Ray

Ray, a great guy and amazing asset to the Bryn Mawr Athletics Program, passed away last Friday. I went to two memorial services today for Ray, and learned a lot about him that I didn't know. From his physical appearance, I assumed he was an athlete at some point in his life. He was extremely tall and muscular, at least 6'3 and 250 pounds. During high school he was the star of both the baseball and basketball teams, and was offered a contract with the Chicago Cubs as well as a full scholarship to Temple University for basketball. He ultimately chose basketball at Temple, which is lucky for Bryn Mawr, because he probably wouldn't have ended up there had he gone to Chicago. Ray was a giant compared to most people on Bryn Mawr's campus, but he was a gentle giant. He was soft-spoken and always had something encouraging to say. He never missed a home event at Bryn Mawr. He was always there, standing stoically on the sidelines of every soccer game I played. I always saw him on the field, checking things out as I walked to the gym an hour and a half before games started. His greeting to every person he saw was "Hey, Bud."

One of the two services today was a Quaker Meeting style memorial service, where people stood up and told their stories of Ray. One girl talked about how much she didn't like being at Bryn Mawr because she was homesick all the time. She talked about how eventually, through playing field hockey, and lifting weights under the guidance of Ray in the off season, the gym became the place where she felt most at home on the Bryn Mawr campus. It wasn't the dorms or her major department. It was the gym, with Ray and all the coaches. I never thought about it before, but that is exactly how I felt at Bryn Mawr, and how I still feel. I've walked into the gym a handful of times since graduating, and I always feel at ease there. I know I'll see familiar friendly faces, and I know I will really miss Ray's being one of them.

Ray dedicated the later part of his life to making people, especially women at Bryn Mawr, physically stronger. He pushed our bodies to the limits, but not beyond what he knew we could do. He cared so immensely about each person in that gym or on those fields, that it's almost hard to believe. He had to undergo a double knee replacement a couple of months ago, and complications from that kept him without the use of his legs for longer than he or anyone else expected. The complications meant was no longer able to do the one thing he seemingly loved most in life, which was being a part of Bryn Mawr Athletics. Unfortunately, this frustration turned into depression, which ultimately led Ray to decide life wasn't worth living anymore.

I wish Ray could have known how much he meant to all of us. I wish there was something we could have done, an extra step we could have taken. I will always remember him as that big friendly giant in the gym and on the soccer field, with a huge smile and a "Hey Bud!". He will hold a place in all hearts who had the honor of knowing him.

Strange Happenings

So the other day I was walking down the street to a beer store (yes, in Pennsylvania you can only buy beer at designated stores). This store is only two blocks from my apartment, but I saw two significantly strange things on my walk.

The first was a tiny little snake wriggling down the sidewalk. It couldn't have been more than a couple inches long, and at first I thought it was a garter snake, but I am pretty sure those are black. I might be wrong. This snake was tan or light yellow (it was pretty dark outside). I tried to guide it to the side of the sidewalk where there was grass in hopes that it wouldn't get stepped on, but I don't know if it made it. Hopefully he/she is out there somewhere, and doesn't grow much bigger.

The second thing I saw was a trolley hit a car. I was standing on the corner, waiting for Jess to pick me up on her way back from work so we could go to a friend's house, when I heard a loud bang/crunch. I looked over and the trolley was stopped, and as I crossed the street to the other side, I realized there was a car smashed up against the trolley. I guess the car was pulling out of a spot on the side of the street and the trolley crashed into it. I am not sure whose fault it was, but neither vehicle could have been going more than 10 miles per hour. The driver's door though, was completely stuck closed though, because it was up against the side of the trolley. No one was seriously injured. I felt bad for everyone riding on the trolley though because they all had to get off, and no other trolley was going to be coming anytime soon because the tracks were now blocked off with this accident. Bummer.

That is all I have to report from the block at 48th and Chester. More to come.

the commercial lies

You may remember a commercial, probably for visa, where everyone is in a cafeteria line and there's music playing in rhythm with each customer paying for their meal with their debit card. Then one person pulls out cash and the music comes to a screeching halt, and the person is bascially shunned because they ruined the fast paced rhythm of the check-out line.

