My Next Project

Oklahoma here I come.  After Christmas break I will be back in Denver for a week and then headed east to Oklahoma.  

My team will become Certified Type 2 Wild land Firefighters and will work with the U.S. Forest Service at Ouachita National Forest.  We'll be living in boy scout cabins!  I'm so darned excited.  This is also where we will be for our 4th round project.

The closest city to us will be Poteau, Oklahoma which comes in at a whopping 8,500 people.  Never fear, there is a Wal-Mart.  Starbucks, not so much.  

I don't have too much more information right now.  I'll let you know as I get more.  Paul is headed to northern Texas to work with the United Way.  He's happy about it.

Best Weekend Ever

I was spoiled this past weekend.  Way spoiled.  Janet and Bob picked me up Saturday afternoon after our team Starbucks run and whisked me away to Paul and Sonja's.  

I was able to have a good home cooked meal and sleep in a real bed.  Funny how my standards have changed since I've been in AmeriCorps.  

Sunday we headed to Max's Wine Dive and I had an excellent lunch which boasted my first taste of Texas fried chicken.  Delicious.  

After lunch we headed to The Witte Museum.  The museum itself isn't very large but there were a few neat exhibits.  Janet and I were on opposite ends of the spectrum for our interest in the textiles exhibit.  I've always been interested in clothing through the ages, Janet just breezed right through it. 

This quilt, aptly named "The Crazy Quilt" reminded me of Grandma Butch.  I'm sure any of you who have seen her Crazy Quilts will agree it's a pretty good replica.  

Sunday evening came all to fast and I headed back to Land Heritage Institute.  Of course, Janet and Bob are amazing and left me with a wonderful care package.  The chocolate won't last long but I'm excited to read the books they gave me.

Longhorns

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have 32 Longhorns that reside in the fields behind our bunk house.  These are purebred Texas Cattlemen's Longhorns, or something like that.

Because they are purebred it is important that other cattle don't get mixed in with them and muddle up the blood lines.

Well, that is exactly what happened this past week.  A few cows from a nearby ranch went rogue and got into LHI's pens.  To make it easier to catch the other cows, and be sure no blood line crossing happened, Peggy rounded up the Longhorns and kept them in the smaller pen behind our house while the rogue cows were rounded up.

Peggy has conditioned the Longhorns to make rounding them up quite simple.  She drives a vehicle over to the pen by our house, honks the horn twice, then yells "hup, hup" a few times.  The Longhorns hear it and know when they come there will be a snack waiting for them.

I took advantage of the fact that the cows were rounded up to get some fun pictures.  I even helped Peggy feed the Longhorns while they were rounded up by driving the truck through their pen while she unloaded food for them.  That was an experience.  I was afraid I was going to hit one with the truck!

Thanksgiving

We had an Ameri-Thanksgiving here at the Land Heritage Institute yesterday.

One of our site supervisors, Jim, joined us and brought with him a turkey.  I was very grateful for that, as I am not quite ready to tackle making an actual turkey.  Although watching Leigh do it last year was fun.

Peggy, another site supervisor, dropped off stuffing and two pies.  Peggy and Mark are married and are the ones in charge of LHI.  Peggy is a great cook, and we've gotten to be beneficiaries of her skill multiple times.  One of my team members is allergic to milk and eggs which makes cooking interesting sometimes, but Peggy is awesome and finds ways to make great food without those ingredients.

My teammate, Laura, and I were in charge of the other sides which consisted of mashed potatoes (!!yum!!), vegetables, salad, etc.  Pretty darn tasty if I do say so myself.  I even had two slices of Peggy's pecan pie, it was so delicious.

After dinner we still had sunny skies and warm weather here in San Antonio so I grabbed my book and headed down a trail near our house to a blind to spend some time reading.  I didn't see any animals, but Mark has told me that the best time for spotting animals is just before sun rise.  Maybe someday I will be ambitious enough to get over there that early.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving at home.  Mom, you might have to make that blackberry pie again when I'm home.  It sounds delicious.  Only three more weeks and I'll be back.

Pictures

Who woulda thought.

Did you ever think I'd be using a pick axe to dig a trench to lay pipe?  Nope, me neither.  I think I will be doing a lot of crazy things this year.  I'm excited.

Photo by my teammate Ben.

Ameri-Birthday

Happy birthday to my teammate Amanda.  I'll take any excuse to eat pie and ice cream.  

