Chainsaw Training

We arrived in Oklahoma on a Sunday night and our sponsors informed us that Monday afternoon we would be heading to Lake Ouachita State Park in Arkansas to do chainsaw training with anther AmeriCorps NCCC team working there.

We unpacked and packed our bags for our 3 day stay in Arkansas.  Chainsaw training consisted of a day of classroom training, and then a day in the field.

The field day was fun.  We worked in the area of the park that was tornado damaged so our work was most definitely beneficial.

When we got back to Oklahoma we headed out to the field to do some actual felling.  It was nerve wracking but our sponsors were right there next to us going over everything we had learned and making sure we were being absolutely safe.

This is the tree I felled.  Crazy, huh!?!

Mom - Don't worry, we're being really, really safe!

Oklahoma!

We took off for Oklahoma at the end of transition week and made the trip in two days.  Stopping in Kansas on the way.  It was nice to only have two days of travel this round as opposed to the three when we went to San Antonio.

We stopped at a gas station in Kansas that had fake palm trees outside.  What's up with that, Kansas?

Our sponsors are nice again this round, although I don't envision them dropping off baked goods like Mark and Peggy did.  I'll talk more about our sponsor, the U.S. Forest Service in another post.

We're living at Camp Tom Hale, a boy scout cabin in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma.  It's pretty neat.  We're 20ish minutes from the nearest town, which has a couple of gas station and a Subway.  We're about  45 minutes away from a McDonalds that has wireless Internet.  It's about a forty minute commute to work each day.

We're living in the nicer staff cabins, which have bathrooms!  A definite pro.  There are four cabins we have access to, the 3 other girls on our team and I have a cabin.  Then the boys split up in threes in the other cabins and we designated one as our hang out space.  We've dubbed in the Command Center, as we lovingly refer to our team leader as Commander Connolly (his last name).

I've upgraded from a cot to a bed!

The camp is huge!  It was finally nice enough out to explore yesterday so Max and I checked the place out.  I'll write up another post about it soon when I get more pictures of it.  Below is a sneak peak of the  amphitheater.

One of the biggest con's of the camp is that there is no running water in the commercial sized kitchen we cook in.  There is also no heat in the kitchen/dining hall, so for the past two days that's been a pain. We've learned to bundle up for dinner.

This is not a joke, this is how we actually bundle up for dinner!

Seeing as we don't have internet, I'll do my best to write weekly updates when we 'head to town' for our weekly Wal-Mart trips for groceries.

Transition Week

After a two week Christmas break home in Minnesota it was back to Denver for transition week.  It was a few meetings with a lot of hurry up and wait in between.  

My team chose myself and my teammate Melinda as Peer Helpers for our team so we had a training for the position.  It reminded me a lot of RA training.  We're not expected to give advice, just to be there to listen when needed.

It was also fun to see the friends I made during training.  We headed downtown Denver a few times and had a good time.

Tower of the Americas

San Antonio's version of a space needle.

Tamalada

Part of my AmeriCorps NCCC requirements for graduation are to complete 80 hours of independent service hours (ISP’s) in addition to the 1700 hours of service we complete as a team working for our project sponsors.  This past round my team was able to complete close to 25 of those hours.

We spent a day volunteering at a local high school Tamalada.  The students were attempting to set a world record for most tamales made in a day.  Students from neighborhood elementary and middle schools also came to made a few tamales as well.  Here are some pictures from the day.

Big Lou's

My teammates and I demolished a 42 inch pizza this past round.  We made a stop at Big Lou's in San Antonio and filled our bellies with a delicious pepperoni and mushroom pizza.  I personally stuffed my face and finished a single slice.  No small feat when a single slice is equivalent to a 10 inch pizza.

Sea World

Have I told you guys my sponsors this past round were awesome?  Well, they definitely should win an award of some kind.

Mark and Peggy were constantly bringing us treats and surprises.  The one that's going to take the cake was a free, behind the scenes, trip to Sea World.  No joke, you guys, it was amazing.

We went on a Wednesday when the park was closed to visitors, so we had the entire place to ourselves.  Well, minus a few workers who were being busy bees working away.  We had a tour guide who took us around and was so knowledgeable about the park and the animals.  It was freezing out, but I was so interested in everything I didn't even notice.

Our first stop for the day was the Killer Whale tank.  There were trainers busy working with 2 of the whales and one came over an chatted with us.  He brought the whale he was working with over and did some fun tricks for us.  He also stayed and chatted with us and answered our questions for 20 minutes or so, another trainer came over and chatted as well.  He had been there for 18 years, since the park opened!  Our tour guide told us later that never happens, that the trainers took time to come over and talk with us.

Next up was the penguin tank.  We got lucky on our timing and they were feeding when we were around so it was fun to see that.

The other big highlight from the front of the park was the Bottle Nose Dolphin area.  The dolphins are in an open tank and visitors can try to pet them.  Since we had a smaller group and there was no one else around many of my team members were able to touch them.  I didn't get that lucky, but I did get splashed!

The behind the scenes portion of the tour was awesome.  We got to check out a tank of sting rays.  Our guide let us put our hand in the water and sting rays then would swim right underneath and touch us.  There was a tank of baby sharks and our guide caught one and put it in a smaller tank so we could tough it, too.  It felt almost like a fine sandpaper.

Sting Rays

Here is our tour guide catching the shark!

Some other fun pictures from the day.

After our tour, Mark took the whole team out to lunch at a fun Tex-Mex place.  Laura and Melinda even got serenaded!  They definitely spoiled us this round.