How I Miss You, Dear Internet...

That's correct - I don't have the internet here in Mississippi. I'm currently at the Waynesboro Public Library, but they block certain sites and other functions, so I can't make a proper update. I have lots to say about my spike in Mississippi so far and I have plenty of media to share with you too, but I guess that will have to wait!


I'm simply posting to reassure anyone who may be distressed; I will be thoroughly describing this spike once I am again securely connected to the rest of the universe! Nevertheless, here's a summary... This project has been amazing. We work 10-hour days, four days per week, which can be pretty tiring. Still, our living situation is incredible. We live in a beautiful state park and we were given amazing cabins that they typically rent out for over $100 per night. Basically, the staff has done all that they can to make sure that we enjoy ourselves during our month-long stay here.

The community is also incredible. People continuously offer us free meals, groceries and any other opportunities they can think of. We were also featured front and center in this week's issue of The Wayne County News! There are a couple of pictures of us accompanied by a description of our program and the work we're doing here. I've been on the lookout for the paparazzi, but luckily it seems I've managed to evade them so far. I'm sneaky - what else can I say?


That's all for now. I've got limited time and resources when it comes to the internet. Hopefully my next spike (which will begin in early March) will allow me to access the internet more reliably, at which point I will go into greater detail about this spike and provide pictures and videos.


That's all, folks. Hopefully I'll post again soon!


-Scott

Lafayette H4H and Round III Reveal

Working with Habitat for Humanity was excellent! Every day I got to work with my hands, which is what I've really been looking forward to doing. Most of my work days involve moving large pieces of lumber, painting, cleaning and hammering lots and lots of nails.

On our second-to-last night we had dinner with our sponsors and the other volunteers. They made some incredible food for us and we had good conversation around the campfire. I believe that this was when our team completely realized how great of a project we had.

My favorite thing about Habitat for Humanity is that they have the future homeowners work side-by-side with the volunteers and staff. This means we get to see the people who will own the homes that we're working on. As I'm hammering or putting up trusses, I think about how a family's entire life will be contained within the house that I'm building and that's a really great thing to be a part of. Here are a bunch of pictures of Silver One working:

Above: Ryan, Katie and Rebecca up in the trusses.

Above: Katie enjoying painting.

Above: Erin painting. I really like this picture.

Above: Ryan working in a cabinet; apparently, this kid is like a ferret. The bandana is for dust.

Above: Sarah painting.

Above: Rebecca and Lindsey with Dayna waving in the background.

Above: Erin holding Katie's ladder.

Above: Katie up on the trusses with our site supervisor, Bob.

Above: Katie and the rest of the team hammering.

The staff and volunteers at our site are very kind and interesting people as well. Most of them are older (in their 50's or 60's) and they are all a part of a network of people who simply enjoy travelling around building together. It's a really incredible lifestyle, and I'm glad that I got to experience it first-hand.

Above: Silver One with Doris, Bob, Ron, Sue, Bill and Al.

In other news, my living situation has been interesting, to say the least. Let's see... First of all, our roof leaks. The cold of the night makes water condensate on the metal beams of the roof and causes them to drip on us while we sleep... So that's awesome. Also, there are a bunch of community basketball practices and games that get played. For example, on Tuesday we came home from a long day of work to a basketball game - loud fans, refs and all. Actually, it turned out that they were holding four basketball games that night. So we dealt with very loud noise in our home from the second we got back to past when we typically go to sleep. I personally didn't mind much; I only wish that they warned us that something like that would happen. They felt really bad about it though, and since then there have only been minor incidents.

Still, the Lafayette area was really cool. We were basically in the heart of cajun country, which was interesting. Here's a video of some of us at a really great hostel/saloon in Lafayette. They're playing and dancing to zydeco music. I had particular difficulty trying to understand the creole lyrics that they used from time to time...



