A Little Background

I mentioned last night that I was updating my blog while we were lying around in our hotel room. Nikki was lying next to me on the bed and she would glance over occasionally to see what I was doing. She read the part where I explained the canoe trip and, seeing all of our names, she asked if I had explained who everyone on the team was. I realized that I had never done that before, I had only mentioned people in passing. Those of you who read this (all two of you) might be curious as to who all of these people are. Thus, I’ve decided to take this time to introduce you to my team and maybe a few others.

Earth 5:

Ervin Jeffers – Aka, “Swerve.” Ervin is our team leader. He did NCCC last year as a corps member and this year he’s back to give us rookies a little guidance. He’s 21, from South Carolina. He has an older sister with whom we’ll be working when we start our wildfire rounds. Ervin may seem like a man of few words at first, but he’s actually a funny guy. He’s a bit of a wilderness man. He loves hiking and sleeping in his hammock. Ervin was my first temporary TL and I’m definitely glad to have him as my permanent TL.

Harrison Entwistle – Harrison is 21, from North Carolina. He’s actually an NCCC vet, he was a member last year along with Ervin. He was studying acting while he was in college, so his impersonations are dead on and he’s a total character. I think he’s funny as hell. He can be a real gentleman and, though I can’t really seem to tell you why, he’s definitely a southern boy.

Adrienne Call – We’ve managed to coax Adrienne into letting us call her “Addy.” If I had a sister, I’d want her to be like this girl here. Addy’s 23 and from Michigan. She actually lives directly across the hall from me in the dorms but I hadn’t gotten to know her until she ended up on my team. She loves her coffee and she’s really sarcastic, but I adore that about her. She’s also not afraid to be honest or be herself. And she’s one hell of a runner, she keeps me motivated. I tend to have more close guy friends than girl friends, and I’m delighted that Adrienne has proven to be an exception to the rule.

Levi Ashley – I actually knew who Levi was before we got to Denver, thanks to an NCCC Facebook group. My first impression was that I wouldn’t like him at all. But on our first temporary team, we ended up together. He’s pretty much proven my first impression to be wrong and I’m glad. Levi’s the youngest of the group at 18, but the kid has done a ton of stuff in his life thus far. He’s on a search and rescue squad back in his home state of Maine. Ask him about that, cars or motorcycles and you’ve got him started. He’s got a story about everything.

Paul Gerhart – Paul actually reminds me of my brother in a lot of ways; the funny things he says or the way he always has to show me something on YouTube. He’s 20 and also from Michigan. He spent some time in the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) before coming to NCCC. Paul is always a surprise, you never know what he’ll do or say next. The kid is a cluster of energy, he is always bouncing off the walls or jumping around.

Michael Mitchell – Alias M Squared, Squid. For the purposes of this little bio, though, I’ll refer to him as Mike. Mike adds the spice to our team. He’s 23, from the Bronx and he is one cool cat. He’s totally chill and he’s a sweetie. He’s also a joker and an all-around fun guy. He’s “married” to Nikki, but he keeps divorcing her so he can flirt with other girls. And speaking of Nikki …

Nikki Adante – Nikki was among the first friends that I made during CTI. She’s 23 and from Ohio. She is frequently described as the sweetest girl you will ever meet. This is true, but don’t let her fool you – she’s more than meets the eye. She’s a great girl to hang out with and, like Adrienne, she’s an exception to the rule. I was so happy when I found out she was on my team. Nikki is the Jane Bennett to my Elizabeth (brownie points to those of you who get the reference). We are each other’s motivation and she is one hell of a trooper.

John Bowen – Aka “Uncle John.” John’s the oldest of the group at 24. He’s from Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, but he recently lived in Philadelphia for a time while he was doing another AmeriCorps program. So he actually knows where Lansdale is and we’ll occasionally talk about Philly. John was also on my first temporary team at the beginning of CTI. He’s got a quirky sense of humor that I adore and he shares Adrienne’s passion/obsession for coffee.

Travis Barton – Travis was another person whom I didn’t know prior to having him on my team. He’s 23 from “the streets of Brooklyn … Connecticut.” Travis is witty as hell and has flawless timing. Before I got to know him he struck me as an all-round nice guy and that’s exactly what he is. He loves baseball, playing soccer and he’s a loyal teammate. He’ll also blow you away at karaoke. And his purpose in life seems to be toughening me up, heh.


Some others worth mentioning …

Wolf 4: As I mentioned, while we were in Texas we stayed with a team from the NCCC Perry Point campus. If I didn’t have my team, I think I’d want to be with Wolf 4. They really were one of the main reasons we had such great experiences during our first spike. Everyone was great fun and hilarious. Their team dynamic is priceless. Noelle, Sarah, Emma, Renae, Mark, Mike, Pete, Nash, Wade, Tisha: I adore you all and miss you terribly.