I think of this commercial all the time when I am working at the cafe because it is actually the exact opposite. When I have a line out the door and am working at the register, I hate to see someone pull our their credit card. This means sliding the card, waiting for the receipts to print, giving them the receipt to sign, waiting for them to decide if they're going to tip me or not, signing it, them handing it back and waiting for the register to finalize the transaction. All this in the time I could have had 3 customers pay with cash and move on. Also if the card is old and the machine won't read the strip, I have to type in the card number manually.

So. If you have the cash, I say use it. Don't be fooled by that commercial. It's for people who want to make themselves feel better for holding up lines with their credit cards.

The little visitor

Today at work I was in the middle of a transaction at the cash register and I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked to my left, and scurrying across the floor was a tiny brown mouse. I was holing the money the woman getting coffee across the register from me had just given me but in the midst of trying not to freak out about the mouse, I totally lost concentration of what I was doing. I used all the focus I had to get her the right change and have her leave the counter. When my flamboyantly gay (and awesome) shift leader came back from wherever he was I let him know about our little visitor. He said he would call the owner and let him know.

A few minutes later we were helping more customers when I hear my shift leader say "Oh my god" under his breath. I looked over and the mouse was right at the edge of where behind the counter becomes the public seating area...just teetering on the edge of remaining a secret and becoming a public health code violation. I tried to keep a straight face as we worked through the line of customers. Then the little guy crawled under the refrigerated case where we keep soda, juice, water etc. Another girl who was working took the top of a plastic "clamshell" salad to-go container to try and trap the mouse when he came out from his hiding spot and I got the broom and dustpan in case he came my way. Needless to say, he really liked that spot and stayed there for a while.

Later in the night, my shift leader and I were standing at the espresso/sandwich end of the bar (farthest away from the soda/water/juice cooler) and the mouse came crawling back towards us, distracted by all the little bits of food on the ground. My shift leader and I both froze, knowing we had to trap him (or her) but not knowing how. I said "quick! give me something to put over it!" and the first thing he handed me was a big metal salad-tossing bowl, which i promptly covered the mouse with. My shift leader then ran to the back and got a much-too-large-for-a-mouse sized box. We slid the box under the bowl until the little mouse's tail was sticking out from the bowl, which was mostly in the box. then I pulled out the bowl with salad-tossing tongs and closed the box, and carried it outside to the dumpter. I could feel him scurrying around inside the box as I carried it, but then when I put it in the dumpster and opened it, he just sat there in the corner of the box. He was so tiny (smaller than a golf ball) and his heart was beating so fast, he must have been terrified. I left him in the box (hoping he'd find some good stuff to eat in the dumpster), and bid him farewell.

Mouse problem solved. For now.


Another highlight of the day included a man coming in as we were closing and asking for a scone. We told him we were closed, and he said, "I really need it, It's my birthday you can keep the change," and handed us ten dollars and walked out the door. My shift leader gave himself and me $5 each and let him have the scone "for free".

In other, more serious news, someone at the store got their purse stolen tonight. It's the third time it's happened there since I started working and the 5th time it's happened in the last month or so. Apparently it's some woman who comes in and just looks around or sits down for a while and then walks out and grabs things on the way. No good at all.

That's all for my adventures in coffee-land today. Mr (or Ms.) mouse definitely stole the show!

It's always (almost never) sunny in Philadelphia!

So I recently moved to Philadelphia, into a one bedroom apartment with my girlfriend. We live on a quiet street in West Philly in an old Victorian that has been converted into apartments. I was starting to feel pretty hopeless about getting a job, and then all of the sudden, I landed two in one day. I am working at a cafe in Rittenhouse Sq. during the morning/early afternoon and then rushing off to Drexel Hill to coach soccer at a Catholic School there. During the end of September and the month of October I am mostly working twelve-hour days between the two jobs, but so far both are going well. I am the head coach of the "jjv" team which consists of 3rd and 4th graders-mostly boys. I am the assistant/goalie coach for jv (5th and 6th grade) and varsity (7th and 8th grade). I am also volunteer-coaching a 7 and 8 year old soccer team on Saturday mornings at Clark Park, near my apartment.

I wanted to start keeping a blog again because I see and hear so many funny and interesting things every day. Here are some from the past week or two that have been memorable.

