5000 Feet Above Sea Level. 2389 Miles from Home.

"I heard a little girl and what she said was something beautiful. To give your love no matter what." - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Just a little check in while I have Internet. The closer we come to Thanksgiving, the crazier the docks get. I think I am going to working the docks at the food banks warehouse for the next couple days because there are suppose to be an insane amount of donation drop-offs. Apparently in order to volunteer serving food for the homeless on turkey day in this city you have to sign up months in advance... so that is out of the question but we are going to be working (and some of us running NOT ME) in a 5k for charity on T-day. Then our supervisor Harvey has invited us all to a dinner he puts on in the afternoon. so I am excited.

Today is our first day off since we've got here. I spent the morning making phone calls and catching up with people. Then We all watched a little Beauty and the Beast because the cabin we are living in has a Tv and a VHS player but the DVD broke so the only three movies that were in the Cabin were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Mummy haha. And Now we are at the Library picking up some Wi-Fi then we'll explore the city a little.

Tomorrow we are working at this Bike Co-op that collects and fixes up bikes and then gives them to people who don't have them. This is an Independent service hour for us (we have to complete at least 80 hours of these). I am excited to check it out but it will be a LONG DAY, we are working from 9am-9pm! haha I'm buying a red bull.

OIY!

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" Kris Kristofferson

Well. Blogging from this point out might be a little difficult because I do not know how often I will have internet but we will work with what we have. Also I broke my camera so we will not have pictures for awhile.

The Drive from Sacramento to Salt Lake City was like driving being stuck in a deja vu movie reel. At first it was exciting because it really looked like the wild west, I know that sounds silly but really looked like the old westerns. The ground extended until the horizon, the soil red and cracked and tumble weeds tugging to free themselves from the dilapidated barbed wire fences. But after 10 hours of this exact same landscape it all looked pretty bland. I drew a picture of my surroundings in my journal just as we drove into Nevada and 8 hours later I looked at my picture and the landscaping looked exactly the same still.

We would drive through a town and then we wouldn't even see the slightest hint of civilization for about 3 or four hours. The town we did drive through were made up of trailer homes, convenience stores and maybe 1 warehouse-like church. I can't imagine living like that because It would be at least an hour or 2 drive to do any shopping or anything. Even the big cities had only couple thousand people.

I am at the Utah Food bank now. I have been working for 2 days now. The work is hard. We are working in a warehouse. We do a lot of different jobs. While we are at the warehouse we help unload big truckloads of food donations, check them in, sort them and put them away. We are dealing with tens of thousands of pounds of food personally each day. We also are driving Uhaul trucks all over the city to pick up food drive donations. The people here are amazing. Often we will go to a chain store like a jiffylube to pick up a box of food and we will find a huge maybe (5x5x5) box just bursting with canned goods and when we ask the store workers, they will say that they only just put the box a day and a half ago or something. Its crazy.

People also donate weird things. We find unmarked ziplock baggies of mystery powder, cat and dog food, half eaten boxes of gummies and boxes of things boxed way back in 1994. Our work days are Tuesday through Saturday 12- 9pm. Next week will be a crazy busy week because it is Thanksgiving. There is suppose to be a snow storm this weekend big temperature change from Sacramento.

OK well sorry the last part of this blog was confusing I am rushing because I got to get to work

Good Luck. God Bless. Love ya'll!

Race to the top of the tallest building.

Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing

Helen Keller

In order to successfully graduate from NCCC I have to complete 1700 service hours. Most of the hours will be through NCCC with my team but 80 of those hours need to be Independent service hours. So I started working on those hours this past Saturday. We arrived at the tallest building in Sacramento at 6am and we helped set up for a benefit race put on by the Lung association. The race is a timed even where groups of runners set out to run up all 35 floors of the building. It was crazy there were old people and young people, athletes that ran it and even little kids who walked the whole thing. One guy ran it in 3 minutes and 47 seconds!!! that is 10 flights of stairs a minute! Another guy ran it 7 times! I had a wicked sweet job. I stood on the roof, the view was amazing. It was a helicopter landing pad with no walls and I could see everything! It blew me away (quite literally seeing that the wind was crazy). I just cheered people as they came to an end and passed out water.

Salt Lake City Here we Come

No, this is how it works, You peer inside yourself, You take the things you like, And try to love the things you took, And then you take that love you made, And stick it into some, Someone else's heart, Pumping someone else's blood - Regina Spektor

We leave for Salt Lake City in 9 hours give or take. I am all packed and ready to go but it is definitely bittersweet.

I went out last night into Sacramento with all of my buddies. It was so much fun just chilling with all my friends here because we have been so busy, running around because this last week was the last week of training that we haven't really hung out as much. I am really gunna miss everyone so much. We have spent the last 5 weeks together every day basically that it will be weird to not see them for the next 6 or more weeks. Josh, who is going to the Gulf Coast I probably won't see for another 4 months! Its actually really sad. So we all went out last night as a celebration/ going away party. It was a celebration because all of us Graduated training, but also because Sandyha got into Med School and Jersey got into Law school.