Sunday Funday

Sunday Funday wouldn't be complete without a specialty coffee drink.  

Thank you Starbucks for buy one get one free on holiday drinks today.

The Quest for Water, Part 2

This wonderful, drinkable water came out of our kitchen faucet a bit ago.  Today, I am grateful for not having to drive to get water.

I am also thankful for this sunset I am currently enjoying.

Our Sponsors

Photo by my team mate Amanda.

The day we arrived in San Antonio we met our project sponsors.  These are the people who applied to have an AmeriCorps NCCC team come, and in turn promised to help us out along the way.  They're great.  In the photo you will notice my team, all dressed in our Ameri-tux.  

In the middle are Mark and Peggy, a husband and wife duo who help run LHI.  Mark is around every day and assists us in our projects.  Peggy has been an awesome Ameri-mom.  Our first night she cooked a Texan meal of beef brisket and corn on the cob for us.  Last night was my team mate Laura's birthday and around dinner time Mark and Peggy dropped by with a bag of birthday decorations, two cakes, and ice cream.  They're taking good care of us.

In the green shirt is my Team Leader, Nick.  He's great.  I couldn't have asked for a better TL.  He was on a fire management team last year, so he'll be able to lead the way next round when we get our first fire project.

On the right is Ramone.  We haven't worked with him too much yet, but we're going to volunteer at a Pow Wow his tribe is having tomorrow.  I'm excited to work more with him.  He currently has a son who is also doing AmeriCorps NCCC at the Denver campus as well, so he's familiar with our program.

My team is very lucky to have such great leaders and sponsors.

The quest for water.

My current living conditions in San Antonio are pretty great.  The only issue is the lack of drinking water.  We are hooked up to a well, and our sponsor has advised us against drinking the water because they haven't had it tested.To fix this problem, our first team project was to get us some water.

Trenches had been dug and pipe laid next to it, but we were there to finish up the piping.  We spent two long days doing manual labor to get the trenches evened out or dug out where the tractor had missed, get the pipe laid, and then cover it back up.

Here are some photos my teammate Ben took of us at work.  I feel the need to show you proof that I did some hard work!

This was our course of action to get water before.  The spigot at the tool shed about a mile up the road.

We're still working on getting the pipe flushed out and approved, but I'm just glad that work is finished.  We should have drinkable water by Monday.  I'm awfully excited.

Texas

We stopped at an America's Best Value hotel in San Angelo on our way to San Antonio.  I'm not going to recommend you stay there unless you are on a very tight budget.  I've never seen towels so gray and dingy in a hotel.  Nonetheless, the place had one redeeming quality.  Texas shaped waffles.  

They were mighty tasty.  Melinda and I shared.  I ate the western half of Texas and she took care of the eastern half.

Spike Number 1

My first AmeriCorps NCCC project has begun.  We arrived in San Antonio at the Land Heritage Institute on Monday afternoon.  Saying the place is pretty great is definitely an understatement.

The Land Heritage Institute website describes themselves as:

 a living land museum on 1200 acres of open space along the banks of the Medina River 

on the far south side of San Antonio preserving, maintaining and 

interpreting 10,000 years of continual human habitation

How awesome is that?!?

There is just so much to tell about this place, but I'll start with one of the neatest things. In our backyard are 32 pure bred Cattlemen's Texas Longhorns.  Yes, we have longhorns who roam around the 1200 acres and come hang out in our backyard.  

This calf is 3 weeks old.  So cool.

We've also adopted an Ameri-puppy.  A few days before we showed up a dog started hanging around our bunkhouse.  We've named her Daisy.  She enjoyed last nights dinner scraps.

San Antonio Bound

We are currently on day 2 of our 3 day journey to San Antonio.  Yesterday we stopped in Amarillo, and today we are stationed at a hotel in San Angelo.

Yesterday we stopped a Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico for a sandwich lunch.

Then we entered Texas.  Most boring drive of my life.

Although we did get to stop at a Starbucks next to Texas Tech.  Because we don't know when the next time we'll be able to get specialty coffee will be, Melinda and I doubled up with two drinks each.  Thanks again for the coffee card, Leigh.  You're the best.

Next stop, San Antonio.  I'm excited to see the Land Heritage Institute and find out what our housing will be like.

Tool Training

Jenny demonstrating her circular saw skills.

At first I was slightly terrified of the circular saw, but I have now conquered my fear.  I was able to play with all sorts of fun tools during tool training last week. 

