More pictures

Above are some pictures of Sherman Lake Camp.  FYI, I took the snow pictures a couple of weeks ago.  It had snowed overnight and into the morning.  But by 1 or 2 in the afternoon, all of the snow had melted.  I didn't know snow melted that quickly.

You'll also see a picture of me giving a presentation.  For the past several weeks, my team and I have been volunteering at the Kalmazoo Air Zoo.  We gave short physics presentations to young kids.  I think I'm giving one about gravity.  Btw, I never thought physics could be simple yet interesting.

3 weeks to go

Yesterday was a pretty scary day.  It was the first time that I was truly worried about the safety of the kids. 

Usually during dinner, Paul or Jake (the camp program directors) tell us the plan for the evening.  The usual plan is to go back to our cabins with our campers for about an hour (~6:30 to ~7:30pm) and then do some dodgeball before our campfire at 9:00pm.  Yesterday, for some reason, Paul told us to meet back for dodgeball at 8:00pm. 

Now earlier during the dinner, Paul had asked to speak to one counselor from each cabin (starting this week, there are a group of Education students completing an internship with the YMCA.  And we will be paired up with them).  As we were walking back to our cabins, I learned from Chad ( a 34-yr old Education student) that what Paul had told us was all a cover-up for the kids.  The truth was that a hail storm was quickly heading our way.  We had to get the kids in the cabin and stay there until we heard word from the staff that it was okay to come outside.  It was almost a certainty that golf-ball sized hail was going to fall.  And there was a 50% chance of a tornado hitting our area.

As we were walking up the hill back to our cabin, the air was eerily still.  It was relatively quiet also, except for the wind that was starting to pick up and the quickening thunder.  The sky was turning grayer and grayer.  On the outside, I tried to remain calm so that the campers wouldn’t freak out or anything.  Inside, I was still pretty calm.  But I kept thinking about how awful it would be for the kids to have to experience a thunderstorm with hail and a tornado.  I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be what they were expecting from camp.  And if a tornado did hit, I’m not sure what would happen to our cabins.  All I knew was that if we heard the sirens, Chad and I had to get our kids into the shower as quickly as possible.  I didn’t want to even imagine how scared the kids might become when the hail started falling and we were all smushed into a small bathroom.  What if the kids started crying?  What if they started screaming uncontrollably?  I could only imagine.

Fortunately, we eventually got the word and we ended up playing dodgeball around 7:45pm.  There was no hail storm.  Luckily, there was no tornado.  Now that was a close call!

---------------

On another note, my team and I learned last week that our next project will be in Pawnee City, Nebraska.  We are going to be living at the Pawnee City Historical Society and will be helping dust their artifacts.  We are also going to help renovate some of their main building.  I’m looking forward to it.  We are going to be there for a total of 6 weeks.  It’s going to be a lot different than living at Sherman Lake YMCA.  There are only like 6 restaurants in the entire city.  Yesterday, I was looking it up in Google and it looks like there are no other cities around for at least 25-30 miles.  I imagine I will be staring at dirt in all directions, as far as the eye can see.  I’m not thinking about it too much because I still have 3 more weeks at Sherman Lake and I want to make the most of it.  The thing I’m thinking most about right now is that I’m going to the state where my grandparents first immigrated to from the Philippines.  I’m a ways away from Omaha, where they lived.  But I’m sure I still get a feel for the type of scenery they experienced.

Til’ next time!

Some Pictures

Written on 4/10

I left out a very important piece of information on my last post.  WHERE I’M STAYING AT.  The YMCA camp my team and I are working at is located in Augusta, MI.  The biggest city I’m near is Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids.  I’m on the southwest side of Michigan.  A big difference I see between southwest Michigan and California is the amount of woods in Michigan.  On the freeway, on the side streets, in people’s backyards, in their frontyards, there are woods everywhere.  It doesn’t look really pretty right now because it’s not spring yet.  But I imagine that it must get pretty green once spring hits.

The schools in Augusta and the surrounding areas were on spring break this past week, which meant that my team and I got a one-week break.  While I was not working with campers, I was doing maintenance work for the YMCA.  Over the course of a week, I spent about 7 hours raking maple leaves.  I chopped some logs into firewood for four hours and then picked up some fallen trees (which had been chainsaw-ed into logs) for the rest of a work day.  I helped finish a dirt trail, leading from the dock to another site.  This consisted of sawing off fallen trees, leveling uneven ground with a shovel, and making dirt platforms.  A few of my teammates and I also installed some hand-rails along a trail that was pretty steep.  I learned how to put in a metal post and how to burn through climbing rope with a propane bottle.  By the end of the week, I was pretty sore.  It was good, physical work.  It was also the type of work that I expected to be doing as a part of NCCC.  There were some moments where I just wanted to rest and chill.  But I’m glad I got through it.  It will definitely help me adjust more quickly if our next project is a more physical one such as trail-building. 