1) I was sitting on the trolley home from work when a very young looking girl got on with her infant daughter. The baby was sleeping, so she draped her over her knees and opened up a binder on the babies back to do some studying. I looked over her shoulder and the reading material was on emergency contraception.

2) On my first day of coaching Clark Park soccer (7 and 8 year olds) we were scrimmaging at the end of practice. I had a little boy named Dayvon playing defense. I said "Dayvon, are you excited" and he said "yes." I said "I think our team is gonna win, I can feel it!" He paused for a second and said "I can feel it too." Then he paused for another minute and looked up at me and said "Ya'll got bats?" I said "no...do you mean like baseball bats?" to which he replied a simple and innocent "yeah". I said "You want to use a baseball bat to play defense?", and he looked up at me and said "yeah" like it was the most casual thing in the world. I tried not to laugh as a explained to him that we can't use bats in soccer.

3) I was on the trolley home and had waited 45 minutes to get on this particular car because there was some breakdown that prevented any trolleys from coming for a long time. The car was PACKED and I was cranky because I was going to have to rush to soccer practice, and I had planned on using the spare half hour I thought I'd have to plan practice. As we pulled into one of the stations, there was a group of kids who looked like they were coming back from a field trip. I recognized one of them as Lilly, a girl from the Clark Park team I coach. I figured she wouldn't recognize me on a crowded trolly, out of the context of soccer, and after only one practice, but hey eyes lit up and she started frantically waving. I saw her say to the person next to her "That's my soccer coach!" Then she turned to me and made sure to enunciate "Hi Sarah!!", all while keeping her hand waving at me wildly. It was so cute, and made the whole wait for the trolley completely worth it.

More to come from my adventures in Philadelphia...

Mississippi!

So Mississippi isn’t anything I expected. My team is living in two houses on the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge in Brooksville, MS. When we first walked into what is the girls’ “bunk house” we couldn’t believe it. This is by far, the best project housing any of us have had, and is probably as close to the polar opposite of sharing a hotel room with 3 other people (first project), that we could get. We’re living in a spacious two-bedroom house with large bathrooms, closets, and counter space. We have a free washer and dryer in our house. We also have a large porch with a hammock and we are a 50-yard walk to the lake. The only downside is not having internet and having to drive 30 minutes to town to get it, but I’ll sacrifice that for two months of this.
We are right in the middle of the woods, and there are tons of animals everywhere. On our first day here we saw a bald eagle, a box turtle, a cotton mouth snake, a glass lizard (legless lizard), deer, tons of birds, two very large alligators, and lots and lots of bugs. Between the eight of us, we’ve probably pulled 30 ticks off of us in two days of work so far. I also had the pleasure of getting bitten by 10 or so fire ants today, which is a lot more painful than I expected it to be.
The first day of work (Friday) we were doing boundary marking, so we were scraping and painting yellow strips on trees every tenth of a mile along the boundary of the refuge. After Friday we had a three-day weekend during which we spent a lot of time hiking and canoeing as well as catching up on tv and movie watching. I also started and finished the book “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson, which was excellent and made me want to hike the Appalachian Trail.
Tuesday we were removing pine trees from a field, which took the seven of us (Avery is at home for a couple days) from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm. We cut the trees down with bow saws and loppers, but the brush was so thick (mostly with pricker bushes) that it was really hard to move around. We would walk from one end of the field to the other in rows, and the brush was so thick and the trees were so tall, we couldn’t tell how close we were to either end. It was always a surprise to come out to the light on the other side. There was also anywhere from an inch to 5 inches of water on the ground which made it extremely hard to move in some places. In the morning it was very hot and humid. After lunch though, it rained which we all thought was great until it stopped and our clothes weighed twice as much and there was even more water on the ground. The second day of doing the same job was pretty similar, except it was hotter, more humid and more pine trees. I also got my boots stuck in the mud as I was walking and fell flat on my stomach in the mud. After lunch, we were down to 6 people because Eddie had been stung by bees and is allergic. People started getting really nauseous and head-achey so Mike decided to end the day early and let people (Joe looked like he was in especially bad shape) rest. They were extremely exhausting days and I am covered in scratches and fire ant bites all over my arms and legs, but it felt satisfying to be that tired at the end of the day.
I think this is going to be a good project for our last one in Americorps. We’re in a beautiful place and we have really great supervisors. I am ready to be done and close to the people I love again, but I’m glad I get to do something like this before I go.

