FIRST ASSIGNMENT!!!

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Finally found out where/what my team's first project will be! Last night my team played laser tag against another team in our unit and before we went in our team leaders hid brightly colored envelopes throughout the room. (What is is with AmeriCorps and secret envelopes???) After the game, which was surprisingly fun!, we opened our envelopes and each answered one question about our first full assignment.

We are going to be doing an environmental project focusing on fuel reduction (as in clearing trees and bushes from trails etc.) and making the area more environmentally friendly and "green" if you will. We'll be staying in California ( yay!) but moving to a small town called Oakhurst about 20 miles away from Yosemite!

The best part? Our sponsor is a Christian summer camp and we're going to be living on the camp staying in their cabins and using the camp facilities! Some people on my team were a little nervous about living like this for 6 weeks, but to me it's like going home 😊

Part of the requirement to complete NCCC is that each team member has to do a certain number of independent volunteer hours. I had extra time on Friday so I looked on a website all about volunteer opportunities in Sacramento. I happened to stumble across a really neat after school program for elementary students in the city. They were supposed to be doing an outdoor fitness project, but it ended up raining so instead I got to do arts and crafts. It was a really great experience! The kids were so friendly and welcoming and the center seemed like an amazing place for kids to learn/have fun in a safe place!
I don't usually have Monday-Friday afternoons free so I'm not sure if Ill make it back again during training, but if one of our next projects is local I will definitely try to get more involved there!

It's kind of funny how I almost accidentally found this and was able to sign up and go, but since I've been here I've been trying to volunteer at a soup kitchen and have been completely unsuccessful!! A lot of them need you to first attend an orientation during the week which I can't really do with my training schedule. I did end up reading about one through the Salvation Army that doesn't have an orientation- but I can't get hold of the volunteer coordinator! I've called a million times and keep getting a machine and the guys hasn't called back or emailed even though I left all that information... I want to help them for free! Why is this so hard to plan??

Saturday was a day of service for everyone in NCCC, we all got assigned to a project working at community gardens throughout the Sacramento area. MY team went to a project coordinated by an older Russian couple. The city had been considering putting in a new road through some unused land in their neighborhood that had gone to weeds. The lady was so cute, she said "The men come and see weeds here and say 'Road road road!' but if the come and see garden they will say 'maybe garden is better than road'!" Building a garden was their peaceful way of protesting!!

It was fun, but pretty hard work. Our first priority was planting new trees and we had to dig really deep holes for them. The soil wasn't easy to dig; some of it was hardened clay. We ended up having to fill back in a few of the holes because the water didn't drain so we knew the trees couldn't survive there. That was a bit discouraging after how hard we worked...

But it was worth it when we did get some of the trees planted! The couple asked us to name each one and they recorded the exact time it was planted so they could put up a sign. (we tried to arrange the first letter of everyone's name into a tree name, but it was hard because there were so few vowels and a lot of repeated letters!). It was very sweet when we left, the lady told us to come back to this spot in 20 years. "We will not still be here, but your trees will!"

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