Oh, so a story about our living situation... I was shooting some hoops the other day when we heard an urgent knocking on our doors. I opened up and there was Green 3! Apparently they were told to move in with us? No one on our team (even the team leader) was aware of this... That's AmeriCorps for you, I guess. Well I'm glad they're here anyway - it's more fun with more people around. So lots of unexpected things happened to us back at the community center, but we just had to deal with them, I guess!

And in more important news, I got my next project assignment! The first thing to note is that this is a four-week project. We were expecting an eight-week project (which most other teams got) but we were an exception. Personally, I like this a lot. With the news, I now have a six-round year, which is amazing! This means I get to see and live in six places as opposed to the four places that I was expecting.

The year is probably going to be split in half, with Gold and Blue units at the region projects for the first half and Green and Silver (I'm Silver) units on the gulf for the first half. Then we'll all switch. This switch was going to happen at the end of my eight-week project, but now I'll have two four-week projects in there instead. My team leader knows what our second four-week project will be, but she's not allowed to tell us yet. So now that I've bored you, I guess it's time to tell you where I'll be headed:

I'm going to Waynesboro, Mississippi! We'll be on the southern part of the state but not along the coast, and we'll be quite close to Alabama. My team will be living and working with The Pat Harrison Waterway District, which is basically the managing agency for a variety of Mississippi state parks. Our work will be environmental, but it looks like we may be doing some construction-related work as well.

I'm really quite pumped for this one. Again, I get to be outside, which is a huge plus. Also, I've seen some pictures of the place and it looks pretty amazing! We'll have plenty of space outdoors to go hiking, play games and have campfires (of course, this if weather permits those things...). Also, I've seen some pictures of the cabins they have there and they look REALLY nice. It hasn't been verified that those are the ones we'll be staying but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Right now I'm sitting in Camp Hope, the nation's largest volunteer housing complex. It's a converted elementary school in St. Bernard, LA, which is near New Orleans. Obviously, it's not elegant by any means, but it's fun to be here. I've gotten to see tons of my friends from CTI that I've missed so much! Both the Silver and Green units are here, so that's half of the entire corps!

In a way, I wish that I had a project where I would get to stay at Camp Hope. It becomes such a lively and bustling place during the upcoming season because of all of the collegiate volunteer groups that come down for alternative spring breaks. I feel like it would be an amazing experience to be around here. Also, I'm obviously not looking forward to saying goodbye to my friends all over again.

Still, leaving won't be so bad. If our place in Mississippi has warm showers, it's already got something over Camp Hope! So yes, I am very excited to leave as well. I leave tomorrow morning. I've never been in Mississippi, so it should be interesting!

That's all I've got for you, I think... Again, thanks for reading! I miss everyone from home and UW and I hope you're all doing very well! Lastly, here is the video that I presented at my debriefing. You'll see lots of the photos that I already posted above, but there are some other things too.




-Scott

All Over The Place

One might say "Scott, you have really been slacking with your blog." Well in response, I would say "Yeah, you're completely correct." I want to thank those of you who have, nevertheless, checked back to see if I've updated. Feel free to badger me about updating more frequently because I really, really want to.

A lot has happened since I last posted. Camp OJ seems like a very long time ago. The last week there was pretty typical. We finished up our work with Catholic Charities, which was nice. We also did an excellent ISP at the Firefighter Museum in Beaumont. I got to play with kids and make fun of Ryan (no one knew one of us would have to dress up as Santa).

Above: Ryan as Santa. This is where little kids would crawl on him and get their pictures taken.

Above: Ryan as Santa, Dayna as Mrs. Claus and Katie J. as an AmeriElf.

Above: Me rescuing the AmeriElf from immense danger.

Above: Kristina (from Gold Six) in a fake/retired fire truck.

Above: Santa needs to work on his pedestrian skills.

Then we took our long roadtrip up to Sacramento for transition. The final day of driving was about twelve hours long but it was worth it. It was unconventionally cold in the west on our way up so the mountains of northern Arizona were covered in snow and had fog rolling down their sides.

Above: Northern Arizona. Too bad I didn't have my camera for the best parts.