Good ol' southern sexism

I love it down here. I love our project, I love the weather, I love the food. One thing that I can't seem to get used to is the sexism. I am constantly hearing our supervisors ask for some guys to come over and move this or that. "I'm gonna need...Mike, Joe, and David to move that scaffolding over there." What? I admit that many some may have more upper body strength than some women, but there isn't anything on this job site that I can't lift with a minimum of one other person. I've stood on the worksite and listened to supervisors and other older male volunteers talk about being married to women and how much it sucks and how
"all a woman is good for is...". I've heard them make sexual jokes about women. I've heard one supervisor (Tony) who constantly talks about how he raised 6 daughters, talk about how he brings his 11 year old twins out when he drinks, because they are "chick magnets". One day at lunch after we spent the morning hammering in a subfloor, we had lunch delivered by Olive Garden and one of the older men said "which one of you women cooked this up". A few of the women on our team were offended by this, and were talking about it later. The two guys on our team said "Well, it is a compliment, it was good food!". Grrrrr.

Today Tony was sending Erin and Anna to the warehouse to move some things and he called over to another supervisor and said "you don't have anything too heavy over there right? for these girls?" I actually thought he was being sarcastic, but he wasn't. Luckily, Erin spoke up and said "what is that supposed to mean?" Tony got all defensive and said he just meant that sometimes there were things that girls couldn't lift. Erin informed him that she could lift anything a guy could lift. He said "don't take it personally", and she responded with "well I am taking it personally", which is exactly what I was thinking in my head. Then she told him he shouldn't generalize like that, to which he responded that he wasn't generalizing, blah blah blah. So basically, Erin is my hero of the day, and I can't wait til I am back in a place where women are capable human beings and not just blobs that cook and clean and pop out babies. I thought about what would happen if the women on our team went on strike for a day, leaving a team of three guys to do all the work. It would be interesting to see how much got done then.

shim shimminy

This past weekend the team went to New Orleans because Anna had to fly out Saturday afternoon to North Dakota, and Joe flew out Sunday morning. Erin had some points of some kind and was able to get a free room at the Sheraton, so we split the cost of another room and stayed there, which was pretty nice. The only thing that wasn't nice, was almost getting trapped in an elevator that would go up a few inches, then slam...then go up a few inches, then slam. So when we finally got the doors open we had to step down about 6 inches to the floor. I was very close to living one of my worst fears...being stuck in a small elevator with 9 other people. We spent Saturday walking around the French quarter, the French Market, and Frenchman street....all things French. We went to dinner on Frenchman, met up with some other Americorps people who are working in New Orleans, and went up to Bourbon street, where we drank a lot of alcohol and ran around collecting beads and doing other crazy things. On Sunday we spent the morning in Audobon (sp?) park eating a picnic breakfast and listening to the extremely loud and annoying songs blaring from the "celebration of the young child" festival happening there...songs about how safety is fun and so is cleaning. Yeah! After that we explored Magazine Street, then called it a day. When we got back from New Orleans, we saw one of our windows was off the frame, and thought someone had broken in. We ran in to check if our laptops were there, and everything was accounted for. I noticed also that the freezer door was open, which I thought was weird, but thought maybe one of us hadn't closed it all the way when we left. Later that evening, one of the girls in the neighborhood told us that some kids had broken into our house and stolen lollipops and eaten all of our ice cream. The lollipops and most of the ice cream were indeed gone, which accounts for the freezer being open. This is the second time we've been broken into; the time before this a kid was steeling granola bars. Weird.

On Monday, Erin and I went with Lyh, one of the Habitat Americorps guys, to Galliano to work on a house there. Lyh's dad is in town, who is a very cute older Chinese man with a great sense of humor, so he came along too. We spent the day installing cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom. To install a cabinet, you first have to center it wherever it's going, then put shims under it until it's level, then cut out holes in the back for any piping that needs to go through it (if it's a sink cabinet), then screw it in. Whenever we were putting shims under the cabinets, Erin and I couldn't stop ourselves from singing "shim shimminy shim shimminy shim shim sharoo". On the way home from Galliano, I saw an alligator! I couldn't believe it. It was one of my goals for this project : ) We got home around 4:30 and played basketball 3v3 for PT. Then I made dinner, we ate it, and now here I am!

