Induction enthusiasm

I've never been one to easily run with the crowd. I have to sit back and figure out what's really going on, and figure out whether i really want to go along with that particular movement. This has resulted often in my lack of enthusiasm at things like pep rallies. and most of the sporting events i've attended.

but at induction on wednesday, i felt really excited, really proud to be a part of something. It was a surprise to me. When i stepped back, looked at what i was doing and asked myself if i really agreed with it all, i said yes!

I was proud to be a part of the gold unit when we went around the room and each unit did our cheer. I was happy to stand and shout "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD!" and pound the nugget (pound fists with other gold members)

Thought i'd leave for interested parties out there the induction oath.

I, (insert name here), do solemnly pledge that as a member of the Americorps*National Civilian Community Corps, I will serve as a leader and active citizen of my community and my country and will accept equally the opportunities and responsibilities of citizenship.
I will support and uphold the mission of Americorps*National Civilian Community Corps to strengthen communities and develop leaders through team based national and community service and commit to my role as a full participant of the Americorps*National Civilian Community Corps, Sacramento Campus, agreeing to abide by the guidlelines established to ensurea healthy and productive community experience for all Corps Members.
I will participate as a self-governing member of our nation. I will inform myself about the problems of my community and my country. And i will work with other citizens to solve those problems.
Further, I agree to continue to serve my country as a leader and citizen, not only thoruhg my involvement in Americorps*National Civilian Community Corps, but throughout my life. I make this pledge freely and without promise of personal gain.


There, now it's like my whole family was there to see induction. (Hi family!)

Next time i post, I will be in Portland (and it may be a while, i dont' know when i'll get to a wireless port, or what the internet situation will be like when i get there.)

bitch

Hey! Bitch magazine is based out of Portland, and their office is only about 2 miles from where i'll be staying! how awesome is that.
Hooray bitch magazine.

Sarah Jane

This doesn't really have a lot to do with my NCCC experience. But it's a part of my path that led me here, so i guess it sorta does. In the summer of 2005, I worked as an aide for a little girl with a seizure disorder and severe brain damage. Her name is Sarah Jane, and she won my heart. She couldn't talk, or move on her own, but she has a smile that can melt anyone. She loves music, she loves school, she was learning and growing at a rapid pace that summer. I have gone a long way away from St. Louis since that summer with Sarah, but I've never forgotten. Her wonderful parents have kept me on their list for updates on how sarah is doing, and each one, with good news or bad, brings me right back to her and all the time i got to spend with her.

I learned a great deal that summer, helping the physical therapists and occupational therapists and speech therapists and music therapist. I went to doctor and hospital visits with Sarah and her amazing mother Sandy. Sandy is an incredibly strong and intelligent woman who I admire. She was pregnant that summer with her second child, Graham, who i sadly have not met. The last time i visited them was December 2005 and Graham was born in January.

I've listed the link to Sandy's website about Sarah, and i hope that at some point you'll head over there, and at least look at the pictures.

Hopefully i can go visit her while i'm home.

free time? what's that

CTI is wrapping up. We had our second baseline this morning. I shaved a minute and a half off my run time! And i did twice as many pushups and 20 more situps. Hell yeah.

And now, in the last couple days of CTI, they're stuffing every day full of trainings. It feels like each day is busier than the last. My team has our project briefing in the morning, more trainings tomorrow afternoon, then that's it! Induction (we become official corps members, ready to be deployed at any time) and Thanksgiving!
I'm excited about going home. About eating all those great thanksgiving foods and participating in home traditions. I'm sad that Kristin and Laura aren't going to be there, but i'm glad that i get to see my family. And who knows? maybe i'll even start tackling the project of cleaning out my room? (don't get your hopes up too much, mom. you know how i procrastinate.)

Right now, the information i have about where i'll be living in Portland is that it's a 3 bedroom house. (5 girls sleeping in cots in a tiny bedroom? it's like a dream come true!) and it comes with no furniture. And yes, you read that right. we've been informed that we'll be sleeping in cots. We'll get furniture from the Habitat Reuse center within the first week that we're there, but we've been told that we start work tuesday morning (after driving the whole way on monday and arriving very late monday night). We're hoping that this schedule will change in our favor. It's overwhelming to think we might start work before we can even get a cot to sleep on?

Yesterday was diversity training. It was a lot of things i've heard before, of course. But i thought that the women who lead it (both former NCCC) did a great job with it. It was hard...ok, impossible to stay mentally and emotionally engaged in the training for the full 8 hours. but i feel like i got a lot out of it, and i hope that other people on my team did as well.

Towards the end, they talked about volunteering as charity or solidarity, and shared with us a quote that i really liked:
"I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charidy is vertical, so it's humiliating. It goes form the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the others and learns from the others. I have a lot to learn from other people." -Eduardo Galeano

Lots of love to everyone. And comment! I want to know who's reading!