Once in Sacramento, my team and I debriefed with staff. We gave a presentation summing up our entire experience in southeast Texas, from our work to our living conditions. I also made this short video for the debriefing (you may recognize some photos that have already been uploaded to this blog):



After a few days in Sacramento I flew home to Chicago for winter break! It was really good. Most importantly, I got to see tons of friends and family. I also got to play a lot of hockey and eat a lot of good food. New Year's Eve was excellent as well. I saw some college friends early in the night, I saw AmeriCorps friends while the ball dropped and in the early morning and then I went back to see my high school friends and ended up watching Are You Afraid Of The Dark? at 5 AM. The two-week break actually seemed pretty long, but in retrospect it was very short. I returned to Sacramento, did a briefing for my next project and hopped back on the road with my team.

So here I am at my destination - Abbeville, Louisiana. Our road trip took us through Needles, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City and Beaumont. Again, northern Arizona and New Mexico were really pretty and I took a few pictures...

Above: New Mexico with snow.

Above: More New Mexico.

Above: All of my possessions for the next three-ish months. This includes all of my uniform components, my laptop and my sleeping bag. I have learned to pack very lightly.

At the moment, I'm sitting in my new home in Abbeville, Louisiana. We'll only be here for two weeks, as this is a short project. Our sponsor seems really nice. We'll be first training for our work this Monday. We'll be working with Habitat For Humanity doing finishing work (siding, painting, etc.) on houses for displaced victims of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina (yes, people are still displaced from Katrina - many of them). I'll put up a quick video of our living arrangements:



As you can see, we've got it made here. There's a whole room full of balls, roller skates, hockey sticks (score!) and anything else we may desire. What else do we need? Abbeville is a pretty cute little town with a decent amount of shops and restaurants and such. The weather is very warm and humid. It's definitely a much better living situation than Camp Orange was. Also, it's only a half-hour drive from Lafayette, Louisiana, which has even more options for food and entertainment. Overall, our team's spirit is very high. We're really excited to be working outside and living in a fun and convenient place!

So I think that's all for now... I should be updating again soon, once I get a feel for my new job. Also, we should be finding out our next project very soon! This next one is most likely going to be eight weeks long so it's much more substantial news. Stay tuned for this information! Again, I really want to thank everyone who has kept up with me despite my lack of updates. I'll try to be better! Well I should get to sleep. Tomorrow morning we're going to take advantage of our nice neighborhood and go for a run. I'll leave you with a wipeout video:



-Scott

NOLA, Ike Relief, Camp Orange, Round Two Reveal and More!

A long title for a long entry. I haven't written for a while, so I have a lot to talk about. Oh yeah, and I've gotten my assignment for my second round! However, I'm saving that for the end. Don't you cheat and scroll to the bottom - I'll find out.

So... Camp Orange... It's less than ideal. I think I can speak for everyone on my team when I say that we're pretty tired of tents, port-o-potties and shower trailers. There have also been some harassment issues with some of the non-AmeriCorps guys who live here. Not to mention, it's pretty obvious that security targets me and my teammates in a disciminatory manner when they enforce their policies. I don't know if it's because we're young or because we're not from around here, but they do it.

Still, things aren't terrible. We've got a (plastic) roof over our heads and food on our table, which is much more than I can say about most of the people that we're trying to help down here. As for work, sometimes it's boring and sometimes it's exciting. It's a lot of office work (phone calls and such), but when we get to actually meet the residents of southeast Texas, it's totally worth it. Even though we're not giving them tons of aid or anything, most people are extremely grateful, which eludes to the fact that they are in a lot of need. Here are some pictures of my teammates at work:

Above: Ryan, lethargic from too much telephone-ness.

Above: Lindsey, who couldn't be lethargic if she tried!

Above: Lawrence attempting to be Model-Lawrence.

But regardless of my job or my living situation, we only have one week left here in Orange, TX! Next weekend we are driving back up to Sacramento and that will be the end of Round One! I will be flying home to Chicago on December 21st and I will report back to Sacramento on January 3rd.