Friday was a pretty scary day.  My team leader got a call from the Iowa campus informing her that if Congress didn’t come up with a budget by midnight, we would have to leave Michigan immediately and head back to Iowa—once we received a phone call.  It definitely caused all of us some stress.  Throughout the night, I kept on checking the time, hoping and waiting for my team leader to text us any updates.  Luckily, at 11:30 pm, I received a text from my team leader letting me know that a budget deal had been reached.

Today, I watched the news and read the paper, trying to find out what kind of deal had been reached.  It’s kind of weird that I wasn’t able to find anything.  It’s interesting that what may have been an important issue to NCCC—being a federally funded program—may not have been as important of an issue to the outside world.  My team and I were literally on the edge of our seats, anxious to hear about what was going to happen to us.  I’m glad that what sounds like a temporary deal has been reached.  It means I don’t have to pack up everything and leave for Iowa. 

But this whole government shutdown mess truly doesn’t make sense.  It was Republicans and Democrats fighting over planned parenthood and the oversight of the EPA.  While these are important issues, I feel that they have no direct connection to the economic recession, which is what politicians were all talking about before this all happened.  It really was annoying to know that so many people’s lives would be affected by so few people.  While I am interested in working in the government/public sector, this shutdown scare opened my eyes to the fact that a government job can also be unstable.  In a lot of ways, your job is dependent on the politicians and lawmakers and the decisions they choose to make.

After an eventful week, I’ll be working with the campers again.  Time to gear up.  I’ll keep ya’ll updated.

-David

First few weeks on Spike 1, YMCA Cabin Counselor

Here are a few things that you should know since my last post:

There are a total of 10 people on my team.  Molly-the team leader, Henry, Jacob, Alex, Britney, Sam, Chloe, Theda, Maria, and me.  This will be my team until November.  The last picture ya’ll say was my temporary team.  Now it’s permanent.

We had a short project in Montour, IA during our in-service training.  I wrote a poem about it in my last post.  In case any of you were wondering about the last line of my poem, I said I was “still ambivalent.” I meant that I was ambivalent about the project itself.  We were cutting down young trees that looked healthy.  I guess these trees were invasive (!?!)  I just couldn’t tell.

Currently, my team and I are cabin leaders at Sherman Lake YMCA Outdoor Center (SLYOC).  Our job is to supervise the students from dinner until breakfast.  This means that we sleep in the same cabin as the students and make sure they are behaving.  I gotta admit.  I was looking forward to doing some physical work like cutting down trees, painting buildings, or making trails.  But this project is growing on me.  For example, SLYOC tries to teach the campers 4 main principles: Honesty, Caring, Respect, and Responsibility.  When you think about it, so many of what we all believe to be the “right” way to live and behave can stem from HCCR.  I can’t wait to have more moments and opportunities to tell these young kids to be more honest, caring, respectful, or responsible.  I think it can get corny sometimes, always telling kids to be more HCCR.  Or when we play dodgeball—telling them that they need to be more caring and apologize to anyone they hit in the face.  But it does make sense.  One of my teammate put it nicely.  When asked what she hoped to get out of the project, she said that she wanted to be able to use these experiences to examine HCCR in her life and to see how she can improve in these areas. 

If you had to ask me what I’m hoping to get out of this project—I want to be able to communicate HCCR to the campers in an effective and interesting way that doesn’t make me sound corny.  Observing all of the YMCA staff, they really do “talk down” to the students.  But they don’t talk down in a bad way.  It’s not like they are treating the 5^th and 6^th graders like they kindergarten-ers.  Rather, they aren’t using big words.  When they explain HCCR to students, it isn’t really long-winded.  It’s more of trying to get the students to talk things out and solve situations on their own.  During our training, we learned the more ideal method of dealing with conflict.  When there are two kids who have beef with each other, take the two of them aside separately.  Ask them what the problem is and then tell them what your problem is.  Then ask them how you can help them.  The point is to get the students talking and to do as much listening as possible.  I’m still trying to learn this method.  At times, I still feel like I’m talking to the students in sentences that are too long. 