That's all I've got for now. More adventures on the bayou to come...

on the bayou

We've had some interesting adventures the past couple of days. On Monday evening we went to an "informal cajun jam session", which turned out to be a bunch of people on a stage playing music...informally. One woman sang "when the saints go marching in" while the musicians all played, and the woman on the washboard came down into the audience and marched our team through the seats, onto and off of the stage, and all around the auditorium. At one point they were asking where we were from (we are very clearly not from around "here", pretty much everywhere we go) and they asked if anyone on our team sang/played. We pointed Anna out, and they invited her up on stage, where the guy who was singing the songs at that moment proceeded to call her Loretta Lynn for the next half hour she was up there. She did a great job. I came down to Louisiana with the intention of buying and learning how to play a harmonica. One of the guys in the informal band inspired me to do that even more, so I went ahead and bought one this week and am working on my harmonica skills, mostly while sitting on our front porch.

We've been having some pretty great food for dinner. Because of the weather, we can grill so we did that one night. One night we had catfish soaked in hot sauce and breaded and fried...that was delicious. Erin and I made some pretty good stir fry one night (if I do say so myself). Our lunches are provided every day also, but Habitat via local food establishments that donate.

Work has been a little slow, because there are so many college volunteers here, so the boss people mostly focus on keeping them busy while we do some side jobs. One cool thing though, is that we've learned how to measure, cut, and install base trim inside the house. While it doesn't seem like it would be very difficult, it has proved to be pretty challenging. Depending on the location of the corner, you have to cut the pieces of trim at one of four different angles (a butt, a cope, a 45, or a 31.6). Then you have to cut the other piece at another one of those 4 angles to fit in with that one. After you cut the trim at an angle, you have to use a coping saw or a jig saw to carve out the angle from the wood so it will fit into the other piece. Even a 16th of an inch off means they won't fit together, which is okay if you made it a 16th of an inch too long, but not ok if you made it a 16th of an inch too short. We've gotten pretty good at it though, and it's cool to know that our team alone has done the trim in two houses so far.

Today I got to go with one of the site supervisors and a couple other guys to a town called Galliano, which is about an hour southeast of where we are now. They're working on some houses down there. Today, Joe and I built a 5 foot high platform for an air conditioner to sit on. I know it sounds easy (when our supervisor told me in the car on the way there, I was like "yeah no problem") but it took us all day. It was also at least 90 degrees, and very humid, which made for a lovely working environment. We had to measure and cut 16 2x4's to make this thing, and then use a crazy big nail gun to put everything together. This nail gun was the size of my arm, and when you push the safety in, it fires nails rapid fire until you pull it back out. It was intense. Neither Joe or I are expert carpenters, so it took us quite a while to figure out the best way to do things on our own. We were also building this platform on a very uneven and slanted slab of concrete next to the house, so each leg ultimately had to be a different length so that the top of the platform would be level. That was the hardest part for sure. In the last 10 minutes of the day though, we actually got it to where everything was level, and it made the whole day totally worth it. It felt good to work and sweat all day : )

Two or more Americorps members from every team are getting sent on disaster to North Dakota to help with the flooding. On every team, each team member is ranked for disaster and usually the top two are sent. Joe and Anna are heading to North Dakota on Saturday morning for three weeks or more, which is pretty exciting for them. I'm going to miss Joe a lot.

Well I think that's all my news for now...as always, I'll write again when something exciting happens.

An awesome weekend

On Friday after work, a few of us went out to explore the bars of Thibodaux. We didn't find much. The first place we went to was called "The Red Goose". We walked in to an empty room except for the people sitting at the bar who proceeded to stare at us the entire time we were there. We stood at the bar for a while before the bartender came over. This was the conversation that ensued:

me: "hi, do you have any specials tonight?"
bartender: "no"
me: "do you have any beers on tap?"
bartender: "no"
me: "do you take credit cards?"
bartender: "no"

So, we each had a drink and continued our bar hopping. The next place we went to was much more lively, took credit cards, had beer on tap, etc. It was pretty fun. We were all pretty exhausted from work though so we left around 10 (before the bar we were originally going to go to even opened), and went back to the house and went to bed.

