Mail

Just in case you feel so inclined:


Nathalie Besse
c/o AmeriCorps NCCC
52175 US Highway 59
Hodgen, Ok 74939

Next year I get a green shirt.

As mentioned previously, I'm going to be a Team Leader for AmeriCorps NCCC Class 19 based out of Denver, Colorado.  I guess I'll have to keep the blog going for another year, except this time you'll see me in a green AmeriCorps shirt.

I'm very grateful as quite a few people applied, and there were only 9 spots to fill.  I feel even more grateful that I received my first choice, to be in the office.  I love AmeriCorps, but would go crazy leading a team for the full 10 months.  As an office Team Leader, I will work in the office for first, second, and fourth rounds and then take a team out in the field third (shuffle) round.

My area of concentration with will be Operations (ops).  I had my choice between media and ops, and took ops without a second thought.  I will work with Brian and Paul who are in charge of all the supplies (from vehicles to tools), Eric who is the finance guy, and Vanessa in member support.  Should be a nice variety.

The blog may not be as exciting with work related tasks, but I'll have plenty of time to explore Denver, which I am pretty excited about.

Oklahoma Week 2

I wish I could start this post off with a picture I took of the 3 mile trail around our lake at the campground, but I seem to have forgotten my camera back at camp.  Instead, I'll start off reviewing our work week, which just isn't quite as pretty.  Anyway...

We became the U.S. Forest Service maintenance crew this week.  Not exactly the most exciting thing in the world, but we were occupied and working so we were happy.  Tasks included trail maintenance on the above mentioned trail, priming and painting a water tower, and lawn mowing at the campground.

I'm actually pretty happy with our trail maintenance task.  The trail around the lake is beautiful, but I was always absolutely freaked out on it because of the overgrowth.  I thought some rabid animal was going to come out of the brush and bite my ankles.  Now it's maintained and I have been taking advantage.  It's tough after a hot work day to get my butt in workout clothes and around the lake, but I feel great after.  And let's be real, I walk a lot more of it than I run.  But it's the effort that counts, right?!?  I'll get the pictures up soon.

Another AmeriCorps NCCC team is working twenty minutes from us in Heavener, Oklahoma so it's been fun to have some friends nearby.  Last weekend we had them over for a barbeque, and Wednesday night we went over to their place for dinner.  This will sadly end soon though, as we move 1.5 hours south come Friday.  Supposedly we're moving into air-conditioned Oklahoma State University housing.  We don't know many details, besides we're moving on Friday.  I'll believe it when I see it.  Although I am excited, camping has been great but it's getting a bit too warm for this Minnesota girl.  The past couple of nights I have abandoned the comfort of my two sleeping pads for the ground inside my tent, it's much cooler.  When I wake up around 3 am I move back to the sleeping pad because it's cooled down enough, but I'd rather just sleep through the whole night.  Conundrum.  It'll be over soon.  

As you may have inferred, we never headed to Arizona to fight the wildfires there.  They had them contained enough by Monday that they didn't need the reinforcements.  We're still in the system though, so we could be called for any fire anywhere in the states.  Our sponsor, Justin, says it's a decent probability we'll get called.  We'll see.  

Speaking of fires, we're definitely on call this weekend.  Being Memorial Day weekend with hot and dry conditions, they told us to be ready just in case.   The campground started filling up this past Wednesday/Thursday and as of Friday night last night, it's pretty well full.  We've got neighbors!!  We're keeping our fire packs and boots in the trucks so we're ready.  We're all itching to get some real fire experience.  

Stay tuned next week to find out if we get a fire this weekend!

Oklahoma. Part 2.

My round in Eudora ended with less than fireworks.  The rest of my team loved the project and really felt like we were making a difference.  Not so for myself, I felt like I spent the mornings babysitting 20 toddlers.  Alas, it's over and done and I have moved onto more interesting things.