Rory: Rory was one of our site supervisors for Habitat for Humanity in Port Arthur. He is truly a great man. He’s a genuine southern man both in his kindness and humor. My favorite thing he said was, “He was so high he was driving around town without a car.” He was a great teacher and we learned a lot from him, both about building houses and about life in general. We always looked forward to a day of work with Rory because, even when a situation was less than ideal, nothing could go wrong while he was around.


And while we’re at it, a word or two about Texas …

First of all, Texans LOVE being from Texas. I think they’ve figured out how to put the lone star flag on any object. I saw a car with not just one bumper sticker of the state of Texas, but two. Do you know anyone who has a bumper sticker of their state? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one in the shape of PA. I can’t imagine where I would get one. And this car had two. They’re not just from Texas – they’re REALLY from Texas. I don’t say any of this to criticize. It’s just different, something I find it amusing and endearing.

Now, when they say that everything is big in Texas, they aren’t kidding. It’s not even really something materialistic. I mean, yeah, I’ve never seen so many raised pick-up trucks in my life. But I think it’s more of an existence, an experience. There are miles of fields and, even in the more developed areas, the sky just seems bigger. It’s a sensation. There’s room to stretch out. You feel like you can breathe easier in Texas and I don’t think it’s because I went from being a mile above sea level right down to the coast.

And I have to say, we were lucky to be in Texas for the time we were there. The weather was gorgeous. It was as if we skipped spring and went straight to summer. For someone like me who hates to be cold, it was delightfully rejuvenating. Even when it was too hot for others I loved it because, in the back of my head, I knew it was snowing in Colorado and it wouldn’t be long before we were back in the mountains.

"Drivin away, leaving it all behind ..."

Currently Reading: Don Quixote, Cervantes
Oh, heavens. I am so far behind, shame on me. Things have been so busy since my last entry.

We ended up passing off our Port Arthur house to a group of volunteers from Oklahoma, I think. While they adopted work on that house, we put decking up on the underside of the houses in Sabine Pass. Yeah, everyone thought that we were done with them. Every time we went back, it was to do a few finishing touches and they were finished. Well, now they're finished for real. Decking is frustrating. It's supposed to cover the insulation underneath the house, preventing birds from nesting up in it. But putting it up requires spending your entire day looking up with your arms over your head the whole time. We also had some issues with measuring the pieces and getting them flush on all edges. By the end of it, we had somehow found a rhythm. Still, we were definitely glad to finish that little project.

That next weekend, me, John, Nikki, Adrienne and Travis went canoeing with Wolf 4. That was lots of fun. We did a nine-mile stretch of river and spent seven hours on the water. It was awesome. We all had names for our boats. Nikki and Travis were Man Boat; Sarah and Renae were Gettin Wet for Jesus; Pete and Emma were Free Spirit; Wade and Noelle were Buzz Kill. Apparently as soon as Team Man Boat got on the water, they flipped. Poor things! Nikki lost her shirt and her sunglasses, Travis lost his hat and lunch. Still, we all survived. Mark and I half capsized at one point when we got stuck on a fallen tree. Nothing suffered besides us, though. I ended up with some prized bruises by the end of the day. It was great, good battle scars.

So canoeing was Saturday. On Sunday, Earth 5 had another ISP scheduled at Buu Mon. This time, we spent the morning fertilizing all of the buckets of lilies and lotuses. We only worked up until lunch, though, there wasn't much to do after everything was fertilized.

We kept decking on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. On Thursday, we went back to Beaumont, the first project location we had at the very start of our round. Everything had come full circle! We spent the day roofing. I loved it! It was a really nice day for it, too. The sun was behind the clouds all day and there was a light breeze. I spent all day putting shingles down on a roof, it was great fun. Unfortunately, it was downpouring hardcore when we woke up on Friday, so we reported to the warehouse. The site supervisors divided us up and took a few groups to different houses to do some interior work. I was a part of a group that remained at the warehouse and built some sheds. It wasn't bad. Adrienne and I cut 2x4s all morning. We helped assemble sheds after lunch.

For our last weekend two of the site supervisors, Rory and Troy, showed up to our humble shack on Sunday with some barbeque for us. That was a nice little gathering. And I believe we invented a new game while we were hanging out. It's called Triple Threat. It involves throwing around a frisbee, a football and kicking around a soccer ball all at the same time. Sometimes, you try to bombard one specific person with all three. But basically, it's just fun to try and keep them all going.

On Monday, we were able to go back to Beaumont and keep roofing. It was sunny and a little humid, though I know the rest of my team would probably say that it was really hot and humid. Personally, I enjoyed it. And we were roofing! So I had fun. After work, our team went out for our team dinner. We went to a Chinese buffet, because it was the only thing that would fit in our budget. Big mistake. I should never ever go to buffets of any kind. I always want to eat a little bit of everything and that always ends up being way too much.

After we got back from dinner, the livestock were grazing near the Y again so some of us were feeding the horses. There's one that was really friendly, she was a sweety. She really liked me. That, or I just had the right kind of grass for her.

