A Little Late on the UpDate

Bunches and bunches of things have happened since the last post. So here goes it...

First of all- Catalina Island was AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL and pretty much vacation. We spent most of the time working with the conservancy doing yard work ( stuff like trail clearing, building fences, and stacking wood). The work itself wasn't that glamorous, but the island was pretty amazing. We were able to get free kayaking and snorkeling, and there was no such thing as a bad view.

After Catalina we spent some time at the Boys and Girls Club helping out with the kids and stuff.....i don't want any now. lol

Then...we spent a week doing FRT training. That involved a TON of classroom sitting and listening, but then we spent an awesome day in the field cutting hand line and learning about fire tools and toys.

Now we are in northern California at Camp Mendocino.(near Fort Bragg) we are living at the camp doing a bunch on maintenance and outdoor work for them. so far we cleared about 2 miles of brush on the road leading into camp, we fixed up one of the dumpy houses, spread a bunch of mulch, burned lots of brush piles, and cleared out lots and lots of nail sheds. Its been fun, and I'm totally going to miss it here, but i can wait till we get to travel again to a new project.



Here are a bunch of pictures...and since I haven't figured out this program yet they are in no specific order. lol

Goodness gracious! CTI is over, and I'm half-way through chainsaw training and then I'll be off to Catalina Island!!!! LOVE IT! This week we have been learning all about the awesomeness and dangers of the chainsaw and all these crazy techniques on how to cut down trees and its AAAMMMAAAZZZIIINNNGGG!
.....I even got to take one apart....and re-assemble it.. by. my. self. aaaaahhhhhh~ but so much fun.
We've been doing tons of team building activities...including going to Camp Mendocino, where we did some service work ( splitting logs) and got to go some high ropes course stuff. we've also done some local service work like working in community gardens....pulling invasive species...and working in a factory....( counting and binding rubber bands for HOURS) lots of fun times.
We take off for Catalina on Monday and I'm totally not going to have any internet. We are camping the whole time, so no electricity. The team is doing work there with the conservancy..clearing brush, and removing invasive species. YAY!
......oh ya. I got my permanent team for the year. LOVE THEM! this year is going to be perfect!

So we do this AMAZING thing called room inspection here....yeah, I know you all are jealous. Here i was thinking that I was a super tidy person so far and that this whole inspection thing would be no problem. um....false. Apparently I'm a bit of a slob cause I TOTALLY failed it. : (

My bathroom wasn't clean enough, I didn't vacuum well enough, and there were too many personal item in sight. However, ever since then my room has been spotless....and I'm pretty sure I've been driving my roommate CRAZY! haha totally always "reminding" her. gah. if i were her i would have killed me by now. lol yay for AMAZING roommates.

.......yeah....im totally crying in this picture. lol i was getting so frustrated that the darn room wouldn't get clean.

Dum Dum .......bored bored bored

Have you ever had one of those days where you are just bored outta your mind?? Like i was totally pumped to have a slow day because after yesterday I was exhausted......but it was too slow. After eating, getting a physical, mustering, reading a book and taking a nap all by 2 pm, i was bored. With no cable or easy Internet access I sat on my butt and miserably tried to find ways to entertain myself.....i even cleaned my room! I know...weird right? Now lots of people are going out into town for the night, but I've got a physical test tomorrow...so i gots to be in bed early. yay. so pretty much I'm just rambling for something to do now. Don't be surprised if I add like 5 more posts tonight of absolutely NOTHING! It's kinda dull around here.......fun.................BLAH!

I LOVE SUNSHINE!

Okay, so today we had our first kinda mini service day. and yes.......it was totally rad! We started off with the amazing 6 am wake up where I then proceeded to drag my butt over to the cafeteria to get my last catered breakfast.....I also downed like 3 cups of coffee. (if you can call if that.It taste more like brown water:(
After that we loaded ourselves into the glorious government property van ( which totally sat all 13 of us) and headed off to some elementary school. Once there we learned that we would be helping dig/fill a nature trail that is running through that "wetlands" in the school play yard. There was always a class from the school out there "helping" and I LOVE how eager they all were. Everywhere I turned there was a little kid wanting to help out. Its been too long since I've seen kids actually want to work. They even sang us a welcome/thank you song when we first arrived! CUTEST THING EVER!!!
After spending about 6 hours loading wheel-barrows and hauling them over un-even ground we were finally done. The trail looks AMAZING and it was so much fun. I learned that I actually really LOVE my team mates ( and its sucks that the teams are re-arranging soon) and I cant wait to get out there onto a SPIKE and do some more service.
NEVER BEFORE HAVE I EVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO TAKE MY SHOES OFF AND HAVE A SHOWER! It was hot, and humid, and we ALL got dirty. But it was totally worth it.