Spike Travel

Winter break is now over and before heading down to Texas we all spent a week in Denver preparing for our next spike round. I have to say that it was quite hard coming back to Americorps after seeing all my good friends and family back home. Everything in Chevy Chase just seemed so familiar and I adjusted to the overall situation so quickly compared to the places I have been living so far this year. I have found a bit hard to get back into swing of Americorps in the past couple of weeks without thinking about home.
My team was originally scheduled to move down to Austin for our next spike project, however FEMA decided that my team would be of better use in Beaumont Texas. My team was a little bit discouraged by the news as we had all been excited to live in Austin, but we were assured that our project in Beaumont would be a lot more fulfilling. Rather than running call stations in Austin to locate displaced persons from the recent hurricanes, we will be working directly in the affected areas and helping the local governments to plan long term recovery projects.
The trip down to Beaumont took about three days and ran pretty smoothly. Our first stop was in Amarillo Texas, home of the 72oz Big Texan steak. We then spent the night in Fort worth. The next two nights we spent in Houston where we took a training class for our division of FEMA (ESF-14). We finally arrived in Beaumont on the fifth day to the extended stay hotel where we will be living for the next two months. Overall the four days of travel in the big passenger van werent too painful, but the majority of the scenery through northern and eastern texas looks exactly like this...

Greetings from New Orleans!

We have now been down here for about two two weeks running the Kitchen at Camp Hope. For those of you who don't know, Camp Hope is the base camp for Habitat for Humanity volunteer who are working on rebuild projects. I am on the dinner shift and work from 12 to 8pm every weekday. The dinner crew is comprised of 4 of my team members and myself. We come in at 12 and plan the meal and then decide what needs to be done when. Dinner starts and 5:30 so we have plenty of time to prepare any meal we decide on, and to take a break or two to relax some. It has been a very laid back project so far and lots of fun cooking with my team mates. Here we are, The Dinner Crew.

My whole team is living in one co-ed room together. Camp Hope used to be a middle school but was devastated by Katrina, so we are essentially living in a classroom filled with bunk beds. I've got a full bunk bed to myself and I share another one for storage. The camp has many facilities such as a small weight room, computer lab, lounge rooms, tv rooms, and a book room so life here is pretty comfortable. The biggest challenge is finding personal space while living in a room with nine other people.

Over all I am loving this project and New Orleans. There are many locals that come for dinner every night and they each have their own amazing Katrina story. It's truly incredible how this devastating storm is now such a defining factor of everyone's life who was affected. The french quarter of down town New Orleans is a very cool and interesting place. We have managed to go down there a few times a week so far and discover someplace new every time. There is a whole lot of culture down here that you don't see anywhere else in the world. Here's a picture of one of the many musical performances going on all the time in New Olreans, you can't escape the music in the air.

Projects

So far we've completed two service projects in our time here in Denver. The first was a project where we filled in a playground with mulch to provide a ground surface for the playground. It took us about six hours to fill the playground entirely. Our team used pitch forks rakes and wheel barrels to create a ten inch think layer of mulch across the whole playground. The work was a bit tedious at times but it needed to be done. After completion we all found the project to be very rewarding and we found out how well we worked as a team. The best part of the project was a little boy who lived across the street. He literally watched us out his window the entire time and stuck his head out the door as we were leaving to wave good bye.

The other project that we helped complete was a trail through the Denver city park. The entire Americorps campus worked along side about 200 volunteers to level out the trail material and complete the trail. The work wasn't too hard and we finished quickly with so many people on the job. After we completed our individual sections we all gathered back at the park pond where we enjoyed live music, food, and an address from the mayor.

Boulder Trip

This past Sunday and Group of guys and I took a trip up to Boulder. We took the 4 dollar bus out of Denver and it took just about an hour to get to the famous college town. Boulder is a cool little city filled with lots of little shops, a cool pedestrian shopping/dining area, and lots of college kids; but we were there with hiking in mind, and we came to the right place. Boulder rests directly next to the rocky mountains and the view is amazing. The picture on the left is one I took just as we were entering Boulder on the bus. After checking out the town we set off for the mountains. We took a bike path out of town that ran parallel to a rocky stream. The path was well used by walkers and bikers of all ages and there were many people sitting silently in the creek bed, either reading, writing, or just relaxing. Not after long we had reached the foot-hills. First chance we got we got we broke off from the bike path and started to make out way up a mountain. The trail we took was somewhat challenging with the occasional cliff which we (well at least my buddy Walker and I) were eager to climb. After about an hour of hiking we were satisfied and sat on a cliff for a little bit to soak up the view over Boulder all the way to the horizon.

Two Weeks Done

We're now entering our third week and the second half of our CTI Training, and the days seem to go by ten times faster than they did for the first couple of weeks. Today we were put on new teams for the fourth time with new Team Leaders. I've enjoyed each team that I have been on and I like all the people I have met in the Fire unit; however I'm still anxious for Friday because we are going to be put in our permanent teams. Whatever ends up happening I know that I will have a great experience with whoever is on my team. Next week we will have the raffle and find out where we will end up going. The mass majority of teams are being deployed to the Galveston area of Texas, so its likely we'll end up there but I wonn't know for sure till next week sometime.
The shot above is of the first team that I was on, and so far I have enjoyed that team the most. I loved all of the members and the team leader Charlotte was especially cool.

One Week Down

I've now been in Denver for a full week and am making my first official post. There is no internet access in the dorms which makes it hard to get online but we can get wireless in the quad and in the library.
The first week has been an experience in its self. I met about seven incoming corps members on the flight in from Dulles and found that everyone was very friendly. The group of us were seated together on the plane and chatted most of the trip. After landing we were greeted by AmeriCorps reps at the baggage claim and seated with other incoming members from all over the country to wait for the bus to take us to campus. Many of us chatted as to where we had come from and attempted to remember names, but the one thing we all had in common was the inability to take our eyes off of the snow-capped mountains that sat just across from the airport. The weather was beautiful, not a cloud in the sky.
When we first arrived on campus we were first given the keys to our dorms and our roommates. My roommate's name is Trevor and is from Westchester, Pa. I soon became aquainted with the rest of the guys in my hall. Theres Christian from SanFransisco, Joe from Salem Massachusets, Paul from Buffalo NY, Jack from Pittsburg, Patrick from Vienna Virginia, Aaron from Georgia and many more. Theyr'e all really cool people who have tons of common interests and everyone seems to be on the same page of life. The remainder of the first day was mostly devoted to in-processing/paperwork but a group of us did get a good game of ultimate frisbee in. I snapped the above picture just after the sun set over the mountains.