So we all lounged around for a while, put off packing, and tried to spend one more good night with Wolf 4 as we could. Eventually, I packed up most of my stuff. A few of us in Earth woke up the next morning to see Wolf off to work. There was lots of hugging. Not gonna lie, I cried a little. After they left, we finished gathering up our stuff and Earth 4 showed up. We packed up, ate lunch and headed out. After a little driving, I started crying a bit. I think leaving actually started to hit me. I felt really detached, it was a little surreal. I'm really going to miss those guys. I think Adrienne pointed out the night before that we'd actually spent more time with Wolf 4 than we had with most of the people in Denver. We'd lived with them for a longer period of time than CTI, we were around each other a lot. We spent a lot of time together. Our first round is insperable from them. They were definitely one of the reasons our first project was such a good experience. They were great people, I'm really going to miss all of them. I hope we can keep in touch. If they have a project near Philly when I go home on breaks, I think I'll try to visit.

As of right now, I'm lying around in our hotel room in Amarillo. We spent last night in Dallas. We're apparently getting up wicked early tomorrow to make it back to Denver early enough to go to a Rockies game. We'll see how tired I'm feeling. It sounds like it would be a good time.

Okay, speaking of ... that's all I have as an update for now. I know I have more to talk about, but I think I'll save that for when I've settled back into my dorm. Sorry it's been so long! I hope it won't happen again. If those of you reading have any questions about what's going on with me, feel free to post them and I'll be sure to answer.

I save tadpoles.

Goodness, I have some catching up to do. Let's see ...

Well, the Air Force Academy left on Sunday morning, I believe. No ASBs arrived that night, so we're pretty sure that was the last group for the rest of the time that we're staying in Port Arthur. Things have been a little more lax as a result, heh. Lights don't go out right at 11 pm, things are a little less organized than normal (re: messy), and some of Wolf 4 are now sleeping in our room because it's air conditioned (or, the air condition is working).

Things on the work site have been going well. Wolf 4 has been at a different site all week. We all miss working with them, but at the same time we now have more work to do because it's just our team of just ten people. This past week, we finished up the houses in Sabine Pass. Their dedication ceremonies for the homeowners are today. I was going to go but I need to do grocery shopping.

My 23rd birthday was on Tuesday. I got to wear our site supervisor's Panama hat for the day (every day, someone different gets to wear the hat). At lunch, I got a surprise: a slice of carrot cake from the convenience store down the street. So good! After work, everyone got cleaned up and we went out to dinner as my gift. We went to a Mexican restaurant near the Y. It was so good! Almost everything was fried, but damn. I didn't realize how much I missed Mexican food. It was a staple of my diet for three years because I worked at Tortillas. I had it at least twice a week because of my shift schedule. But yeah, it was delish. And my team got the servers to sing Happy Birthday, even though I specifically told Ervin that I hate it when people do that to me. Oh well, it was still a lot of fun. When we got back to the Y, we were hanging out for a while. I was going to call it a night but then a big group went bowling, so I joined in. It really was the greatest birthday. I ordinarily don't celebrate my birthday or make a very big deal about it. But it was a lot of fun to just spend time with my team.

We went to a new work site on Wednesday; it's actually in Port Arthur, so it's a quick drive and I get to sleep in an extra 15 minutes in the morning. As I said, it's nice to have fewer people because there is more to do. But with this new work site, everything actually has to be redone. Nikki and I pulled up a bunch of baseboard trim because they weren't lined up. Our site supervisor, Rory, has a few people working with him specifically on rehanging the kitchen cabinets, because they were done wrong too. It's a little frustrating, because it makes more work for us when we could be using our time to make more progress. Instead, we have to fix contractors' mistakes all along the way. Sometimes I wish Habitat would just have us do all of the work instead of contracting out for some of it -- at least we would make sure it's done well. You just get the impression sometimes that they don't care about the quality of their work because it's a Habitat house.

Ervin's birthday was yesterday, so we had a cook out for him. Yum yum.

Yesterday, a bunch of us did some ISP work at a Buddhist temple here in Port Arthur. It was the best ISP ever! It was really the most fun I've ever had and so rewarding. We spent the day dismantling a big lily/lotus pond that they had in one of their gardens. We had to drain the pond, remove all of the invasive weeds, and resubmerge the lilies and lotus pots into other tubs of water. We also had a tadpole/frog rescue operation going on the entire time since so many of them live in the ponds. That was especially fun. Between playing with tools, getting muddy and catching tadpoles, AmeriCorps has pretty much restored my childhood. I'm seven years old again. Hee. But yeah. It really was the most amazing experience, even just being there. We're gonna go back on the Saturdays that remain before we go back to Denver.

I feel like there's more I have to say but I can't think of anything. I'm going to do kitchen inventory before I go grocery shopping, so I'll run over the past week in my head to figure out if I forgot anything.