This Week in Photos!

These pup-pups visited us on the trail. So cute!


The dishwasher was full (and clean), but instead of emptying it we all decided to just pile our new dishes to the side when we were done washing them. I thought this was hilariously lazy and necessitated a photo.

We spent one day this week building a trail at a different location than we normally work on, about a mile away from the farm. We created a path using felled logs. Before:


After:

Weekly potluck at the Interpretive Center (the main building at the Gorman Farm where school groups and community members visit and buy homemade honey!) They also have baby chicks hatching/growing in a heated enclosure in the hallway. Pretty sweet. Here we are stuffing our faces:

Fracking Kentucky

I just learned a new way to express a commonly-used obscenity in a way that is both publicly acceptable and hilarious: "Frack." I use this new-found word to describe how I currently feel about the state of Kentucky. Primarily because the following incident occurred:

Last night, my team and I decided it would be a lovely idea to head into downtown Cincinnati after dinner and take a stroll across the historic Roebling Suspension Bridge. Built in 1866, it connects Cincinnati to Kentucky and is a great location for photos like the ones my teammate Gaby and I were taking as we skipped across the bridge joyfully yelling, "We're running to Kentucky! We're skipping to Kentucky! etc."




Then, just moments over the center point of the bridge where you actually cross into Kentucky, this happened:

Wipe out. Not 2 feet into the dang state I tripped, fell, and ripped the shite out of my knee. I also tore a hole in my brand new NorthFace coat, ruined my pants, and shredded a glove. I assure you there was significant complaining on my part for the rest of the night, but I decided to suck it up and enjoy a delicious ice cream at Graeter's in Fountain Square. After all, this was a classic Darcy move as evidenced by the fact that my mom's initial response to hearing of this mishap was, "Oh, Darcy. Don't you know by now that you're not good at running?" Fair enough, Mom. Fair enough. After purchasing this sundae and a 32oz bottle of hydrogen peroxide, I guess I'll chalk it up to a good story.

Fact: Trailbuilding is hard. Fiction: Ohio is warm.

Over the years I have traversed many a trail in national and local parks. Never have I thought to myself, "Gee, this is a lovely path, I wonder how it got here." But this week I found out. Trails are basically built by a big 'ole team of people with shovels, rakes, and fire-fighter axes busting their bums in the cold, rain and wind on steep hills with aching backs and freezing mud-soaked gloves for 8 hours a day. True fact. haha It's pretty hard work, but also neat to be able to see an immediate physical result to your actions. Over the last week, we've "benched" a ton of trail, which is basically cutting into the soil on one side of a path and pulling the dirt to the opposite side so you're leveling out the walkway and making it less steep and easier for people to walk on. We've also pulled out a bunch of honeysuckle, an invasive plant species not native to the U.S. that tends to grow over trails as well as block sunlight that native plants closer to the soil need to grow.

Here are some members of my team speaking with our site supervisor, Ted.


Shoveling wheelbarrows full of wood chips to place over a large portion of trail downhill that was collecting rainwater and becoming too muddy for us to get our golf cart up to the trails:

Benching a trail:


And removing honeysuckle:



Did I mention that the temperature here is ridonk? Basically one day it is a t-shirt-worthy 70 degrees, the next we are hiding indoors while a tornado siren blares at us, and 2 days later we have a forecast of 1.5 inches of snow. WTF, Ohio?!

Maple 4 Goes to the Zoo

Our project sponsor got us free tickets to the Cincinnati Zoo, and we used them over the weekend.




Props to Gaby for the nice animal shots. Cincinnati Zoo is the second oldest zoo in the country apparently, and hella huge. So obviously we got lost:

My team was fed up, so they tried to feed me to this Alligator:

Welcome to Cincy!

On Thursday, my 10-member team crammed into a van with 11 seats and filled any empty space with bags, food, tools, rain gear, and coolers. Then we drove 10 hours from Vinton to Cincinnati, Ohio. It was epic. But we made it, and despite the lack of personal space, it was a pretty relaxed & uneventful trip. We even got to break up the trip with a stop at Taco Bell.


For the next 6 weeks, we will be living at the Gorman Heritage Farm, 120 acres in the middle of a bustling suburb of Cincinnati called Evendale. The farm, the oldest and one of the only remaining farms in the area, is used for educational purposes so that people can visit to learn about farming methods, rent a garden plot, or buy meats and vegetables produced here.


Gorman Farm grows corn, alfalfa, different types of lettuce, berries, apples, potatoes and that sort of thing. Our neighbors are goats, horses, mules, roosters, cows, bunnies, and chickens. The goats are pretty friendly:


A lot different from Boston, as you can imagine. When we toured the farm with our sponsor on Friday it hit me how bananas it is to go from working 9 to 5 at a desk in one of the busiest cities in the country to hanging out with cows on a farm 900 miles away. On Monday, we start work on our project, fixing old trails and building new ones on a hill adjacent to the farm. Members of the community use these paths for exercise, to cut through from one housing development to another, or to get to the Walmart, which is literally a 5 minute walk from our house. But when the paths were originally built the grading was incorrect, so there are a ton of crazy-steep paths and muddy areas where rainwater collects.


That's where our team comes in. It will be a lot of hard manual labor using tools I'd never heard of before AmeriCorps like pulaskis and MacCleods. It's likely I'll even get chainsaw trained in the next couple weeks! I'm really looking forward to the change of pace.

On a side note, the farm house we're staying in is reportedly haunted and I'm pretty excited about it. I just got a new digital camera this weekend so I'll try to take some good ghost shots and post those bad boys on here.