Transition week in Denver was fun, albeit a bit overwhelming.  It was my first real transition week, as we missed the last one while we were in Branson doing disaster relief, and I found it mediocre.  It was great to see friends from other teams and especially Paul, but there was a lot of spare time that was spread out and in result didn't end up in enough time to actually go anywhere and do anything.  A few highlights included an awesome yoga class at a place in Cherry Creek called Kindness Yoga.  It was a tad expensive coming in at $10 (a days wage), but it was great to get off campus and get my yoga on.  The big highlight of the week was seeing the Denver Symphony Orchestra.  A group of  or so of us headed down to the Performing Arts Complex with our fingers crossed hoping we'd be able to snag some student rush tickets. We were in luck!  We were able to schmooze with the ticket guy and get $80 seats for $10!

It was a special performance that included a full chorus for the 2nd half of the performance.

Paul, Kat, and I at the symphony.  I got a haircut!

As you can infer from the blog post title, I am currently back in Oklahoma.  My team and I are living at Cedar Lake campground and it's been a fun experience.  

This is my new home.

We have a group campsite and I was able to stake my claim to a spot in the corner where I am able to find some solitude at the end of our long days.  I get my own tent, which is awesome.  They are pretty roomy, but would get cramped quickly with two people plus belongings.

While in Eudora, I ordered a hammock from REI.  I love it.  It's so great to relax in and is so unbelievably comfortable.

Our group bathhouse, gotta love it.  Mosquitoes and all.

Monday my team finds out if we've been assigned to detail in Arizona to fight the fires that have broken out there.  We'd drive to Fort Worth and then fly out.  Our sponsors said there's about a 60% chance we'd get assigned, but my gut instinct is that we'll be staying in Oklahoma.  

Other exciting news, I received a Team Leader position for next year!  Monday I find out my exact job, but I'm pretty sure I get to be an office TL, which was my first choice!  I'm super excited about it.

My internet time is about out, but I'll do my best to write again soon!

Round 3

Round 3 is flying by.

I'm in Eudora, Arkansas working at two different schools and at the J. Austin White Cultural Center, which is an after school hang out of sorts.

I work in a classroom of 20 pre-schoolers in the morning, and oh boy, are they a handful.  In the afternoons I switch to a 1st grade room and some evenings I take my turn at the cultural center.

Overall things are going well, but I'm excited to get back to Oklahoma for fire season soon.

I'll sum up the past couple of weeks in pictures:

We went fishing.  I'm the only one that caught any keepers.  

This is the road I run on.  Pretty boring.  I can see our house pretty much the entirety of my run.

An old building across from the Center.

Arkansas does have some nice sunsets.  This is our backyard.

We had to drop one of our members off at the Little Rock airport.  That meant I got to see Leigh and she took me to Central High School in Little Rock.

I spend time in the tree in the backyard (see above picture) reading.  Oh, and check our my new shoes, I love them!

Time for an Update

Yes, I admit it, I've been neglecting the blog.

We wrapped up in Missouri, I got a cold, we drove back to Denver, I've slept for the last week... and well, that pretty much brings us up to date, right?!  I guess I'll give a few more details :)

It seemed as though our two weeks in Missouri was the perfect amount of time for us to be there.  We arrived with the goal of doing initial disaster response; we wanted to get the immediate needs taken care of.  And as a team, with the community's support, we did just that.  Homes that were un-insured or under-insured had immediate needs taken care of (i.e. taps on roofs) and construction debris was moved to public dumpsters the county was funding.  The last few days there, we transitioned into a Long Term Recovery Committee (LTRC).  A few community members took over the disaster response effort and will work to get the people affected by the tornadoes back on their feet.  They will operate quite differently than we did with the initial response.  Instead of matching up volunteers with immediate homeowner projects on a day by day basis, the LTRC will will work with individual homeowners to get their needs taken care of.  The LTRC will work with large donations (Our VRC did not handle any money) to get homeowners necessary funding and materials to get them on their feet.  In a sense, the LTRC will act as case workers for each homeowner.  I know they will do a great job, too.