So that’s what’s up with me right now.  So far, I’ve been the cabin leader for 3 different sets of students—about 8-10 students each time.  I’ll be here at the SLYOC until early May.  I’ll try to get some pictures in my next post.

Peace

Reflection

RED BACKPACK FULL!

rush to the car

check the headlights, check the tires

on our way to Montour

Pilgrim Heights, Orientation

divide up our tasks

Maple 6 clean

Maple 3 work

Saw, saw, saw

saw, saw, saw

Tree, please come down?

Finally

Sweat. Hard Work. Need practice.

My second tree. Third tree.

Fourth, fifth, sixth tree.

Thinking about what Jimmy said in

Tool Training

Cutting down trees

Stills feels like I’m trying harder than I should be

Suggestion from my teammate

His method works.

I become more comfortable.

Second day

I’m used to sawing, pulling, dragging

The day passes

3:45 pm.

It’s starting to rain.

Pulling up long-fallen trees

Placing trees in pile

Going back

Looking for more logs to haul

Maple 3 and Maple 6

We worked so hard.

looks like no more work to do

I move over to a steep hill

more logs to pull

Carrying logs up a hill

Not fun.

Time passing slowly.

The longest 8 minutes of work.

Rain coming down harder

finish off hauling one last log

glad its 5:00 pm

Third day

Snowed all night

Ground is slushy and muddy

We cut down trees

Now it’s time to pile cut trees into trailer

Good to know how many trees we cut down

how many logs we picked up

how many weeds we pulled

Wait. We cut down that many trees?

What’s the deal?

So much wood.

Is it a waste?

Some members are hurt.

“Those trees are healthy!”

Debrief with project sponsor

We cut trees for scenic reasons

But also...

Sponsor wants to be able to guide the direction of the forest

Which trees grow where.

Some trees, if not cut, will kill off other trees.

Because we made the scene clearer

by cutting down trees

sponsor can better see how the forest should grow

head home

eat King Tower Cafe meatloaf

Full Stomach.

Good mini project.

Got my hands dirtied and bruised.

Still feel ambivalent.

2/23/2011

Hey everyone!  This is going to be my official blog for the 9 or so months I’ll be in Americorps NCCC.  I appreciate all those who are going to be following me as I learn and experience different things. 

So I’ve been in Vinton, IA for about a week.  Things are going pretty well.  A lot of it has just been settling down—learning dorm policies, kitchen rules, things of that sort.  For the first week, I was in Team G—all of the corps members were placed into temporary teams based on their last name.  It ended up being a pretty good group.  I think we all generally had a very chill personality.  For example, we had to come up with a grocery list for 3 days worth of food, which went really smooth.  No one really had any restrictions and we didn’t really have any preferences.  Something that’s pretty cool is that we were probably one of the most diverse groups.  Understandably, the majority of the corps members are white.  In my group, we had me, a Filipino, someone who was Columbian, someone who was African-American, about 5 Caucasians, and a girl who is half-Croatian and half-African.  On that note, another thing worth mentioning is it looks like there are only 2 Filipinos in the whole program—and the other girl is half-Filipino. 

I’m surprised at the diversity of the corps members in terms of education level.  There are quite a few of everything it seems—no one group outnumbering the others.  A good mix of folks who just graduated high school, folks who graduated from college, those who are taking 9 months off from college, and those who are in their later 20s and are still considering whether to pursue higher education at all.  I actually have to give props to those who just graduated high school.  I remember when I graduated from high school.  It didn’t really enter my mind of doing anything but going on to college.  These people will definitely be entering college with a unique experience that should serve them well in college. 

I’m currently starting my second week in Vinton.  I was assigned to my permanent team, which I will be with for the next 9 months.  We are Maple 3—Maple being our Unit.  I’ll try to diagram the order of command in the next post.  I think we are also a good group.  We should be able to feed off each other and make this year pretty good.  I also like the Team Leader we got.  Her name is Molly.  She’s one of those folks who may be physically small but packs a lot of punch.  My team and I will be in Vinton until around March 17^th at which time we will depart for our first project.  I still don’t know what that project will be and will probably not know until sometime in March.  I’ll keep you all posted.

Thanks again everyone!  Now that I’ve pretty much settled down, I’ll try to blog probably once a week, twice a week maybe.

Best Wishes