It's Getting Real Now

Training is coming to a fast close.  Sun 3 (my team) takes off for San Antonio on Saturday morning.  We were originally planning on a two day trip but in accordance with the AmeriCorps motto, the only constant in change, we are now taking a three day trip.

AmeriCorps regulations state that we are not allowed to travel over 500 miles in a day, and while the trip is slightly less than 1,000 miles total, there was no place to stay at the midpoint of the trip.  Oh well.  Our first day we'll get close to 8 hours of drive time to get to Amarillo as our stopping point.  The second day will be a bit shorter as our target for that day is San Angelo.

That puts us at arriving at our final destination at the Land Heritage Institute early in the afternoon on Monday.  Starting work on Tuesday.

Today was supply check out and our trucks are now partially loaded.  We'll be sleeping on cots for the month, so we got those checked out along with our cooking supplies and some trail building tools.

I'm excited to get started but also sad at the same time to be leaving the friends I've made during CTI.  Tomorrow is induction and after that we're all planning on heading into Denver for a farewell for now evening.

Fire Management

Three of the 28 teams on the AmeriCorps NCCC Denver campus are designated fire management teams.  The members of these teams spend time in training to become certified type  two wild land firefighters and spend their 2nd and 4th round projects dealing with fire.  Mostly fire mitigation, but also with the possibility of actually fighting fires.

Due to the nature of the work, AmeriCorps members must apply and be chosen to be on these teams.  As you know from my last post, I am on one of these teams.  Pretty crazy, huh!?

There were a few different facets of the application process.  Physical testing, an interview, as well as an essay.  The physical testing consisted of two minutes each of sit ups, push ups as well as a 1 mile run.  Believe it or not, I actually did 17 push ups.  The interview was with Vaughn, the Sun unit director, and Nick, the sun unit fire management team leader.

After making the team our next step was the pack test.  The pack test is one of the qualifications to becoming a type 2 certified wild land firefighter.  It consisted of a 3 mile walk with a 45 lb. pack on our backs with a 45 minute time limit.  We headed to Golden, CO yesterday to take our tests at Colorado School of Mines.  I passed!  I crossed the finish line in 41:01.  Time to spare.

Now, I just know some of you are asking yourself why I ever decided to apply to do this.  Well, let me tell you!

I applied to AmeriCorps NCCC with the hope of getting some disaster relief experience.   AmeriCorps NCCC teams have been deployed to do disaster relief for every major disaster for a number of years.  Who actually responds to disaster is chosen somewhat methodically and somewhat randomly.  After learning more about the fire management teams and what they do, I realized that they do a type of disaster relief with their work.

Much of what I will be doing 2nd and 4th round with be fire mitigation.  I figure preventing a fire before it happens and gets out of control to a disaster state is a pretty worthwhile thing to be doing.  Also, the potential 4th round (fire season) to actually put a fire out is pretty neat.  Preventing a fire from getting out of control is also pretty worthwhile in my opinion.

Ameri-family

Continued from yesterday's post

.................

"Welcome to Sun 3, take off your blindfolds."  I happily obliged and as soon as my eyes adjusted to the light I looked around the van at my new team mates.  The people who will become my Ameri-family over the next ten months were in the seats next to me.

Some of the faces in the van were familiar ones, people I had become friends with over the past few weeks.  Others were unfamiliar, individuals I hadn't had conversations with before.

Now, remember back to yesterdays post when I talked about the fire management team I applied for.  Well, Sun 3 is the designated fire management team.  Our previously unidentified van driver turned out to be Nick, the Sun 3 team leader.  Hearing his voice meant that I had made it.  I was on the fire management team.

We all piled out of the van and headed into the park that Nick had driven us to.  We all sat in a circle with the biggest grins on our faces.  We had put our hearts into applying for this team, and we had made it.  The nine of us were chosen out of a very qualified applicant pool to make up Sun 3.  Five guys, four girls, and Nick our team leader.

The biggest question in our minds now; where are we going?

Team Reveal

This past month all 280 corps members have been organized into four units.  Earth, water, fire, and my own unit of sun.  Within each unit are teams of roughly 10 to 12 corps members each with a team leader.

In order for us to get to know each other and for the team leaders to get to know us before they placed us in permanent teams we shuffled around every couple of days in temporary teams.

