Wednesday, November 25, 2009
New Campus
Hey guys! I'm really sorry I haven't posted something in a long time. I've actually been at home for Thanksgiving break! But I will be heading back sometime next week and going to Vinton, Iowa.....Vinton, Iowa? I thought you were in Denver Tim?....well yes I was in Denver, CO....but w/out going into all the details, things didn't work out in Denver and so I will now be joining with a new team at a different campus in Vinton, Iowa....so, it's pretty cool. I will finish out my service with AmeriCorps NCCC in Vinton, Iowa starting next week! I will hopefully be updating and writing new blogs once a week on the weekends. I hope this find everybody doing well and that you all have a great Thanksgiving! "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Week Before We Leave For Spike
Ok, so I wasn't able to take many pics this past week and this is the only one I did take haha....my friend Pat was "balancing" on the rails and he was sooo excited about it. He actually has what is called a "slack line" that he attaches to two trees and balances on those. Its pretty cool and pretty hard to do. I've tried it.
Anyway, so this week has gone by sooooo fast and I haven't had time to write in my journal so it's not like I have a lot of material to refer back to except for my own brain (oooh boy). But i'll give it my best shot. My days are starting to run together so be patient with me. One day of training we spent part of the day learning car maintenance. We learned how to change a tire and also how to put on snow chains if needed. Which they've told us if we ever need those then there better be a good reason why we're still out on the road. But anyway, it was pretty cool. Most stuff I already knew, but a few things I didn't.
We eventually got our permanent teams on Thursday. The TL's had this scavenger hunt planned out and we had to take our piece of paper and go to a location that led us to another location etc. etc. At each station there was a person completely covered from head to toe with a mask, sleeping back, hat...you know, whatever it took to COMPLETELY disguise their identity. We kinda figure it out that they were the TL's and eventually the station we got to in the end the TL there would be our TL. Well, I eventually got to the last station and met my "team" and after a while the TL revealed themselves and it was Daniel! I was like "sweet!". I wanted him. But then he was like ,"surprise, i'm not your TL." What!? lol we were confused. He said we had one more station to go to, and gave us another paper to go to another location. And there I found my REAL team and my REAL TL Terrence. I like him too so it was all good. We were all so glad to finally get this out of the way b/c everybody was getting so antsy and nervous about the whole thing. On Friday we spent the entire day going to the classes that we wanted to that taught about the team positions we could hold. I ended up going to the yearbook class which basicly means I take a lot of pics and write a short summary of things and turn them in to " The Altitude" (campus newspaper/yearbook). I also want to be the "team counselor" and the "Assistant Team Leader" but those won't get decided until 2nd Spike come January.
On Saturday we had this thing called "World Cafe" that the TL's had set up in the caf and it basicly was an event that helped us realize the poverty issues surrounding the world today, how lucky we are, and helped us to think of ways to help out. It was pretty sweet and I enjoyed it a lot. There were 3 different stations that each team has to go to and each one helped you get a better understanding of issues in the world and in our own backyard even.
Saturday, our team (Water 3!) was going to go hiking. But first Terrence wanted to take us to a fairly local Farmer's Market. So we spent about an hour there and actually ran into a few other teams. It was pretty cool and had a good time. And since we were already there and it was about lunch time he asked if we want to just stay and go to the Pearl Street Mall and find shops and eating places. And of course we did, so we spent the next 1 1/2 hours there. Afterwards, we began the drive to go hiking and it turned out that all the parking spaces were full b/c of all the people hiking and playing at the park that day. So we ended up going to another park and just hanging out there. At the park we made expectations for the group and for ourselves. I think we had a better understanding of each other and what each expects from the group for the year. It was nice and I think we'll all be fine.
As I sit here writing this it is 2:48 PM in Denver, CO on a Sunday afternoon and tonight we are all taking Jessica out to dinner (and possibly bowling I think?) for her birthday that was yesterday. We were going to go last night but we ended up not b/c something came up. Anyway, she's 19 now and we're gonna take her out for dinner. We actually had about 10-15 cards taped to her door the night before her birthday so when she woke up she was bombarded (sp?) with b'day cards. I think she liked them. And she seemed to have a pretty good day yesterday so that's good.
