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