On Saturday the plan was to go to the beach as a team. We had to go grocery shopping in the morning though, which took much longer than expected, so by the time we got back it was already 12:45. We decided to go to the beach anyway, until we found out it was 2 hours away instead of 1, so we decided to go Sunday instead. We ended up just laying around outside and in the house Saturday afternoon. Around 4pm, I walked over to a couple who has their RV parked at the end of the street, and asked them if I could borrow one of their bikes they had outside of the RV. They let me use it, so I got to ride 3 or 4 miles outside of our neighborhood and explore. The land out here is really pretty, and I love and miss riding my bike, so it was a great time. When I got back, a kid in our neighborhood was throwing a barbecue, so I went to that. This kid is in 7th grade, but looks like he could be 16 or 17. He's really sweet. Apparently he wanted to throw a bbq for the volunteers, so he bought all the hot dogs himself, and other people pitched in hamburgers, baked beans, chips, and s'more stuff. It was a really great time. It was about 6 adults from the neighborhood, and the nine of us, and then about 8 neighborhood kids all sitting around a fire and eating and talking. We hung out there until it was dark, and then headed back (10 yards) to our house. Around 9 the whole team went out to a Cajun bar and "lounge" that Joe found in the paper saying it had live music. We walked in to a shotty looking cover band and an empty dance floor with a lot of older people sitting around. I was kind of nervous at first, but it turned out to be a really awesome night. The dance floor and bar filled up pretty quickly, and the band picked up and played some really great covers. We spent the night dancing and laughing and had a genuinely great time. We left the bar around 12:30 and sang at the top of our lungs the whole way home. A few times, as everyone was singing and dancing in the car, I just broke out into a huge smile because instead of all fighting and yelling (which is what happened on my old team anytime we were in the van), everyone was happy and singing, and it was the perfect ending to a great night. Actually, an even better ending was that Erin made us all quesadillas when we got home.

In the morning, we headed to the beach. It took about 2 hours to get there, but we drove through the very southern parts of Louisiana where it is mostly water and fishing boats, so that was really cool to see. We got to the beach around 12:30. The water was warm and very shallow and the sand was really fine and felt good on my toes (maybe a first in my life). The only thing was, it was extremely windy so when I laid out on my towel, I constantly had sand in my eyes and in my teeth if I opened my mouth. We had a good time though. Mike and Joe dug a hole (because, as they explained to me, that's what boys do), and i took a long walk on the beach and found some cool shells. We left the beach around 3:30 and drove home, showered, and ate dinner. Tomorrow it's back to work, but I don't even mind after such a wonderful weekend : )

here is a link to the pictures I put up from this weekend:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029557&id=10300564&l=12b42fd1cc

here is a link to the pictures I took on the way down to Thibodaux:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029508&id=10300564&l=ea5c5b86f2

Thibodaux, no Gray, Louisiana

So it turns out we are actually staying in a town called Gray, which is right next to Thibodaux. We pulled up to our house on Bon Jovi Blvd yesterday afternoon. We are living in a neighborhood of all Habitat houses, and we're staying in a couple houses designated to volunteers. The issue right now is that there are all these college kids down here on spring break, so instead of sharing a 4 bedroom house with 9 people, we're sharing it with 18 people. I am currently sleeping on a mat on a concrete floor, which made me feel like I had been beaten last night when I woke up this morning. I think people are starting to leave tonight and Friday though, so hopefully we'll all be in beds in the next couple of days.

I am currently on my lunch break at my first day of work. So far we've put up some storm doors and measured pipes under a house for insulation. I think after lunch we're going to actually put the insulation on the pipes. The weather is pretty hot and humid, which is definitely a change from Denver, especially the humidity. I think it's actually about the same temperature as it was there, but that moisture in the air makes a big difference. On the bright side, it's much easier to breathe here at sea level than it was up there. Well I'm going to get back to work, but I'll write more when something happens!