Oh! And one more thing before I go! We found out my team's first project and it is going to be in Wickes, AR doing trail building. We leave next Saturday on the 14th and will get back I think on the 16th of December. It's pretty cool and i'm excited about it. I'm sorry about this post not having any pics and not really that organized but once we leave for our first spike it'll be more interesting and full of pics i'm sure. I hope you've all had a good week and i'll be writing again soon! "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!!!
We eventually got our permanent teams on Thursday. The TL's had this scavenger hunt planned out and we had to take our piece of paper and go to a location that led us to another location etc. etc. At each station there was a person completely covered from head to toe with a mask, sleeping back, hat...you know, whatever it took to COMPLETELY disguise their identity. We kinda figure it out that they were the TL's and eventually the station we got to in the end the TL there would be our TL. Well, I eventually got to the last station and met my "team" and after a while the TL revealed themselves and it was Daniel! I was like "sweet!". I wanted him. But then he was like ,"surprise, i'm not your TL." What!? lol we were confused. He said we had one more station to go to, and gave us another paper to go to another location. And there I found my REAL team and my REAL TL Terrence. I like him too so it was all good. We were all so glad to finally get this out of the way b/c everybody was getting so antsy and nervous about the whole thing. On Friday we spent the entire day going to the classes that we wanted to that taught about the team positions we could hold. I ended up going to the yearbook class which basicly means I take a lot of pics and write a short summary of things and turn them in to " The Altitude" (campus newspaper/yearbook). I also want to be the "team counselor" and the "Assistant Team Leader" but those won't get decided until 2nd Spike come January.
On Saturday we had this thing called "World Cafe" that the TL's had set up in the caf and it basicly was an event that helped us realize the poverty issues surrounding the world today, how lucky we are, and helped us to think of ways to help out. It was pretty sweet and I enjoyed it a lot. There were 3 different stations that each team has to go to and each one helped you get a better understanding of issues in the world and in our own backyard even.
Saturday, our team (Water 3!) was going to go hiking. But first Terrence wanted to take us to a fairly local Farmer's Market. So we spent about an hour there and actually ran into a few other teams. It was pretty cool and had a good time. And since we were already there and it was about lunch time he asked if we want to just stay and go to the Pearl Street Mall and find shops and eating places. And of course we did, so we spent the next 1 1/2 hours there. Afterwards, we began the drive to go hiking and it turned out that all the parking spaces were full b/c of all the people hiking and playing at the park that day. So we ended up going to another park and just hanging out there. At the park we made expectations for the group and for ourselves. I think we had a better understanding of each other and what each expects from the group for the year. It was nice and I think we'll all be fine.
As I sit here writing this it is 2:48 PM in Denver, CO on a Sunday afternoon and tonight we are all taking Jessica out to dinner (and possibly bowling I think?) for her birthday that was yesterday. We were going to go last night but we ended up not b/c something came up. Anyway, she's 19 now and we're gonna take her out for dinner. We actually had about 10-15 cards taped to her door the night before her birthday so when she woke up she was bombarded (sp?) with b'day cards. I think she liked them. And she seemed to have a pretty good day yesterday so that's good.
Oh! And one more thing before I go! We found out my team's first project and it is going to be in Wickes, AR doing trail building. We leave next Saturday on the 14th and will get back I think on the 16th of December. It's pretty cool and i'm excited about it. I'm sorry about this post not having any pics and not really that organized but once we leave for our first spike it'll be more interesting and full of pics i'm sure. I hope you've all had a good week and i'll be writing again soon! "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!!!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Snow, Snow, Snoooow!!!!!
So this week as you can see is going to be about how much SNOOOW we got. I don't know the exact amount but I know it was well into the 12 in. mark. Prob way more than that. But anyway, lets start with Monday....Monday was a day off for my unit since Saturday we did a project raking leaves. So I spent the day just relaxing. I took about a 2 hour nap when my friends called to wake me up and go to dinner. I went with Jessica, Pat, & Avi. What stunk about it though was that about halfway through dinner I started feeling sick. I don't know if it was b/c I ate too fast after waking up or if it was the food. But my stomach just wasn't happy. I eventually got better and we spent the rest of the night playing Phase 10 haha! I know I know, it's kind of the norm for us now. But we all enjoy the games we play and it brings us closer as a team.