We all slept in Sandyha's room last night and then woke up at 6 to see of Kent and Cody because their group is going to Wyoming to build houses. After that I went back to bed until 11:30!!!!!!!! It was the longest I have slept in since I got here. I spent the entire day just cleaning my room and packing and getting ready for the trip. I am really gunna miss all my friends but I am excited to be able to get to know my team better. I am REALLY excited to see salt lake and Utah even though it is gunna be wicked cold. The good thing is that after Christmas break I am gunna be on campus for a month and so will Jersey, Kent, Cody and Sanyha.

AHH It is so soon. I have 2 days of driving but hopefully I'll get WiFi or something so i can keep ya'll updated... haha if there is anyone out there

South Lake Tahoe

"And I'll talk real loud, God damn right I'll be heard" - Modest Mouse

Just came back from Lake Tahoe for the weekend and it was amazing!!! We had eight people and we found a really nice motel called the Stardust Motel. The guy checking us in was really cool and he gave us a suit (three rooms) for 120 a night. It was close enough to walk to the Casinos. My buddies a gambled a lot. one of my friends won 300 bucks but then another one lost 180. We hiked around lake Tahoe. It was pretty cold out, maybe 50 and we all went swimming in the lake it was FREEZING! I had the most amazing time but now I'm even more sad that I'll be splitting with all my friends on NOV. 16th for our first project.

OH and also It turns out when I was sick last week (I had to go to the doctor and sleep for like 40 hours) I actually had the Swine Flu, just a fun little fact. They just called to tell me the test results.

Camp Mendocino where the RedWoods Grow

Hey Guys. I know I just posted but I figured I would give a nice quick re-cap on my Camp Mendocino trip. Camp Mendocino is a camp where they take inner city kids from San Fran during the summer. We went up there to help fix up the camp and do some team building exercises. It was beautiful. We drove through desert, and mountains and red rocks for hours until we got into the Redwoods district. Then after driving for miles and miles without even a speck of civilization, we took a dirt road that slipped between jagged hills and rocky ledges over a river. We drove on this road for almost an hour, EVERYTHING was dripping with moss and we drove so far into the forest that it became wicked dark because the trees were so tall and dense.

We stayed in plank cabins, windows with no glass and no doors or electricity. It was freezing. In the nights it got to about 40 degrees or colder, waking up for PT every morning at 5:30 was hell but it didn't matter because the land was soooo beautiful. I literally didn't change out of my clothes once because it was so nippy, I wore long johns under my entire uniform and my parka. Even in the mess hall, which was heated, we could see our breaths. We got three huge meals everyday and a different team helped prepare/ clean up for it everyday. We were at camp for 4 days with all 60 people in my unit. We hiked, did a ropes course, went on a zip line through the the woods and helped scrub the camp from top to bottom. At night we had camp fires. On the last night I pulled my stuff out by the fire and slept there instead. The sky was outstanding.

PICTURESThis Is one of my team mates Christina

Big Tree
Anthony being a crazy son of a bitc
Christina, My team mate

Destination: Nowhere Near

"This is My life, and Freedom's my profession"

-Gogol Bordello

So Lets get straight to the point. MY FIRST MAJOR SPIKE. Most people are going for about 6-8 weeks to their first projects, but because I'm on FRT, I need extra trainings to become a Forest Firefighter and I need trainings in chainsaw use. SO on the 16th of November (2 days after my induction) We will be driving to Salt lake City, Utah and working at a giant Food bank. We will be driving around the city and picking up foods from donaters and such. It will be cool because I am getting certified to be an authorized NCCC driver so I hopefully will be able to drive the sponsor vehicles around the city! We will be living in these sweet cabins just outside the city in a really gorgeous area. I am sooo excited.

We will be there for a month and then we will come back to Sacramento for my trainings. In Sac, we will have 2, 40 hour week of training and then (DADADAD

Speaking of teams, my team is really great. It was hard for me to move from my temporary pod who were all crazy and goofy, a lot like me, to a team who are a lot more focused but I am really happy with me team. They are are super nice and wicked reasonable as well as fun. Other teams are already having conflicts but its hard for me to see any major conflicts coming about at all.

There are a lot of really cool projects for the other teams too. The entire gold unit, which about 7 teams, 60 people, will be heading to the Gulf to do house rebuilding. A lot of other teams are going places to build houses, Wyoming, So Cal, etc. One team is going to be camping on the beach in the Catalina Islands and removing invasive species. AHHH so many cool projects.

My Birthday

I'll start out by telling you guys that my friends were soo sweet to me on my Birthday. It was Oct 20 (i know I'm a little late) but, it turns out that they had been secretively asking me questions about my cake/ pie preferences and had found out that pumpkin pie was my favorite thing so for my birthday my Pod all pitched in to buy me a pumpkin pie and a Boston Creme pie and brought it out at dinner and got the whole dining hall singing happy birthday to me and then bought me a card with a firefighter on it (cause I had just passed my FRT test) It was just really nice I was about to like cry hahaah.

OK well I have to run off to help organize a school supply bank ( for families who can't afford to buy school supplies). I'll tell you about that when I get back. I'll also fill ya'll on in on my time in the redwoods AND

I GOT MY FIRST SPIKE (project)!!! So keep checking in if you wanna know what I'll be doing for the next two months!!