Tyler, Texas

We started the day off in Amarillo at 8, and got to Tyler around 5pm. The hotel we left this morning had a Texas shaped waffle iron, which was a big hit at breakfast for some members of my team. We drove pretty much all day...stopping for an extremely windy picnic lunch on the side of the road where we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When we got to Tyler, my friend Erin and I went for a run along side of the highway, which was really hot. The hotel we are staying in is absolutely amazing. I think my team leader splurged a little bit. It is one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in...really nice beds and bathroom, it is very refreshing compared to the hotels I am used to staying in for Americorps. We went across the parking lot to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, which was really delicious, AND they had free soft serve ice cream on the way out : )

The team is still really great. I realized today that I haven't felt really angry or stressed out since I've been on this team, which is how I feel a lot on my permanent team. I was talking to other people on the team and they are saying the same thing, that this team is such a change from their old teams, and that it's a really good change. I feel really good about this project, I think it's going to be great. We get to our house in Thibodaux tomorrow in the early afternoon. I can't wait to see it!

back in Amarillo

Here I am, back in Amarillo, a town I never really wanted to see again after driving back and forth to Austin. My team is on our way to Thibodaux, Louisiana, but we won't be there until Wednesday afternoon. Tomorrow we're driving most of the way through Texas and sleeping somewhere near Tyler. This round of projects, all the teams have been shuffled around, so no one is with their normal permanent team, and we will go back to those permanent teams fourth round.
My team is pretty awesome. The majority of us are 21 or over, which is a big change from my permanent team. There is no one on the team so far that is loud or overly attention seeking, which is the biggest change from my permanent team. I was sitting in the van today and noticed that no one was talking...or screaming...and it was so amazing to just hear nothing. I couldn't believe it. I think I am going to like this round, although I will miss some people from my permanent team definitely.
I am really excited for this project and my team I will try to keep up with writing more this round, which might be easier because we are living in a house with wireless internet! Until next time....

Jackson Hole

On Friday afternoon after school got out, SJ, Joe, Ruthie and I drove to Jackson, Wyoming. It took about 9 hours between the rush hour traffic we hit coming out of Denver and the out of nowhere squall we drove through in Wyoming about 3 hours into the drive. All of the sudden snow was blowing directly at us and we couldn't see anything. Ruthie was driving though, and she got us through it. We also got pulled over for speeding by a Wyoming cop who was the nicest cop I've ever encountered and let SJ get away with a warning.
We got to Jackson at 2:30 in the morning and went to Ruthie's brother's house where we slept on couches and the floor. In the morning I walked outside to a freezing but beautiful morning. The mountains out there are absolutely breath taking. We met up with Ruthie's brother and got to the mountain around 10am. It was Ruthie and my first time skiing, so Oliver (Ruthie's brother) agreed to hang out with us and teach us while Joe went out by himself for the first part of the day. We got our rentals for free (well, for a pizza and beer for the rental guys) and our lift tickets for half off, because Ollie works at the mountain and knows everyone there. I was told that this is the ski mountain of all ski mountains in the U.S. and that if I could ski this mountain I could ski anything. That didn't make me feel too confident. Once we got all outfitted, Ollie took us to the lift line. I thought we would take baby steps and do some lift-less bunny hill, but no. Skiing was a lot easier than I thought it would be though, and I made it down the trail without falling, and it was fun! Throughout the day I probably went down 8 times, and had a blast. Joe and Ollie went off to bigger and better trails, while Ruthie and I perfected the lowest trail. At the end of the day, all four of us went up to the very top of the mountain in a tram that held 100 people. My ears were popping the whole way up (about 10,000 feet in addition to the 7,000 or so we were already at). Ollie convinced Ruthie to ski back down, but I knew it wasn't a good idea for my "level" and took the tram back down. It turned out to be a good thing, because Ruthie ended up coming down in a sled after she was too slow coming down, according to the ski patrol. I was proud of her for trying though, I was way too scared.On Saturday night we went to a local hockey game where people get really drunk and roudy. The Jackson Moose beat whoever they were playing 8-3.
On Sunday we drove around Grand Teton National Park and saw the Elk Refuge, which was really cool. We also ate at Bubba's Barbecue for breakfast, which was pretty tasty. We made it back to Denver in about 9 hours again, because we hit the worst fog I have ever seen (again while Ruthie was driving), but we persevered once again. We also saw a moose on the way home, which was one of my life goals! It was awesome. I am really glad we went...it was an incredible experience. I definitely recommend Jackson to anyone.