I'm definitely looking forward to being home for a bit. It'll be nice to eat some good food and see everyone whom I've missed so much. It's funny though - once I get back to Sacramento, it's going to feel like I've been away from Silver One for ages. That's how it felt when I went to New Orleans for Thanksgiving (hey, what a convenient transition...).

I went to New Orleans, LA (or NOLA) for Thanksgiving break! It was a great time. I went with Sarah and Katie L. from my team and Ryan and the two Kristens from Silver Two. We rented a van to get there and stayed at the Olivier House, which was incredible. The Olivier is an old house that's located in the French Quarter of NOLA about a half-block from Bourbon Street. It was very pretty and we got a great discount for being in AmeriCorps (actually, I've gotten quite a few discounts and free things for "wearing the A").

The room was really interesting and definitely had a lot more character than other hotels that I've seen. I've never seen a loft in a hotel before, that's for sure! I stayed with Sarah and Katie up in the lofted bed and the Silver-Two-ers pulled out the couch downstairs. Here - I'll post a video and a picture from the hotel:

Above: The view from the outdoor hallway. We tried the pool but it was way too cold that night.

Above: A short video tour of our room.

Since it was such an ideal place, it turned out that tons of AmeriCorps members were staying there for break! We even met some people from the Denver and Iowa campuses. It was a lot of fun to reconnect with a bunch of my friends from CTI and explore NOLA with them.

So while plenty of people did the Bourbon Street thing, I decided to explore on my own for most of the break. Obviously, I met up with them later at night, but I spent the vast majority of the weekend simply walking around New Orleans. I found some really incredible neighborhoods and architecture around the city, so I'm really glad I got away from the whole touristy thing.

Also, on our way back from NOLA, we stopped in Baton Rouge to meet up with my friend, Arrielle. She brought us to this great Latin restaurant. It was really nice to see Arrielle again, since the last time I saw her was up in Madison. We also got to drive through the LSU campus, which was interesting to see. Overall, it was an excellent trip!

And lastly, my new assignment for Round Two. I'll preface this by saying that this is only going to be for three weeks. You see, this first project in Texas was a disaster project and it ended up being shorter than the other non-disaster projects that teams have. Thus, they are giving many of the disaster teams short, three-week projects in order to allow the other teams to catch up to the schedule. This means that I am going to have a five-project year, which is atypical and pretty much awesome! I like it because it means I get to see more of the country and live in more places throughout my year of service.

So my next project... Erin, my TL, made us go on a scavenger hunt around camp to find out. We found a clue in the Christmas tree, which led us to a clue taped onto the side of a port-o-potty, which led us to a clue taped onto the towel lockers, which led us to the final envelope in the driver's seat of our van. Each envelope also hinted about our project. We figured out that we would not be going to California or Texas (which I was very thankful for), that we would be doing construction and that we would be working with Habitat for Humanity. Then, we completed our hunt and the reveal was complete:

My next project is in Lafayette, LA! We're working with Habitat for Humanity building houses. This project isn't perfect, but it's excellent and I'm happy with it. It should be better than my current project in a variety of ways (not to say my current one is horrible, or anything):

First of all, we're be living in a building (a church, to be precise). That's a good start. We'll have more space to ourselves, indoor plumbing (ooooh, aaaah), a full kitchen and other goodies like that. Here at Camp Orange we have a cooking staff that usually prepares the type of food you'd expect construction contractors to want (tonight we're having hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, etc.), so I am really looking forward to being able to eat healthily without spending my own cash at the grocery store.

The next project should also be better because I'll be able to get outside and do some work with my hands, for once. I spend too much time indoors here - I can even notice my skin getting lighter. I'm glad that I'll be able to get back outside and do something more tangible. Also, I really can't wait to learn about construction since I'm sure one of my remaining three projects will be construction oriented.

Lastly, I hear Habitat for Humanity is great to work with. Obviously, it depends on your specific sponsor, but a Habitat project is essentially the standard AmeriCorps project that all other projects are measured against. I do admit, however, that my current sponsors at Catholic Charities are super-nice and I think my whole team will miss them once we're gone.