Camp Mendocino

My unit was at camp mendocino wednesday thru sunday. It was awesome, a lot of fun, lots of team bonding. We did this thing called Flying Squirrel, which is a high ropes course thing where you are harnessed in and tied to one end of a rope attached to a pulley about 25 feet in the air, then the rest of the team is attached to the other end. The team runs, the one person runs in the other direction, and ends up flying through the air, swinging back and forth.

I took an awesome video when i was flying, and i was really excited about posting it. But my camera seems to have lost it. Also, my battery charger doesn't appear to be work, which i'm thinking i can blame on the day that i walked around in the rain in san fran all day and my backpack got soaked. SO, if you want to see pictures from Mendocino, head on over to my team's blog (ncccgold1.blogspot.com) and check out the links over there.
In the meantime, my camera and i are in a fight. i'm very unhappy with it right now, it has not treated me well.

more sanfran fotos

San Francisco weekend

What a relief it was to be in a real city again! I didn't even make it to the real tourist attractions of the city, i was so caught up in just enjoying the city. I spent 4 hours walking around the mission by myself on saturday, and had an amazing time! I never rushed myself, i wasn't in a hurry to be anywhere, and i had no agenda. I just got to walk around and be a part of the city, something i haven't been able to do probably since may, in new york.

The city was beautiful. I met up with some americorps friends saturday afternoon and stayed with them the rest of the weekend. Sunday afternoon, we went to a park near twin peaks and climbed one of those famous San Fran hills to a rock face where we stood above the city, admiring its beauty below us as the sun set. It was beautiful and amazing.


So! the next time i go to san francisco, i have to go to the golden gate bridge, Fisherman's wharf, ghirardelli (are there free samples?), City Lights bookstore, all those famous things.


Tomorrow morning, i head to camp mendocino with my team and the rest of the gold unit for a service project, probably some bonding, and a little bit of ruffing it.
Back friday evening!

I am one week from done with CTI! This is exciting because i get to go home, then go to Portland and start the work which is the whole reason i'm doing this. This is also sad because i've made some good friends in the last month who i may very well not see again until the end of July.

Coming Out of the "Americloset"

That was the name of the event tonight. The Pride Alliance event.
It's funny, i didn't expect there to be a pride alliance here. but i'm realizing after tonight's event that i need it here more than i ever needed it in college. Drew, for all people may have said good and bad about the atmosphere, was incredibly accepting compared to the outside world. And especially for me, with the bubble i built for myself there, it was easy to be comfortable with being out.
Going to camp last year, I wasn't sure i wanted to be out... i just hadn't decided yet. But i did have a girlfriend that i was completely in love with, and the very idea that i wouldn't talk about her was pretty rediculous. So instead of not coming out to anyone, i came out within the first 5 minutes of conversation with the first person i had a conversation with. And Harriman 2006 wasn't 100% comfortable with my being gay, no one was ever mean to me about it. I hope that by my being just simply there and out, they became more comfortable with the world outside of heteronorms.
Pretty much the same thing happened last fall when i got to new york. the words "my girlfriend" just popped out of my mouth, and though i considered gender ambiguity for a second or two, i just didn't bother.
Back at camp this summer, i was so completely comfortable and in my zone that it was not even close to a question of being in or out.
So here I am, in yet another new situation. And I've been out to myself for years, to my friends for almost the same length of time. And now that i'm out to my parents, i guess i sort of feel invincible. They were the last frontier, and now that they know and are by and large ok, i don't even think about people being unaccepting. Generally i challenge people by dropping my sexuality like some sort of grenade, just to see how it'll hit them, whether they'll explode, implode, or just be cool with it. I don't care how it affects people. If someone i consider my friend doesn't accept me for who i am, then i pretty much think 'fuck them' and can't be asked to further pursue a friendship.
But my team... it's a completely different question. This is a group of people who have been thrown together. And despite our different beliefs and backgrounds, we are all going to be living and working together for the next 10 months. And for the first time in a long time, i feel that i need to approach the situation more gently, not just for my sake but for their sake. One by one, i'm feeling people out and getting to know them. I'm trying to figure out who would be able to handle knowing now and who needs some time. Basically, I want to know that the individuals on my team see me as a whole person, and not as a label. I really hate being pigeonholed into one label. I want them to see me first as a hardworking dedicated member of my team. Second as a compassionate individual invested in doing my part to improve the situations of people in this country who need my and our help. After that, i want them to see me as the opinionated, lighting obsessed, sociologically thinking, theatre loving, book loving, movie loving, music loving, quiet, intelligent, leadership qualityful, queer liberal feminist that i am. All of it.