Here is a link to some of the pictures I took while I was there:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028642&id=10300564&l=71d73

El dia de cien

So the 100th day is a pretty big deal in elementary school. I don't remember anything about a 100th day, but both my kindergarten and first grade classes had big celebrations for it. In kindergarten, the class had a contract with the teacher that if each of them could count from "uno hasta cien" (one to one hundred), the teacher would buy them pizza. Each kid came up to the front of the class to the number chart and counted all the way from one to one hundred, and sure enough, at the end of the day they got their pizza party. A lot of them brought in projects they had made at home out of 100 things. My favorite was a box a boy named Kevin made that had "mi 100 cosas recicables para un mundo mas verde" on it, which translates to "my 100 recyclable things for a greener world". It was a cardboard box with soda cans and paper and plastic forks taped to it. It was pretty cute.

a poem

So I have a lot to write about and I need to get to that, but for now I wanted to post this poem that a third grader in the school I'm working at wrote. He's not in either of my classes, but he's in one of my afterschool clubs. He's a really rambunctious crazy loud kid, and when I saw this poem he had written I was surprised because it is so tranquil and beautiful. here it is:

The Angels by Erik

When it snows,
I think the angels feathers are
falling
off
the
sky.

When the snow melts,
the feathers go back
to heaven.
The feathers of the angels,
grow back.
All the angels are happy again.

FIeld Trip

On Friday the first through fifth grades went to the stock show in Denver for a field trip. I chaperoned with my first grade class. About half of the boys in the class were dressed in their best jeans, shirts, cowboy hats, and boots for the stock show. It was really adorable. We took busses there, which was an adventure in itself. My class had to split up on two busses, which meant that I was put in charge of ten first graders. Luckily my class is pretty well behaved, so it wasn't too hard except for trying to herd them all in one direction and not get them mixed up with other classes.
Once we got in, there was an arena where they were doing horse obstacle things where the horse has to go over a series of jumps. I have no idea what that is called (clearly). After that we walked all around through different buildings and saw a lot of animals including horses, cows, llamas, el pacas, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, etc etc. We saw sheep being sheered which was pretty interesting. We also saw llamas getting bathed and blow dried. The kids in my class loved it. I loved it as well but I was also pretty allergic to the whole event, so I was sneezing my way through all the indoor parts. There was also a petting zoo part where the kids got to walk through a hay filled section full of the above mentioned animals (minus the horses and cows).

I put a link to the pictures I took below. The ones of the kids are pretty cute : )

Today we had off of school for Martin Luther King day and went to a march in Denver (the second largest MLK day parade in the country/world). It was awesome. I will post pictures of that soon. Tomorrow it's back to school!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028091&l=33235&id=10300564

Ding, Round 2

I haven't written in a long time...because nothing has really happened. Until now. We started our second project, which is at a Denver elementary school. The school is in the bottom four schools in the district for literacy. They failed the literacy component of their last CSAP--Colorado standardized test, and if they don't raise their scores by the next time they take them, in March, the school will most likely be shut down. Our job is to work in different classrooms with students one on one helping them with their reading and writing.
The school is 95% Latino and has kindergarten through second grade classes that are entirely taught in Spanish. Above that, most classes are taught in English with assistance in Spanish. In the morning I am in a kindergarten class and in the afternoon I am in a first grade class. Both of my classes are completely taught in Spanish and all of the students are first language Spanish speakers. The kids are ADORABLE. It's kind of fun because they are learning to read and write in Spanish and are at a level right around where I am, maybe a little lower, in learning those things. When there is reading or writing time in a class I walk around and help whoever needs help, working one on one with spelling and punctuation. At the end of the day in my first grade class there is an English lesson, where the kids usually have to practice writing in English. Yesterday the teacher told the class they were all going to write something and they just sat there. Then she said "in English" and they all groaned. It was pretty cute.
Today was a half day for the kids because there was teacher training, but we came in the first half of they day and unpacked computers for a computer lab they are setting up in the library. We set up 24 new computers. The teachers and librarian were really happy that we did it because they haven't had computers in the school yet that work. We also get to go to recess with the kids, which is fun. Today I helped kids make a snowman and played four square for a while. It was pretty fun.

I think it's going to be a good project. We are running after school programs starting January 26th, which should also be fun. I will write more when something eventful happens, which it is bound to : )