St. Louis... Home?

Home again home again. St. Louis doesn't really change much. It does, of course. Clayton Rd is wider now on what used to be my drive to high school. They're building a new shopping center with a Target and a Whole Foods right next to the Schnucks up the street. And the bar that is in the storefront that was once Fitz's has changed ownership yet again. (it's now called End Zone, just like the local sports bar in McClellan! goodie!)
But really, things are pretty constant here. The stockings on the chimney are the same ones we've always had, that my grandmother gave us back before i can remember. My parents and my brother are still annoying each other. The food is in the same place in the pantries and the house is always clean. I know, it's pretty basic, boring stuff. It doesn't make much difference, except to the child who leaves and comes back again, over and over.
Each time i come home, it feels different and it means something different to me. I've been home a total of 18 days in the last 2 years. It's sometimes a safe haven, and sometimes it feels like a trap. I have made choices that mean my environment and my circumstances are constantly changing. So I suppose it would make sense then, that depending on how i feel about the place i've come from, i feel differently about this one.
Right now, i feel idle. I've been home less than a day, but i've already done more sitting around than I have in the last month. And it's so quiet! And having my own room is strange, i can't believe how much space i have. My room here is twice the size of my room in the house in Portland. My house has never seemed so big or so quiet to me.

But it's nice to be home, looking at things, once again, with new eyes.
And i get to see Kristin soon! Can't wait. :)

Hello McClellan, you ugly ugly town

That's right! I'm back in Sacramento. My flight is this afternoon, then i'm home for Christmas, then Chicago for New Years, then back here to drive back up to Portland. And each time i spell that out, my break starts sounding very short. But i think i will definitely have time to relax while I'm home. Appreciate family, and alone time.

Driving into McClellan yesterday, my whole team was like... man. this place is ugly. I sort of didn't notice it before. And in the 5 weeks we were here, i kind of convinced myself it wasn't so bad. But really, it is. It's ugly.
But! The sun shines here. The sky is blue all the time. And sometimes, that's enough to make me happy.
I just looked up the weather, and it's warmer in St. Louis than it is here. But at least i know how to dress to run over to the BX (Base Exchange)

Every day is a new chance for me to learn how to live on this limited budget. I didn't fully understand what kind of impact it would make on the lifestyle i'm used to that i'd be living on about 70 dollars a week. Sure, my regular food is covered. But Portland is a city of coffeeshops, and awesome thrift stores and music stores. I said to one of my teammates yesterday in the gas station, the dollar has never had quite so much value to me. I used to 'treat myself' and get the drink at the coffee shop or the beer or whatever that was just slightly more every time. Now i think about what i could do with that one dollar, and i think , perhaps not. I have some cash in my wallet that i got out last week so i'd be able to use it in the airports on the way home. And it's hidden in my wallet so i couldn't use it in my daily purchases. So last night when i went to the bar, i had 4 dollars. Luckily, here in McClellan, 4 dollars goes a long way...as long as you get budweiser. So, going against my beer snob ways, i got bud. Not something i plan to do often. I feel that it's better to spend money on beer less often and get good beer, than get beer all the time and get the cheap shit.

I am very excited about going home, but i feel completely unprepared for Christmas. I don't know what i'm giving my family, i didn't have time to do proper christmas shopping, and i didn't ask anyone what they wanted. And even though i've seen christmas decorations around everywhere since thanksgiving, I think it's going to feel strange to see the (live!) Christmas tree sitting in my parent's house.
I suppose it feels even stranger because i didn't go home for christmas last year, i went to morgan's. Which was cool, but definitely different.

But at this point, it's hardly worth worrying over. I'll be home in about 12 hours!

I'm off to the bx for some cough drops. Speak to you all soon!

Macaroni Grill tonight!

Today was our last day of work with Habitat before break. Tonight, we're getting a complimentary dinner at Macaroni Grill. Macaroni Grill sponsored the sites that we just dedicated last week, and now the owner is buying us dinner! It's going to be not just our team, the site supervisors and the Americorps guys that work full time with Habitat will be there as well, so it'll be a nice way to wrap up the year before we all go our separate ways for the holiday.

At work today, I spent the morning making a small retaining wall. And after lunch, I bolted some steps up to the back porches into the concrete, and then laid sod. Then, all muddy from laying sod in the rain, we played pass the baby with the last roll of sod and then wiped mud all over each other's faces. Some of the volunteers seemed to think we were acting like children! I don't know why, honestly!

I'm starting to really look forward to going home. I think i want to find a book or something so i can start doing more yoga on my own. I like yoga classes, but with time constraints and no income, it's not really an option for me at this point.

I must go, i need to pack for break before i go to dinner tonight.
Happy Holidays!

Portland bridges

Today i took advantage of the day off, and walked downtown with one of my teammates. We walked across the broadway bridge, which has a drawbridge, and stopped often so that said teammate could take pictures. I can't wait til i can bring my camera back in january, there are so many things i want to capture. there's a great combination of industry and residential and commercial in this city, they practically intertwine.
We went to Powell's again, i love that bookstore, every time i go in i find myself wishing i had a million dollars and a million hours so i could get and read all the books in that store that i find interesting. Other people say they find the layout overwhelming, but i disagree. I find that finally, i can walk into a bookstore, just one, and find all the books i'm looking for in one place. And they're all for selling used books, so i can find it cheap too.
Tomorrow we're going to go hawthorne st and explore, and probably explore the area around there as well.
I have a bit of a cough that's been quite persistent this week, but other than that, it's been a great week.
We had the dedication on one of the habitat sites we've been working on. That means that the board of habitat and the families that are going to be buying the homes and the people who've been regular volunteers on the homes all got together and had a small ceremony and celebration acknowledging all the support and work that goes into making Habitat homes possible. It was nice to finally meet the families and to see what we're really doing and why it matters. It was strange though, to look at the floors and banisters and trim that we put in, and see it as something that isn't just the flooring i put in, or the banister my teammates put in, but it's someone's home, and the work we're doing is soon going to be a place where a family will live and grow. Will they notice the little nick in that, or the spot over here? will it matter? can they fix it?