I am happy to report that the shuffling is over and I have been placed on my permanent team.  Now, there is a little side note to go with team selection.  Of the 28 teams on campus, 3 are designated as fire management teams.  I, Nathalie Besse, applied to be on a fire management team.  Can you believe it?  (To apply we had to do a number of things which I will cover in another post.)  So to add to my nervousness about finding out my permanent team, I was also nervous about whether I would make the fire management team or not.

Finding out our teams was quite the adventure.  The team leaders put together a scavenger hunt of sorts.

We started out with all 70 sun unit corps members in a circle facing inward with our eyes closed.  The team leaders taped words to our backs and told us that we needed to sort ourselves into teams based on our words without talking.  We started this process and were having a tough time.  None of the words seemed to really correlate with each other.

After 5 minutes of confusion and frantically trying to figure out how words matched up in silence a staff member comes outside to where we are and stops us.  He tells us we all need to immediately go back to our dorm rooms because they need to investigate an incident that happened on campus over the weekend.

Disappointed we have to stop our team search, we all reluctantly head back to our dorm rooms.  When I arrived at my door, I found a note with my name on it.  I read it and immediately started laughing.  It read something like this... "Haha, Gotcha!  To find out your team go to (place on campus) for your next clue."  We each ended up having to visit a few places on campus before we were directed by our final note to go to the AmeriCorps offices.

I head on over to the offices and find that everyone is being blindfolded and directed to sit on the grass. I sit there for 5 minutes or so blindfolded, and in silence as directed, as everyone else in the unit arrives and is also blindfolded.

Next, a team leader comes, takes my hand, and tells me we are going to go somewhere else.  She leads me to what I eventually figure out is one of the 15 passenger vans and tells me to hop in the back, buckle up, and remain silent.

Now, as you may know, I have a little bit of a claustrophobia issue.  Mostly when I feel trapped.  Sitting in the back of a hot, stale aired, van while blindfolded induced a little bit of a panic.  For a minute or two I thought I may have to bail and go stand outside, but I held strong.  I took a few deep breaths and opened the back window.  But man, that was definitely a heart pounding minute or two.

Eventually the van filled up with people, someone got in the drivers seat, and said person started the van.  Next thing I know we were in motion and driving.  Keep in mind we were are all still blindfolded and not allowed to talk at this time.  We drove for 5 minutes or so and then the van pulled over and the driver spoke.

................

Come back tomorrow for part 2 of team reveal.

Ameri-isms

Lately we've been making words up like mad around campus.  I like to call them Ameri-isms.  It's pretty simple to do.

Ameri-family - Refers to the teams of 10 we've been placed in.  These are the people we will eat with, sleep next to, and spend all of our time with for the next ten months.

Ameri-loving - Refers to the couples that have formed around campus.  My friend and I have quite a laugh at the amount of Ameri-couples that have formed between our corps members.  Paul and I have been mistaken as an Ameri-couple multiple times.  We're finding it quite comical as we feel more like Ameri-siblings.  Other words falling into this category are Ameri-marriage, Ameri-baby, and Ameri-skeeze.

Ameri-dog food - The not so wonderful food we eat in the cafeteria.

Ameri-bubble - The bubble we live in.  We've been eating, sleeping, and breathing AmeriCorps this last month in Corps Training and find ourselves constantly talking about AmeriCorps.

Ameri-(insert word here) - The possibilities are truly endless.

I've got a problem.

Saying I have internet access on campus right now is a little misleading.  While there is internet, it has always been quite slow.  Recently, Colorado Heights University has added another hurdle to using the internet.

That hurdle is called filtering.

I believe the filtering is meant to keep people away from sites using tons of bandwidth and completely clogging up the network.

I am all for that type of filtering, however the university has taken it to another level I'm not thrilled with.  To help explain the batty filtering I have compiled a list of sites which have been blocked:

1. The New York Times

2. CNN  (My morning news intake is only through the unblocked NPR at this time.  Pretty disheartening as I like to check the top stories at a couple of different sites each day.)

3. Blogspot  (I am unable to access my own blog and unable to read anyone else's.)

4. You Tube

5. Pandora

6. NetFlix

Believe me, there are many more I just can't seem to remember them at this time.

The only site that pops up with any relative speed is Facebook.  Lame.  Even the Winona Daily News takes forever to load and not all of it shows up.

My only solution at this time is to keep my butt in this coffee shop chair and catch up on posts with some real internet.  A lot has happened since my last post, I now know my permanent team and where I'll be headed first round.  I'm going to get some some posts cranked out today and put publish dates on them so stay tuned for new posts all week.