? Is it Kumonga? Either way I hope they all die soon cause its kind of freaking me out.

Today, I got up at 5 in the morning for the privilege of taking a baseline physical test in the dark on wet grass. I was pleased that I was able to run the 1.5 mile test in 13 minutes and 30 seconds. Not great, but not too bad for one of the flabbiest guys on campus.

Afterwards we were treated to an 8 hour hell of a red cross training course on disaster response and shelter management. WE didn't learn a thing because the lady talked to us like we were 9 year olds. After losing the respect and interest of everyone in the room (there must have been 100 of us) I think she ended the class early because she knew that we were nearly at the point of open rebellion.

Tomorrow: another 5am fitness training (henceforth refered to as PT) and van driving lessons!

Zap

Finally getting down to the real training today. I spent 7 hours at the Red Cross getting certified in CPR, first aid, and those automatic defibrillators they have now. Its kind of intimidating, knowing that if I see someone in trouble now, its MY duty to help them until someone more experience shows up. That's a lot of responsibility!

They had room inspections today. About 95% of us failed. They want us to keep military-level cleanliness in here (it IS an old air force base, after all). I understand they were being particularly harsh for the first one in an attempt to get us into good habits early on, but I have to object to getting in trouble for having ANYthing in the garbage can. Even a single scrap of paper will get you in trouble. Do they expect us to take the garbage out every night? (They do.) That seems a bit wasteful. I thought this was an environmentally friendly program. I'll have to start a petition or something.

Anyway, off to bed with me. Tomorrow starts the hardcore early-morning fitness training. Wish me luck.

Meeting Monday

Cripes, another day full of meetings and lectures on policy and safety. Its so boring and feels like we've already been through everything at least twice. Tomorrow some of the exciting stuff begins: our first fitness training and red cross certification.

Starting this week, I'm putting myself on a strict budget, hopefully to save some money for bigger trips and end up having some left over when this is all done. I think $40 a week for spending should be enough? That should certainly force me to cut down on beer intake, as well as prevent me from eating too much of the exotic junk food around here. Did you know Wienerschnitzel is a real place? I always thought that was something TV shows used when they needed a funny name for a restaurant. But they have them here.


Oh, and by the way, the coin said "no" to the FRT. And 'm ok with that.

Lazy Sunday

Today I have a free schedule, mostly. On the first day they gave us the option to join a specialized unit called a fuel reduction team. Their job is to go through the forests and mountains, digging barrier trenches and clearing out small dry material which would fuel larger forest fires. They spend most of the time outside, have much more intense physical training, and are exempt from a few of the things other teams have to do. They also get a lot of training and certifications that would be difficult and expensive otherwise. Oh, and they also start smaller, controlled fires to prevent larger uncontrolled ones. That's pretty awesome. They have to pass the 'pack' test: carrying a 45 lb pack 3 miles in 45 minutes. It sounded pretty awesome, so I signed up.

But I started having second thoughts: the FRTs don't stray too far, since we're already so close to the biggest danger zones for fires. That mean's I'd be missing out on the opportunity to go all over the country. They spend the whole time doing the same thing, which means I wouldn't get the wide variety of experiences. They don't respond to disasters, and don't go to the gulf. I'd be missing out on a lot of stuff. So NOT doing FRT sounds pretty awesome, too. And I have to decide by 1 oclock whether or not to take the test and get locked into it.

I'm so bad with making this sort of decision. I know that whichever one I choose, I'll constantly be wondering if the other choice would have been better. That's why I'm leaving it up to fate: Time to flip a coin. That way I can't blame myself for the decision.

Rich White Folks

Today we had our first real service project in Americorps. We, by the way, refers to Pod 6: a temporary group of 12 people and a team leader that we're in for orientation until we get our real teams. We drove about 45 minutes to some gated suburb for the 55 and older crowd. We built them a community garden. It was really nice.

Laptop internet is working again so Ill be able to post pictures as soon as I stop being busy/exhausted.

I am in a new place, and have also made a new blog.

Ok, blog attempt number 3. I will try my very best to keep this one up to date. Which will be hard, because as many of you know I am now in sunny California for 10 months of service with Americorps NCCC. Its day 3 and I am only just now getting to putting this thing up. I'll try to catch up.

I had to leave my house at 4 in the morning to get a 7am flight out of LaGuardia. The bad thing about having a government agency pay for your flight is that theyll pick the cheapest one possible. After a few mishaps trying to find the right terminal, I slogged through security and made it to the plane just in time. There was a stopover in Chicago. I met up with a lot of people on that flight; it seemed to be the congregation point for everyone coming from the northeast.

The flights were smooth and had minimal delays. The whole thing took about 8 hours. I got a window seat on the plane out f Chicago. It was cloudy most of the way, but there was a break just in time to see some of the Colorado desert and the Rockeys. It was breathtaking, and Im sorry I didn't have a camera.

California is an alien landscape. Its a dry 80 degrees every day. What I have seen so far has been absolutely flat, mostly farmland, with very few trees. It will take some getting used to. But the weather is nice, and I hearing that its already snowing back home makes it even nicer.

Campus is another story. It was fromerly McClellan Air Force base, and was turned into a business park in 2001. The rooms they stuck us in make college dorms look like luxury suites. The bathroom is litereally just a toilet and a shower...not even a shelf, rack, or hook to hang your towel. And its shared by 4 guys. The sink (you know, for washing and brushing teeth) is out in the bedroom. The beds are lumpen. Theres only one lamp, and its on the opposite side of the room as me. There isnt even a desk or table. The food has been terrible. But I guess the point is that we're not going to be there that often, once projects start.

The surrounding area is a suburb of Sacremento, called the North Highlands. I haven't done any real exploring yet, but it looks like theres some OK places to hang out. Must be careful with money, though. We only get paid ~$80 a week.

So far, we have been busy getting to know our temporary teams, going to Corps-wide meetings, and filling out paperwork. The real training starts on Monday. They call it CTI (corps training institute) and it lasts for about a month until we head off to who-knows-where for six-week projects called spikes. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.

Thats it for now, I guess. Updates might be sparse for a little bit, because they're in the middle of switching over to new wireless routers, which is good because computers running Windows Vista tend to not like the one they have now. I'll upload pictures whenever I can, although I havent had an opportunity to take that many.

I miss everyone and will see you all soon!