I'm pretty sure that sums it all up. NOLA trip, new assignment, but currently just more Orange. I know I threw a lot at ya this time, so if you have any questions or comments PLEASE let me know. I may be horrible at keeping in touch with people at the moment, but that doesn't mean I don't want to!

Thank you so much for reading. I'm not sure if I'll be posting over the holidays (I'm considering a special in-depth team info post, though), so if I don't speak to you until I get back to Sacramento, have a good holiday season!

-Scott

Hurricane Ike

Alright, I've been on the job for a week now. Before I get to that, however, I'm going to talk about my team's trip to Oak Island, TX (which is not an island...). We drove over there with our project sponsor so that we could fill out some intake forms in person as well as see some hurricane devastation first-hand. It was really crazy to see what the hurricane did to this small town... There were tons of homes that were completely destroyed. Often you'd simply see a FEMA trailer sitting at the end of a driveway. At first you don't make the connection... Usually when you see that, it means the entire house was ripped up and taken elsewhere by either wind or water.

So yeah, it was pretty sad to see the scattered remnants of an entire zip code... Here are some pictures of Oak Island and (finally) a movie for you as well. Don't expect premium entertainment though. It's 45 seconds of wreckage. I let it go that long simply to try to capture the amount of debris that used to be "house" and is now "stuff". Of course this is just one short stretch of road among many...


Above: Here is the video.

Above: Not really comfortable anymore.

Above: Not really livable anymore.

Above: Not really there anymore. Yes, that was a house.

Above: That's pretty straightforward.

Above: My TL Erin getting mobbed by dogs. There are tons of pets and stray dogs just roaming around the gulf.

According to Wikipedia, 90% of Oak Island's homes were left inhabitable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island,_Texas). Here is an article about Oak Island too: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/092108dntexoakislandike.187ff9a.html

Needless to say, there is a lot to be done down here. My team, Silver One, is working with Catholic Charities of Southeast Texas. I mentioned this before, but keep in mind that we don't do religious work and we aren't allowed to fundraise or anything. Basically, we're providing the administrative work needed to run the hurricane aid programs that they provide. They work with thousands of people, assessing their needs and giving them money to keep them going. We don't just serve Oak Island - we serve several counties!

We get tons of calls every day (and about 30-40 voicemails overnight) and we have to call each household back and fill out forms about those families. I've also been doing a lot of database work to keep all of the information organized. The work is definitely not the outdoor, physical work that I had hoped for, but it's worth it. It's really interesting to hear the families' stories about what happened to them and it makes the monotonous work worthwhile. Also, our sponsors are very nice people and they are definitely grateful for our work. Considering many teams work 60 hours per week, we're lucky that we're only working a simple 8-5. So yeah, this is my job until December 15 (I think). As we progress through the project, however, we'll probably get more and more opportunities to actually go out to the communities and talk with people, which should be more interesting. Here are some teamies "in action", if you can call it that:

Above: Katie making the phones look a lot more fun than they really are.

Above: Sarah making databasing look a lot more fun than it really is.

Oh and lastly, I have a fun story. We're in eastern Texas, which is not the Texas that you Yankees are probably imagining. There are no Tumbleweeds (though we did see plenty on the way here). I'm basically right on the border of Louisiana so the climate here is more like that. It's been raining a lot. In fact, it rained so much that we got stuck in the mud on our way out of the parking lot the other day. We tried all sorts of techniques but could not move. Finally we got help from a truck full of other Camp Orange residents. We tethered onto their truck and their back wheels sprayed mud all over the front of our treasured 15P as it pulled it out. This is what it looked like after a bit of cleaning:

Above: Our beloved 15P. At least it's intimidating now. If you see this baby on the road, you're probably going to get out of the way.

Alright, time for sleep. It's super late for me already. I don't have work tomorrow, but most of my team is planning to do an Independent Service Project (ISP) at a charity concert in Beaumont (the "bigger city" nearby).

Good night and thanks for reading!

