Keeping this up to date is way harder than I thought. I am so easily distracted by all that is going on.
We just had training all week. So I have survived my first full week of training and 6 am physical training. So far am pleasantly suprised by PT (physical training). Was dreading it because I thought i'd be bored, but they mix it up enough so that i dont completely dread it.
We had a lot of training this week. That was a fight to stay awake. We also got our government cell phones, laptops and tom toms. we got our steel toe boots which we are working to break in by wearing around campus. They are tall black boots that look pretty goofy with our shorts. But they came in pretty handy on our project yesterday. (more about that below)
I also took and passed my driving test for the 15 passenger van this week. That means I can take a van out to run errands if i need to. in fact, i should start doing that so i can get comfortable driving that thing before corps members get here.
After the week of sitting in trainings, i was pretty ready to get out and do our service project for the weekend. On Friday we went out to Soil Born Farms (http://www.soilborn.org/) to prep for our project Saturday. Although you can check the website yourself, the Farm does a lot of cool stuff with organic farming and education. They even donate a lot of the food they grow. Our assignment for Saturday was to be team leaders for about 300 volunteers who would be coming to the farm on Saturday. We split up into several groups doing tasks like picking plants, planting plants, making paths, building an irrigation system and building a fence. I worked with two NCCC people, one Soil Born Farm person and 11 volunteers to begin to build a path from the farm's parking lot to front office. The project was supposed to be really quick, but when we began to dig we found a lot of roots that needed to be taken out with a pick ax. We worked for about 3 hours and although we didn't complete all the steps of the walkway, we definately saw a lot of progress. I want to get in the habit of taking before and after pictures for future projects, but i forgot this time around. Then we got lunch and helped clean up and came home to shower and crash.
So no travelling this weekend because we worked yesterday, but a bunch of us went to downtown sacramento to check out some places to hang out, so we kept busy.
Am happy for the company of another TL who likes to go to church. Went to a crazy big one today just for the experience. (http://www.baysideonline.com/) We had to take a shuttle from the parking lot (which was a school bus) and when we got dropped off we thought we were at a mall. there were a bunch of buildings with sidewalks, courtyards and fountains. The worship was contemporary with a huge stage, ridiculous light show and numerous graphics on the screen. There were literally thousands of people there in folding chairs and bleachers. I am still working on processing this, but i'll just say it was an experience. had to see it once! apparently these churches are fairly common in california. perhaps part of the cultural experience.
That's all for now!