AmeriBlog

The Maple 4 Dinos are blowin' up right now. Two weeks ago, the 2 media rep corps members on my team (Phil & Gaby) applied to be the authors of the 2011 AmeriCorps national blog. And guess what? They got it! That's right, out of about 80 to 100 NCCC teams serving our country right now, my team's journey is going to be chronicled on the national blog. We'll be writing the posts as a team and submitting photos and videos to share with all of America. It's so exciting! Check it out:

http://ncccblog.americorps.gov/

Tonight was also the official induction of AmeriCorps Class 17 into NCCC, which means training is over. Tomorrow at 6:30am, my team will finish packing our belongings into a big 15-passenger van and head to Evendale, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. More info to come!

I Heart My Team

Maple 4 with Block by Block site supervisor Bob (Center, bottom row) in front of one of the houses we helped renovate in Cedar Rapids:

The Good, The Bad, the NCCC

The Bad:

Last week I realized that I am completely out of touch with what’s going on outside of AmeriCorps. This realization occurred as I was sitting in a hospital lobby waiting for one of my corps members to have a sinus infection checked out. I decided to call my friend Lara after seeing I had a missed call from her. During this conversation I found out the incredible news that her husband and my friend Dave, who is a captain in the U.S. Army and was supposed to deploy to Afghanistan this month, just found out he’s not leaving after all. Wha?! I was totally shocked. Then she said she had been trying to reach me for days to no avail. I checked my phone, and realized that I had, in fact, missed multiple calls as well as a text message from her from 2 days earlier saying that she needed to talk to me right away. HOW DID I MISS THIS?! I was so upset I started to cry... right there in the hospital waiting room. If there is one thing that’s important to me, it’s keeping the connections I have with family and friends, and I definitely feel like I have been slacking off big time on that over the last 2 months. I think this will get easier to manage once I’m out of the NCCC training period and off doing projects, but it’s definitely scary. Things are happening back home and I’m not there to see them. My mom just got a part time job at a pharmacy in my hometown after looking for close to a year. Kate and Nick just found the Beacon Hill apartment of their dreams—and bought it! My friend Laina, who I have known since the first day of kindergarten had a birthday 3 weeks ago and I literally just got around to calling her. And I feel like that’s really not acceptable. So I apologize in advance to everyone who I inadvertently offend over the next 9 months with a lack of response to emails or phone calls. I’m still figuring out how to manage this new work life with my NJ/Boston life, and it’s definitely a challenge.

The Good/The NCCC:

As for the “good” things going on in life right now, my team had a mini-spike this week that was fantastic. We were sent to Cedar Rapids, where we worked for 3 days to rehabilitate homes damaged by the Iowa flooding that occurred in 2008. My team was able to do a number of projects that included assisting in the construction of a garage, interior and exterior painting, tuck pointing, dry-locking, mucking, paint scraping, and more. During the last few days I was shocked to learn about the extent of the devastation caused by the flooding. Cedar Rapids saw 19% of the community displaced after the Cedar River crested at 31.2 feet and surged across the city. Our site supervisor Bob, with our sponsor organization Block By Block explained to us the floods Iowa saw were comparable to Katrina and that the 2008 Iowa event was actually the fourth largest natural disaster in American History. So why didn’t it get as much press as other national emergencies??? Apparently Cedar Rapids had been bracing itself for some flooding, as they had a large snow melt that winter followed by a rainy spring. In effect, they were somewhat prepared, and had already taken steps to sandbag certain locations. They may not have expected such dramatic flooding, but they were quick to act, resilient and fought back without asking for a lot of outside help. Add to that the fact that Iowa doesn’t include any big glitzy cities and you can see why it flew under the radar. It was amazing to learn as much as we did and be able to give back to a community so close to Vinton. Thanks to Block by Block for training us and including us in their efforts to revitalize Cedar Rapids.

Maple 4 Dinosaurs

Last week I got my actual team for the year, and let me just say right off the bat that they are amazing. There are 10 of us total, split equally between guys and gals. We arrived from opposite ends of the country (Oregon to Miami), with very different backgrounds, our ages ranging from 18 to 26. Some things we all have in common are the desire to serve, “get things done” as the NCCC pledge states, and have fun. Together, we form Maple 4, in my opinion the best team on campus! My evidence:

• They’ve already deemed themselves the “Maple 4 (that's our unit and team number) Dinosaurs.”
• We have a bangin’ logo:
• Our cheer:
Maple 4, Dinosaur! Maple 4, Hear us roar! RAARRR!
• During breaks in trainings they like to run outside in the cold and do jumping jacks to stay awake. There is also dancing/singing involved in everyday activities like the eating of Wheat Thins and hummus.
• Although we all came in with some hesitations about cooking, all members of the team are now pitching in to brainstorm meal ideas and cook dishes from scratch like the amazing baked macaroni and cheese we had last night.
• And most importantly, during this crazy period we’re currently in called Corps Member Training Institute (CTI), they’re enthusiastic - and patient!

The last two weeks have been insane for me, and enthusiasm is definitely appreciated right now. It can be hard to remember what’s what when you’re acting as a supervisor, coach, scheduler, chef, custodian, chauffeur, entertainment coordinator, accountant, personal trainer, paper-pusher, disciplinarian & counselor. Looking at the big picture, it’s sometimes hard to remember all the little details, and although I feel that Team Leader Training prepared me to be both confident and competent in my position, I can’t help but stress when some of the smaller details seem to be slipping out of my noggin. I'm dealing with this by making lists up the whazoo. And delegating tasks and roles for the year (like PT Guru, Media Rep, and Peer Helper) to my team members. It’s helped , but I still feel like I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off part of the time. The rest of the time when I’m on my game, organized and rolling with my team’s enthusiasm, I am reminded that this training only lasts a couple more weeks and then we’ll be out in the field, getting down and dirty with some direct service projects and making a difference for America. I am so pumped you have no idea.