-Scott

Orange County (Texas...)

That's right, I'm now living in Orange County, Texas. So much has happened... Originally we thought we were going to be living at Camp Tarmac in Galveston, but now we're here at Camp Orange instead. Orange County borders Louisiana and has many of registered hurricane victims as well. In contrast to Camp Tarmac, which has lots of AmeriCorps teams, this one is a bit new and doesn't have many. At first I was a bit unhappy about that, but I'm definitely happy with Camp Orange now that I'm here.

But first I'll tell you where I've been the past few days. The first day of our road trip brought us to Kingman, Arizona where I got sick and felt horrible. Our next stop was in Las Cruses, New Mexico, which was probably a lot more fun. Then we settled in Austin, Texas for two nights where we registered with FEMA and trained with them for a bit. At night we went out on 6th street, which was a blast. There's so much really good free music in Austin... It was basically a bunch of really talented people performing just for me. I don't have any pictures of that, unfortunately, because I didn't want to bother lugging my camera all around downtown Austin. Most of the driving was through desert, which was cool and boring at the same time (figure that)... Here's a map of our trip (though we took a more sensible route between Austin and Houston):



This whole road trip was taken with Silver Two. We drove in a convoy and we stayed in the same hotel rooms. We went out with them at night and went swimming in the hotel pools. All in all, Silver Two was awesome and we had lots of fun together. It was great waking up in new and interesting places all the time. Too bad they're going to Camp Tarmac (or at least for now)... We actually saw a lot of friends from CTI in Austin. Many of them are working at the FEMA Joint Field Office (which is a huge office in a converted J.C. Penny) talking on the phone with hurricane victims and figuring out what the government can give them. It was really interesting to see the JFO - it was amazing in certain unexpected ways. Speaking to my friends from CTI, I've gathered that this is a pretty boring job and they work ten-hour days, six days a week! Still, the upside, for them, is that they get to live in Austin in really nice extended stay hotels for the whole round.

So back to Camp Orange... Things are pretty awesome here, despite that fact that it's just a volunteer camp set up in huge tents. The camp is set up for far more people than there are actually here, so we have tons of room and we can each take up as many cots and as much space as we want. There's laundry, good food, supplies, electricity, wireless internet and much more. The MWR (Morale, Wellness and Recreation) Tent is pretty awesome too. It has really nice couches and big TVs. Here are some pictures from the camp that I just took tonight:

Above: My monster of a tent

Above: The MWR Tent

Above: The MWR Tent again

Above: Teamies in the MWR Tent

Also, Gold Six is staying here! Some of my friends from CTI are on that team, which is great. Until we arrived, they were the only younger group of people around, so they were pretty excited tonight. They even made us this saweeet welcome poster:

I suppose it's possible that other AmeriCorps teams show up here later, but there's been no word of that so I'm assuming it's just going to be us two. It'll be nice getting to know Gold Six for the time that we're here. We should be here for about 5-6 weeks which will bring us right up to our winter break, where we'll transition back in Sacramento.

I have tomorrow off, so hopefully I'll just be relaxing and having some fun with my team. On Monday we finally meet our round one sponsors! They're a faith-based community organization, but they are not allowed to make AmeriCorps members do anything religious. So although they're Christian, they cannot make us participate in religious ceremonies, nor can they assign us work that progresses Christianity. In other words, though I'm not sure of my exact job description, I know that I will be working toward helping Texas families get back on their feet after the hurricane. My whole team is quite excited about this and we can't wait to get out there and start. We're prepared for some tough work and some long hours.

I think that's all I've got for you tonight. I feel like I've explained a lot with this post. Let me know if you've got any questions! Also, I'd like to know what all of you have been up to this past month, so don't be afraid to comment or e-mail me.

Thanks for reading!

-Scott

Bye Bye, CTI

EDIT: I forgot to post these pictures, so now I'm going to put them in before the rest of the entry:

Above: Silver One at Camp Mendocino in front of a huge redwood!

Above: Team stuff at camp Mendocino.