Lets fast forward to Wednesday...Wednesday we had safety training from 8:00AM-12:00PM. A guy talked to us about the safety rules on the project site and just basicly on how not to be stupid. We took a lunch break and were suppose to reconnect at 1:30 PM for tool safety but we got a message from our TL's that the rest of the day PLUS tomorrow (Thursday) was cancelled cuz of snoooww!!!! So, OF COURSE, we all changed out of our uniforms and went outside and played in it....had some snowball fights, and built a fort....here are a few pics:
Later that day, after dinner, I played cards with Sophia and Kelly and then we played Scattegories & Life. I had a lot of fun with them. It was yet another nice end to the day.
Thursday, like I said, we had the day off b/c of snow...so several of us (Sophia, Jessica, Danielle, Pat & I) decided to take a trip to the Denver Art Museum. It was a pretty cool place to go. We walked quite a bit to get there after the bus and train ride. And enjoy a lot of cool scenery from the snow.
Now Friday came around and the snow had let up and was starting to go away so we actually did something. The entire campus had times set up for their unit to go indoor rock climbing! It was pretty cool. I attempted 3 walls and was only able to complete 2 of them. My first one I only made it about 2/5 of the way up. I guess I underestimated its difficulty cuz I hadn't done something like this a lot and didn't have much experience. So I attempted other walls and got the hang of it.
Saturday me, Sophia, Jessica, Pat, Kelly, and Lena went to this Japanese Sushi restaurant place called "Sonoda's Sushi"...I don't eat seafood so I got the Teryaki Chicken but it was still wonderful. We walked around town a bit and went to this market and got a pumpkin to carve, so that was cool. Plus, it was Halloween night so there were some interesting characters lurking around. By the time we decided to head back to campus the buses had stopped running so we decided to call a cab. Well this cab company told us 15 minutes......so after 45 minutes had gone by we were getting quite aggravated so we decided to call every stinkin' cab service in the area haha...we ended up calling and ordering about 5 or 6 different taxis. So, we decided that while we were going to wait we would do so inside of an IHOP instead of being out in the freezing cold. When we got there the waitress told us after we had sat down that they were going to be closing soon. We informed her that all we were doing was waiting and that we really just wanted some hot chocolate/coffee and we wouldn't mind leaving whenever she needed us to. She offered to call for us a cab b/c according to her ,"I do this all the time for people and they're here in 10 minutes." .......well then, we call and order a taxi and are still waiting about an hour later, she calls and what you know...a taxi in less than 10 minutes shows up lol .....so we're getting ready to leave and we go to the register to pay and she says ," you know what, you guys were so understanding about leaving....i'm not gonna make you pay for those drinks, especially since its so cold outside." Well talk about a blessing in disguise! We're fa-reezziing!! and the taxis are late and we end up with free hot chocolate. So we hopped into the taxi and enjoyed our FREE HOT CHOCOLATE and made it back to campus safely :)
And now today...Sunday....I went with Leia to the Denver Rescue Mission and helped out with some clothing distribution and a soup kitchen type of thing. We did some food prep, and served, and cleaned up. I was there from about 4 until 8...and then afterwards Leia and I went to dinner to this "noodle" place haha....she wanted to take pics of our food....she said "it's what we Asians do" haha
This week has been kinda slow in a sense b/c of the snow days that we've gotten. But next week will be different with more training and things to do. Like I think we'll be getting a training session with the Red Cross b/c that's one of the things that was cancelled this week. We'll see though. Oh! And plus we'll hear who are permanent teams are on Thursday! Everybody is kinda nervous about that but also excited. I'll let you guys knows about next week come the weekend. So until then stay awesome and leave me messages!! I have the rest of my "snow" pics on my facebook so go check em out! "My time is up, I thank you for yours." God bless!!!
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