The End of Mecca

Photo: Dawn at the worksite

This past week was our last week in Mecca. Tear. I can't believe I'm already done with the first project. We had a teary goodbye with the homeowners while eating Costco pizza and snickerdoodles (made by me upon request) and chocolate chip cookies. I have never met such grateful, appreciative, thoughtful, selfless people. One of the women, Esmeralda, works 3 jobs, 7 days a week, and raises a 7 year old and is working on building her own home. Now that is hard work.

I hope to come back there someday to see the progress of Mecca and see the finalized neighborhood. We began roof tiling our last few days at work. Yes, I can do Spanish tile. We started with just the rafters and managed to sheet, fascia, soffit, tar paper and tile 9 roofs. I'm impressed with myself and my team. Our sponsor, the CVHC, told us in all 20 AmeriCorps groups they have had since 2000, we have been by far the hardest working. You flatter me, CVHC.

Right now, I'm back in Sacramento and it's going well. My roommate, Suzie, decorated our room with Christmas lights and magazine collages, so it's looking quite swell. A few girls on my team and I went to get haircuts yesterday from a crazy Phillipino lady who talked about getting rich the entire time she hacked at our hair. I say hacked because I have never seen anyone cut with such...style... She literally took my hair out of my ponytail (my hair was all curly from being scrunched in a ponytail all day) combed it, and just cut away at it. I can't say it's even close to my favorite haircut ever. I have more bangs but I'm not sure I'm into them, or more like, I'm not into the way she cut them. Luckily, hair grows and it'll probably look better in a couple weeks.

This week is "transition week" for all corps members so there are a bunch of other teams on campus at the moment. Back to sharing a kitchen...yuck. We have meetings all week including our project 1 debriefing and project 2 briefing. I'm just about done with our project portfolio. I was in charge of getting the team to write something about the project and lay it out. It's quite nice I have to admit. 22 pages long. Nice.

On a side note, I'm addicted to the Noisettes Wild Young Hearts album. Check it out.

Project 2 starts next week and I'm a bit apprehensive. I hear the kiddies are tough in that school district. We're all going to have to change gears. Our days will go from 7am to 6pm. It ends an hour later than our last project and we have no siesta... Talk about exhaustion! Hopefully it works out, and if it doesn't, seven weeks isn't long at all.

Alright, onto crossing off more on my to do list.

Have a great week!

Anne

To the Salton Sea!

Yes, I know, two blogs within a week's time! You're welcome. Today was just so interesting, I had to share.

So, about 15 minutes southeast of Mecca is this giant body of water, the salty Salton Sea. We figured hey, let's go check it out! So we drove to the visitor's center at the Salton Sea State and Recreation Area. We learned that the sea used to be a large whole between two fault lines that filled in with ocean thousands of years ago and left a foot of salt at the bottom when it dried up. Around 1905, the levees for the Colorado River broke and began filling in the dried up ocean hole. After everyone was like, "oh crap! it's flooding!" they decided to make bank by building resorts and marinas around the newly formed body of water. From the early 1900's to the 1960's, the Salton Sea was a huge hotspot frequented by Hollywood actors and singers such as Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys. Unfortunately, around the 1970's the sea began to become polluted from runoff of growing urban areas and it became pretty gross. All of the resorts and marinas were shut down and abandoned, and today it's practically a ghost town with a few trailer parks around the edges.

After the visitor's center, we walked to the shoreline full of crusty, salty briny sand and dead salt-cured fish. It's such a beautiful view of the sea surrounded by mountains, until you look at your feet, or trip over a dead fish. Good times.

Then we drove to this area pictured on the front of a photography book I purchased called Bombay Beach. It was essentially a square mile of trailer homes with a dirt levee around it protecting it from the salty sea. Half of the homes were abandoned and decaying. We decided to climb the levee and walk around the shore. It was absolutely bizarre. There were remnants of old homes and some trailers, phone poles, an old crane and some old docks that were all half buried and covered in this salty briny stuff. It was really quiet and no one was around. A bit eerie I must say, but very interesting.