Above: More team stuff.

Above: Kelsey and me after a bunch of us played in the mud!

Settle in for a long one. First I'm going to write a bit about what I've been doing since my last post (I know some of you have been nagging me to update) and then I'm going to write a bit about my upcoming spike (a spike is a project away from campus). So I've been quite busy. My team, Silver One, has been doing all sorts of things to prepare for Induction, which is the end of Corps Training Institute (CTI), when we become full AmeriCorps members. Before each project, teams have to prepare a briefing presentation to give to staff that explains in detail what they'll be doing and what preparations they've made. Silver One doesn't know exactly what we'll be doing, but I'll get to that later. My job for this briefing was to talk about my team position (Photojournalist) for a bit and provide a team brochure which will be given to project sponsors in order to introduce our team to them and highlight our experience and strengths.

Aside from that, we've still had trainings nearly every day. Some of these trainings were with the Red Cross, and now I'm First Aid and CPR trained by them. We also did Disaster Relief training with them, which we will probably put to good use shortly. And lastly, we've been doing service. We've been working alongside other teams to help construct community gardens around Sacramento. These gardens are primarily made for the Sacramento youth and elderly. Specifically, school children get to grow their own plants. This is used as an alternate form of education and it also teaches the Sacramento kids about healthy eating and provides some of that food to them.

I have also been doing some Independent Service Projects (ISPs). The first one I did was right in front of the California State Capitol Building. They had a Family Fun Day there (where they had thousands more guests than they expected) and I and several friends went to help with the clean-up and take-down of the whole event. Afterwards, we walked around downtown Sacramento a bit and watched some crazy guy yell random things at the top of his lungs on the sidewalk.

The second ISP that I did happened just last night. McClellan Air Force Base is right within a neighborhood outside of Sacramento called North Highlands. The community center here had a halloween event where they made up a big haunted house for the kids. They also had a bunch of games with candy prizes set up. I went with about twenty others to go and help with the clean-up and take-down again. We got there a bit early, so I got to help run the event too. It was fun - I mean, where else can you watch a little kid reach into what he thinks is a bowl of human eyeballs?

Here are some more pictures from CTI:

Above: Silver 1 and Green 5 working on the garden.

Above: Katie and Lawrence picking weeds.

Above: Finishing up.

Above: Lindsey.

Above: Katie.

Above: Sarah and Katie.

Above: Family Fun Day.

Above: Hanging around after work.


Above: Us in front of the capitol.

Above: At the nearby Thai place. Erin, Lindsey, Dayna, Me, Zack.

So that's what I've been up to. Now for my upcoming spike. Let me try to get this straight... First, we were told that we would be going to Austin, TX in order to work for FEMA, and that they might send us elsewhere in Texas. Since then, we were told that we would be working for Impact Ministries, a non-denominational organization that helps the hurricane victims get back on their feet. Working for them would have been interesting. We would have most likely been in the Galveston area working outdoors. Just as Silver One was prepared for that project, we were informed that we're no longer working for Impact Ministries. Now we're working for someone else, but we don't know whom. We still know we won't be in Austin with the other teams (a bunch of teams from all campuses are working office jobs at the FEMA headquarters in Austin. They're living in extended stay hotels the entire time, which is pretty nice). So, again, it's up in the air and we don't know where we'll be. It seems like we're simply waiting for FEMA to allocate us. I, personally, like the uncertainty. I think it's fun. We leave Tuesday, and once I know what I'm doing I'll let you know.

The first teams are leaving for their spikes today and teams will be leaving for the next week. As excited as I am to leave, I am pretty sad that CTI is ending. I had such a great time here and I've made so many friends who are now scattering around the map. I'm very thankful that I like my team, at least. It's becoming clear that from now on, they're going to be the only thing in my life that will remain relatively constant.

So that's all for now. Thanks for reading!
-Scott

P.S. It rained for the first time here the other night. Oh, and tomorrow I'm doing an ISP - I'm helping to run a 8.5 mi./3.5 mi. race.