We left on Friday morning, and I woke up with a sore throat that progressed into a nice little cold by the time we arrived back in Denver after our two day trip.  Of course, we arrived back in Denver on St. Patrick's day, so I couldn't just go to bed and get a good nights sleep!  Laura, Melinda, and I got tickets to the Celtics/Nuggets game at the Pepsi Center and then we headed downtown for a green beer.

Melinda's a Celtics fan, so we cheered for them.  They lost.

Monday rolled around and we had our one day of paperwork to do.  Usually we have a whole 'transition week' with meetings and paperwork, but we were lucky and got it condensed down into one day.  We debriefed and presented our Oklahoma project to the staff and then did a question/answer about disaster.  Typically for debriefs we present with one other team to our unit leader and one other staff member.  Well, people were pretty interested in what we had to say as we had just about the entire staff there and a lot of the office Team Leaders.  Put a little bit of pressure on us, but we did just fine.

The rest of the week has been relaxing.  I'll sum it up in pictures:

We shaved Amanda's head!!  She raised money and shaved her head for the St. Baldrick's foundation which raises money for children with cancer.  It's a St. Patrick's day thing, so we did it right when we got back to Denver.  She looks good with a bald head!

Downtown Denver.  Got a new book at the bookstore with Laura and Max, then headed to the park on a nice day to read.

Happy hour!  2 for 1 glasses of wine, sign me up.

And this is what i've spent the majority of my time doing.  The weather has been beautiful, so I've spent some quality time on the hill behind campus reading and looking at the beautiful mountains.  Can't complain.

And that brings me to now.  Updating this blog with a tasty iced latte (thanks to the wonderful gift cards I received over Christmas, I'm still using them!).  

I head for the airport at 5:30 am tomorrow morning.  My first flight is to Dallas, and then I'm off to Jackson International where Jessie, my temporary TL for the round will pick me up and take me to Eudora, Arkansas to meet my new team. I'm a bit nervous, as I've never really talked to any of them, but I know it'll be just fine.   By the time I get there I'll really only have a month and a half on project.  I talked to Jessie the other day and she said I'm going to be in a pre-k classroom.  Quite the change from prescribed burning every day to spending it with little kiddos.  I'm not sure which will tire me out more, my bet is actually on the kids.  I haven't started packing yet, I'll get there eventually.

By this time tomorrow I will have been in 8 states in the past 5 months.  And will have lived in 4 of them.  I'm getting good at the packing game!

The long days feel like weeks, yet it seems as though we just arrived yesterday.

We just learned the ropes and tomorrow we're opening the VRC ourselves.

We're running on fumes, but the good work we're doing is getting us through.

It's outrageous to think we've already been here a week today.  Like I mentioned, it feels like I've been here for a only a day, yet as long as a month all at the same time.

I got out in the field leading volunteers again yesterday.  That was when it really hit that what we're doing here is really something.  I was assigned to a house with some volunteer teachers who had the day off school.  Up until this point I had only been moving construction debris to dumpsters, but today was a little different.  These teachers and I were helping this homeowner move what was part of their home into a dumpster.  Within the pile of construction debris were shoes, sweatshirts and Christmas ornaments.  We moved this persons life into a dumpster.  It was a feeling I've never felt before.  It really spotlighted that the tornado in Stone County changed lives.  We weren't just sawing up trees, we were throwing destroyed Christmas ornaments into a dumpster.

Two weeks ago this was someone's home.  Now it's in a dumpster.

Now, it's not all work for us.  We've found time for a little fun and time to unwind.  Last night we had free tickets to Dixie Stampede.  Seriously, look it up.  It was so much fun.  Mom- You would have liked all of the horses in the show.  Tomorrow we are in charge of the VRC from 9:30 to noon, and then we're getting the afternoon off!  I get to sleep in, and I have the afternoon off, woah.  Nick, my TL is coming over to our county to check out our housing, but other than that my only obligation is to relax.  Looking forward to it for sure.  We also have free tickets to an IMAX show, so maybe we'll check that out.

Life is good.  Crazy, but I guess I wouldn't have it any other way right now. I'm missing familiar faces, but I'll see them soon enough.  I'm tired, but I'm loving what I'm doing.