We have some really great times as a team here in our cozy house, but i'm definitely going to be glad to leave for break. I'm only going to be in Sacramento for about a day, but i'm hoping that the weather will be nice and warm. Right before i go off to St. Louis, where they have snow right now. I'm looking forward to break so much. I just got an email from Laura today. She's in Spain for a few weeks before Christmas, and it sounds like she's having a great time. I can't wait to hear them at New Years.

Hope all is well in your part of the world.

Goodnight.

The sun does shine here after all

Week 2 at Habitat was much better than week 1. We had a much better sense of what we were doing, and they seemed to have a better idea of what to do with us, so we were better utilized. One of the houses is scheduled to be completed this coming week, so most of the team spent the entire week at that site. It was great because it's a walkable distance, and we can come back to the house for lunch, and it's a much more relaxed environment as well.
This week I:

-built a retaining wall with some guys who work for Adidas
-built a deck on a front porch
-more and more flooring
-trim in bathrooms and closets
-drove to home depot twice to pick up 1800 pounds of cement blocks
and on saturday, the sun was out and there wasn't a cloud in the sky all day! it was amazing. i was happy all day.



and then yesterday, on my day off, i went with some of my teammates to do an ISP (independent service project) in the northwest part of oregon that had been hit hard by the flooding last weekend. We spent the whole day ripping out wet insulation from underneath houses in one neighborhood. between my team and the other portland team, about 20 of us went, and we got 3 houses done.
It was hard, dirty work. It took me a while to convince myself i could do it, but once i was under there, i just worked hard on focusing on the work at hand. I only got scared a couple times. (i'm claustrophobic, and ordinarily, that kind of work would be very hard for me. but knowing how much it was needed pushed me to keep doing it.) More than the work itself, what hit me hardest was the people from neighboring houses who came by and said "how can we get help doing this to our house? how would we even do it if we had to do it ourselves?" there's definitely something striking about knowing how immediately necessary the work you're doing is.

<--the allstar crew i worked with























And in other exciting news, i got to talk to Kristin last night. It was a short conversation, but i've missed her terribly, it's been hard not talking to her. so speaking again was wonderful. we're going to have a lot to catch up when we go home for the holidays.

team blog

You should definitely go check out the Gold 1 team blog. There's a great summary of what happened our first week here, and there's a link to team bios on the side!

http://ncccgold1.blogspot.com

(You can also find this link on the side menu!)

Just a quick update since... yesterday:
The rain this weekend was insane! Yesterday my teammate Ben and i went for a walk in downtown portland, and i can't recall seeing anything other than a sadlooking Chinatown and a LOT of rain. The wind was really strong, and i honestly don't think i've ever been so wet from rain before. My mom's raincoat was great at keeping my upper body warm and dry, but my jeans were soaked through. At one point, i could feel the water dripping from my knees under the leggings i was wearing under my pants.
Next time, i'll just stay in and read.

In a total change, today was beautiful! There was even a bit of sunshine! Sure, it was through the clouds and not exactly warm, but sunshine!
Oy, it's going to be a long Portland winter...

Welcome to Portland, I hope you brought your raincoat.

Hello!
I've been in Portland for exactly a week now. It started raining not long after we crossed the border into Oregon, and it has rained at least part of every day since then.
We got to our house about 8:30 monday night, and started work 12 hours later.
What am i doing? Habitat! We're working on 2 different Habitat sites. One is in its final stages, putting on the porch and the inside trim and the flooring and stuff like that. The other was just the frame when we got there, and the last couple days, we were putting the roof on and starting the building of the porch. This week, i worked 3 days at the house that's just a frame, and 2 days at the house that's almost done. I got to do flooring, and on saturday when i was there, i trained other people on how to do flooring! I've gotten pretty comfortable with the jigsaw and chopsaw and table saw and skillsaw (i used the skillsaw while on the roof the other day) and a pneumatic stapler. I'm getting better at hammering. We're all going to have huge forearm muscles from hammering by the end of this project.
It was cool to be training other people on Saturday. Especially because they were my parents' age. At first, working with people outside of americorps was unnerving. We've spent all this time working and training together to prepare to do all these work projects together, and here i am working with other people! I forgot that there are people that don't know who we are. And when they see just one or two of us, they probably don't realize that the clothing we wear is a uniform.
Being able to drive manual has made me a commodity, as I am also one of the drivers, so i've spent a couple afternoons driving big old scary trucks. It was awesome! The first one i drove had a horrible sound because the muffler is just kinda hanging off. And whenever i downshifted, it sang to me.
It's really good to be working now. It's not always great, they're still figuring out exactly what to do with us, but we're all learning a lot, and portland is a really cool city.

Definitely check out the team blog for pictures, i'll try to post again soon. We don't have a connection in the house, so i'm at the coffeeshop down the street. I just need to have the time to get here, which i haven't had until today.
Hasta luega
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