Then we drove to this oasis in the desert where we hiked a trail through this group of palm trees with a stream running through. It was super cool. There were walls of dried leafy palm trees and a thick canopy. So cool!

So, that was our sweet adventure. I reccommend people to wikipedia the Salton Sea. It's pretty interesting!

Tomorrow we're doing a service project for MLK day. It should be a good time! Hope everyone has a great third week of January!

<3 anne

It's Always Sunny in Mecca

Hey Everybody!

It's halfway through January already. Can you believe it?? We have a week and a half left in Mecca!

This week we found out our next project! It will take us from February 8 through April 1. And the project is......dum dum dum........









Tutoring 9th and 10th graders at Woodland high school in Sacramento! Yes, do you recall the monthlong training I had there? The pain? The stress? The torture? In two weeks I will be back where it all began. I am trying to have a good attitude towards our next challenge. We will be at the high school from 8 am until 5 pm Monday through Friday. It's definitely going to be a challenge, but I will hang in there and keep everyone updated. My TL said this will probably be one of the most important projects we will have because education is everything. Let's hope I don't fail these kiddies!

An update of the past week: Last Sunday, Blue 6 (my team that is), ventured to Joshua Tree National Park, about 40 minutes north of Mecca. The park is so enormous, it contains two different deserts and ecosystems: the Colorado Desert to the southeast, and the Mojave Desert to the northwest. All the awesome stuff (Joshua trees, for example) is in the Mojave. So, we had to drive an hour and a half through the park before we stopped for anything. Well, if you don't know what a Joshua Tree is, imagine an oak tree and a yucca plant mated and had babies. It looks like a regular tree trunk with spiky yucca plants sprouting out of the branches. Bizarre. So, these trees dotted the desert land. A very interesting landscape. Also, it looked as if God's kids played with giant boulders and then just tossed them into the flat desert. It was so cool! We were able to climb them all over the place. If anyone is ever in SoCal at some point, go to JTNP. It's awesome!

The rest of the week included doing service at the FIND food bank in Indio, then getting famous "date shakes". We also were able to sample different types of dates. I have never had a date, but I think I will start eating more. They're delicious! It's like a candy with a pit in the middle. As for the shake, I asked for banana in my date shake and it pretty much just tasted like banana ice cream. The banana flavor kicked the date flavor's butt. Still delicious!

For work this week, we layed tar paper on top of 7 roofs (the black stuff you see on roofs before the shingles/tiles go on), shortened window blinds, shoveled dirt around, and cleaned up the site. Very productive! Oh, and if graphic design doesn't work out, I'm going to be a roofer.

Including tomorrow, we have 8 days of work left in Mecca. I said today that I plan to come back to this area in 15 years to see how it turns out. Maybe Mecca is going to be the next hot spot! You never know!

That's all for this week. We will be in touch!

<3 anne

Happy New Year!

Winter break was too good. It was such a wonderful time seeing family and friends and boyfriend, it was hard to come back! Although I am starting to count down the days/months until AmeriCorps is over, I am trying to enjoy each day and each experience. Wishing away time is never a good way to live. I am also attempting to be more myself and make a few allies on my team. I haven't felt incredibly close to anyone on my team, so I am actually making an attempt to open up to people. Hopefully 2010 will be as interesting as last year! I can't wait to see what happens!

We arrived back to Mecca on Monday after a grueling 9 hour drive, in which I drove 4 hours. Tuesday we landscaped and planted trees and shrubs. Very fun! Then Wednesday, we shoveled dirt and removed a giant dead bush from the side of the road and dragged it on a 20 foot long tarp and threw it into the dumpster. Not so fun. Then, today, I painted the faccia (no idea how to spell that one) on the side of the roofs. It took us 7 hours to paint 2 houses by hand, with paintbrushes, the old fashioned way. The weather here has been perfect (70's all week) and the days are getting longer. It feels like July in Michigan minus the humidity.

This weekend, we're planning a trip to Joshua Tree National Park and I'm pumped! I will take lots of pictures, don't worry!

Hope everyone had a fantastic New Year!

<3 anne