Boys and Girls Club

Just a quick note, i have to go to a meeting in about 5 minutes. Just wanted to say a word about my team's day project yesterday.
I was excited to work at a boys and girls club. I've done a lot of volunteer work that is similar, of course. Like the literacy thing i did in college a couple times, for one example. It was helping kids with their homework then playing with them. But unfortunately, it wasn't well organized. I think there was a lot of work to do, but they weren't prepared for us, so they didn't have enough tasks to fill our time. And while most people would be excited to have more free time in their work day, we're Americorps, we're here to work, and we like to work hard. So it was frustrating, and a slow start. And we weren't given a lot of information or direction, just told to play with the kids. But the kids were cute. Surprisingly will spoken, a lot of them had really strong language skills, well beyond their years i thought.
In the end, it was a good day of work, despite the slow start. And my TL said that it was good for us because it gave us a taste for the kind of patience we need to have, because things aren't always going to go as planned. Flexibility! that's our middle name.

Must run!

bikes and movies

2 thoughts, neither of which i'm prepared to elaborate on at the moment, but i'm putting them out there.
the first, an article i found on portland, which calls it 'bike city, usa'
(that's the link.) it's the ny times.

the second is about the movie i saw tonight. My old pod leader, the lovely Ashlee who i still love and miss, had a showing of it tonight for everyone on campus, and quite a few people came out. It is a compelling documentary about the invisible children in northern Uganda. Uganda is next to Sudan, and many of the problems of the south of Sudan and of Northern Uganda are related and becoming worse together.
I haven't checked out the website yet, but it's invisiblechildren.com

and one more link, since Laura asked, and maybe everyone else would be interested as well: my team has a blog, which can be found at ncccgold1.blogspot.com
there are pictures of my team and such there. it's still a work in progress. eventually we will make it pretty, between trainings and meetings and everything else we do around here. :)

The next step

It's November. We keep saying that to each other, as we sit outside with the beautiful weather, the clear blue sky, and the temperatures in the high 70s to low 80s. It's November. Really? None of the seasonal things that usually tell me that it's late fall have shown up. I don't mind though, really. I don't like winter, so I'd be happy if it never came. I think I am the only person in my group who spent yesterday crossing my fingers for a hot weather location.
Oh, i didn't say? We found out yesterday where we're going on our first spikes. I was hoping for a Gulf Coast spike, for lots of reasons. I'm eager to get down there, to do the work i've wanted to do ever since the hurricanes first happened. And i knew that most people would be there, it would be nice to have more time with my friends who aren't in my team. And selfishly, I wanted to be somewhere it would never get cold. But there will be time to go to the gulf. In fact, as my first project is in this region, there's a pretty good chance that I could spend the rest of my time in the Gulf.
So where am i going? Portland, Oregon. We'll be working with Habitat for Humanity there. We'll have a 4 bedroom house to share between our 13 person team. Which is actually a pretty nice deal as far as Americorps goes, since it'll only be our team living there. We'll have some space and some privacy. And while Portland isn't exactly warm, it's not going to snow. It's just going to rain. A lot. I'm going to have to work very hard against my seasonal depression. The work will help. (As work always does) We'll be working Tuesday thru Saturday 8:30 am to 4 pm. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
It'll also be a great place for me to do a lot of my ISPs, because of the city setting. (ISPs are Independent Service Projects, we're required to 80 hours of service on our own, in addition to the hours we work at our assigned project.) I'm also looking forward to being in what i hear is a pretty awesome, liberal, hip city. I've heard good things about public transportation, always a plus.
I've got a lot of friends going to the Gulf. In fact, 27 of the 37 teams will be in the gulf. I wish i could go too, i wanna be with my friends. What if we are on opposite ends of the country for the whole rest of the 10 month service? But a friend told me when i expressed this concern that i think too much. and worry too much. yeah yeah, i know.
A couple of my friends are doing local projects, right here in Sacramento. Which means they've got 7 more weeks to live here at McClellan Park. They're frustrated, but the projects they're doing sound awesome. I don't know how i'd feel about being here. Especially if all my friends were sent off other places. It's definitely going to be a challenging transition for all of us. So many of us have made friends who are all on different teams now, and after Thanksgiving, we'll all be sent off to different places around the country. Will we stay in touch? How many of the friends I've made during CTI will still be my friends next July? It's hard to say, but then, it's not why I'm here, is it.
I'm here to do service, to work hard and help others. To work through my perceptions and prejudices and have a greater understanding of the people of this country as a whole. It's all about the service, and the friendships can just be counted in the perks.

Well, It's November 3rd, but the sky is clear blue, and it's supposed to get up to the 70s again today. So i'm going to go get dressed and spend the rest of this lovely day reading outside!