Backwards Blog

I'm not in the pic....but we mixed seed in the cement mixer

Garbage can full of seed

Working hard on the nature trail

I just accidently put the pictures first...oh well.  This isn't just the backwards blog, it's basically just out of order. It's starting and ending with me in Starbucks on Sunday but I wrote the center on Saturday. And it talks backwards about the week from there....now for Saturday:
Currently the Ameri-mansion is much cleaner than usual and the Rolling Stones are blasting through a sound system we just discovered. We are waiting for the Silver unit Leader to show up within the next hour or so. His name is Ben Richie and he is Chika’s supervisor as well as the guy who decides who goes to Hawaii or Alaska for the Silver unit. He goes around to each of the Silver teams during each spike. So once he gets here he will meet with Chika and Steve, the project supervisor. Then we will all drive around to the areas that we’ve worked to show him what we’ve done so far.
Speaking of which, we did a lot this week. On Monday we continued working on the nature trail, which we finished by lunch on Tuesday. Then we headed back to the wetlands where we continued removing bassia that afternoon and Wednesday. Sam and Ashley also finished planting the fields with Bill. But then on Thursday we mixed some more seeds so they were back to planting again. This time they were in a hurry because Steve heard it would rain on Saturday. So they planted all day Thursday and then headed out at 6:30 Friday morning. Ron and I joined them after work Friday and we all continued working until around 7:30 that night (which was quite a dark and rainy night). But we finished planting all 4,000 pounds of seeds that we had just mixed, plus another 700 pounds we had to mix ourselves that night. So basically, it’s been a long week.
Not to mention this morning we went to our first independent service project (ISP). Everyone in NCCC needs 80 hours volunteering in their free time to help out different organizations. Although I’m aiming to get the Presidential Service Award which requires an additional 20 hours of service, but I’m on my way with the first 5 hours out of the way. (Sam says hi.) We left at 6:30 this morning to drive to Tulare and work with the Salvation Army. They were providing boxes of Thanksgiving food to low income families. Silver 1 took the boxes across the street to senior low income housing. Then a few people arrived from Alpaugh and we drove back with them to deliver another 30 boxes to families here.
Now going backwards some more, I will tell you how we discovered the ISP. On Wednesday evening we went to the Alpaugh town meeting. There we just 3 board members in the room along with a few townspeople and a Tulare County sheriff along with a special visit from a representative of the congressman. We learned a lot about the community there and luckily heard about the ISP. We might also be helping out with a community cleanup later on.
Back in Starbucks again: Other things that happened this week…..I sliced my finger with an exacto knife, basically finished my first crocheting project (a small scarf that I’m going to add a button to!) almost finished reading Into the Wild abd next I’ll probably move onto Into Thin Air. Kendra and I realized why our cookies turned out weird…..we have small sticks of butter that look like half sticks, but are actually full sticks of butter. Oops. And last but not least, my camera finally died. But I’m sure I can steal some pictures from other people to show you. That’s about it for me. Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I’m sad I can’t be in Kansas! Miss you!