The Week of the List

So as some of you may know, I have a list of things to do before I die that has just over 100 things on it. Well this week I completed 2 of the tasks:
83. Volunteer at a soup kitchen
93. Attempt a restaurant's food challenge
Volunteering at a soup kitchen just happened tonight actually. We had an ISP (independent service project) at the Great Falls Rescue Mission. We started off there serving meals and picking up everyone's trays afterwords. Then we were sent on a few tasks of wiping down walls, mopping, and organizing. Overall it was a good night there. We also had our supervisor visiting today so he hung around to watch us do taxes and we all had a meeting tonight. Luckily the meeting included 3 berry pie and root beer floats!
As for the food challenge....we found a place called the Downtown Dog House. Its a hot dog place that has a wall of fame for all the people who complete the Dogzilla and Holy Cannoli challenge in under 12 minutes. So of course a few members of my team and I had to attempt it. There were 4 of us but only Kyle finished right in time. The hot dog was 13 inches and weighed about 2 pounds with all the toppings on it. And in addition there was the 1/2 pound cannoli.  You can see it for yourself in a few pictures!

Pre-eating

This is how far I got in 12 minutes

Picture update!

This is back from when we rode the trolley around town. Rebecca, Sam, Kendra and Abby in the back. Fun times!

While we were on the trolley the driver drove us by this old bridge. They are trying to restore it and they added the cool blue lights.

Last week we did our "community mapping". As part of it we headed around to a few of the great falls!

The team in front of one of the falls. It was quite a chilly, windy day.

These heads are examples of my awesome haircutting skills. Thanks Ron and Kenny!

During our tour of the Ursaline Centre we headed up to Sister Raphaels gallery. Not all the art up there was hers but most of it was. Very cool stuff.

Sam and I hanging out at the rodeo! We all bought fun shirts from the flea market that day.

 It was lots of fun!

This is not my first rodeo

I'm trying to keep up on posting although I haven't been uploading my pictures enough. So the first week of training was a bit rough and I'm glad it's over. I'm officially certified to do taxes! Although I only completed the basic level. There is also intermediate, advanced, military, and international. But I can stick with this or move on to intermediate.
It was a long week of sitting at a computer for 8 hours day. We took advantage of our hour long lunches and added a few breaks to walk to a nearby coffee shop. The only very eventful thing during the week was the tour we got around the Ursuline Centre. We got to finally see the locked up rooms including one nuns art gallery on the top floor. Very cool stuff.
Today there was a flea market that we took turns working. We sat at the Tax Help Montana booth and also put our some Americorps info. It was a fun place to wander around and most of us bought some cheap used shirts.....they're mostly plaid men's shirts but we got them to wear to the rodeo tonight. I'm pretty excited about it. A few people we know from work will be there too so it'll be fun to be around newer people. I'll let you know how that goes and definitely post some pictures!

Great Great Falls

So last Friday was a super fun night definitely worth mentioning. In downtown Great Falls there is an art walk every Friday. It basically includes different galleries that are all open and have snacks and some had live music. We are just a mile or so down the road from all of this so a few of us head over. We found a couple of very cool galleries and there was a guy singing and playing guitar that even covered a Ray LaMontagne song. I thouroughly enjoyed it. As I was listening to him some of my teammates rushed in and said the trolley was leaving for its last run of the night but we can all get on for free. So we all hopped on without really knowing where we were headed.
The driver was a nice older later that was asking all sorts of questions about what we were doing and where we were from. There were 9 of us on the trolley plus two random people. The trolleys first stop was up to a random house. Our trolley driver stopped and said, "run in and say hi, you'll make her night." We were all very confused about what was going on but we all ran into this house. It turns out it was a temporary art gallery for the night so we checked out everything quickly and hopped back on the trolley.
After another small tour we pulled up to another gallery. This time the driver says we have to go in and she will park the trolley and be in in a minute. We can see throught the window that there is some live music and when we walk in we realize one of the performers is Jolene, a woman we had just met earlier that works with Tax Help Montana. And as we look around the room there is also Tom, the boss from Tax Help, and another women who works there. We all see them and acknowledge them....but they don't realize who we are for another 3 minutes or so. But it was great seeing them for a bit and Jolene is a fantastic singer.
Soon our trolley had to head out again and our driver decided to take the long route around town so she could show us an old bridge in town plus one of the great falls. And on our way back she dropped us all off right in front the Ursaline Centre at the perfect time for us to pick up our late arriving teammate at the airport.
Turns out it was a very unexpected and very fun night!

This is the most excited I've been in my whole life!

So it's the first morning in our new Ameri-mansion and there has already been and early mass and school and daycare are still going on on the first floor. This place is so neat!
We arrived at the Ursuline Centre yesterday just after 5pm. We met up with Margo (our supervisor from Tax Help Montana) and Harry (the director of the Ursuline Centre). They gave us a mini tour of our room (yes, just one), bathrooms, and kitchen/eating area. But there is so much more to see in this building!
From there we followed Margo to Tax Help Montana where we had a pizza dinner, which we happened to also have for lunch, and met Karen who I believe runs Tax Help Montana. They talked and talked about the town, themselves, taxes, Native Americans....they went on and on. And everything there were saying was so awesome! It turns out when we head out from Great Falls we will be going towards Missoula then driving up to Browing. Then heading east and stopping at different reservations and the last stop is down near Billings and North Cheyenne. They say hopefully we'll drive through all of Montana's 7 reservations!
Then there were all the fun things they were hoping we could do. They are looking into getting us deals on skiing, taking us to hot springs, and letting us in on a bunch of other deals. It's so exciting! Plus they not only fed us dinner yesterday but also had bought us food to take home with us. AND they're having a potluck for us this afternoon AND they're giving lunch all next week. Our food budget is going to last us a long time here.
I have so much more to say but this is the begining of all the info. Now for some pictures of our fun housing!

The bedroom

My bed!

Cool bathrooms, showers on the right

There is art everywhere!

Pianos are everywhere, too!

There will soon be more pictures coming to Facebook, but now I must get ready for orientation!

Back in Ameri-world

So...I just spent 2 weeks in Colorado and had a very nice Christmas break. There was snowboarding, cookies, presents, family and friends. And it was very much needed but not long enough.
Still, I'm happy to be back with my team and we are right back into hanging around eachother 24/7. Yesterday there were just a few meetings going on throughout the day. Starting off with everyone in a community meeting. Then I waited around until the afternoon when I had a peer helper meeting. Overall, not a very eventful day. Although Kyle and I attempted to purchase tire chains and only ended up driving around for two hours...it didn't work out. Today we got back into PT and had an all corps PT again. And since then I have been sitting around the dorms....waiting until we have something to do. There is another team that is heading to Alpaugh next so we have a cross-training with them in about an hour. After lunch we have our briefing on the new project and then I'm basically done for the day. Except for loading the van tonight! We head out for Idaho at 6AM tomorrow. We'll be staying in a hotel and hopefully we will be in Great Falls by Thursday evening.
We have found out that we are staying in a place called the Ursuline Centre and I believe there is a nun that lives there as well. There is a chapel on the 3rd floor that I believe holds mass every Sunday so it will be neat to check it out.
The program that we will work with is called Tax Help Montana. I still don't know much about them but we will start off in Great Falls for maybe 4 weeks and travel to other cities doing taxes the whole time. I'm excited to see Montana!
So basically there isn't much going on around here at the moment but I'll be sure to let you know more when it happens!