The first week of a new life

The week I've been here has felt like a lifetime, but definitely in a good way. After a year of being relatively unproductive, it has been incredibly gratifying to wake up each morning with a full day of activity and end each day exhausted.

I arrived in Sacramento last Wednesday bright and early in the morning (a special thanks to Vincent for driving me to the airport at 4 a.m.!). It was a long and exhausting flight, but there were thankfully no delays or complications, a huge blessing compared to some travel horror stories I heard later that evening. Upon landing, a big 15-passenger van was waiting to take us to campus. My fellow Americorps members were friendly enough, but the ride was quiet since everyone was still tired from their respective journeys. It gave us some time to absorb our new surroundings and reflect on the mega life changes yet to come.

My first impressions of Sacramento were depressing; the weather was gray and drizzly, and the flat landscape consisted of varying shades of lifeless brown. Our campus certainly isn't very beautiful either. It is made up of four boxy, beige buildings on property that used to be an old U.S. Air Force base, which means lots of concrete and chain link fence.


We spent much of the day in in-processing, which meant tons of paperwork and orientations. We also got our spiffy uniforms (worn during all working hours, shirt always tucked in) and dormitory assignments. It feels very much like college life again. I got stuck in a three-person room, so it's a little bit crowded, but my roommates are amiable enough. I put some pictures of my new home below. I'm in the bottom bunk.



I also got to meet the rest of Pod 22, which is hands down the coolest group of people on this campus. Our little family has bonded really quickly; it feels like we've known each other for years. We've got pod members representing from Virginia, Minnesota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Michigan, Vermont, Illinois, Florida, and a whole bunch of other states. Our team leader is Tonye (front row, far left, in the green shirt) , a real easy-going guy who has been a huge help in getting us situated in our new stations.

To be honest, most of this week has been meeting after interminable meeting. On the worst days, we spend eight hours in front of PowerPoint with just a few short breaks and a lunch hour. These trainings are dull but necessary; they cover safety, policies, insurance, and other pertinent information. Some, like today's training in first aid, were downright fun at times, since we got to role-play using the CPR dummy and the defibrillator. Upon completion, we took an exam and were certified by the American Red Cross. We also underwent physicals, which also included a challenging audio examination, a TB test, and a tetanus vaccination. My arm is still a little sore from that latter shot despite vigorous massage.

The real exciting stuff came on Saturday though, when we had our first actual service projects in the city. Our first task was at Althea B. Smythe Academy of Arts and Sciences, where we were charged with building a community garden. Although it is a charter school, it is by no means a wealthy campus. The surrounding neighborhood is 70 percent Hispanic, and 90 percent of the students are on the reduced-lunch program, a major indication of poverty in the area. The project we worked on was two years in the making due to major obstacles in grant funding, but it will be a great boon to the school as a place of peace and relaxation as well as science education. In a matter of hours, lined up cinder blocks to create flower beds, broke up the clay-like ground, hauled wheelbarrows full of top soil, and filled up the new beds with rich, brown dirt.

The really cool part was having the community come out and chip in. It was inspiring to see so many parents involved in their children's schooling, and a lot of the fathers, who were conveniently also professional landscapers, contributed a whole lot more than any of us corps members! One dad we met named Larry was particularly active. In addition to pitching in for the garden, he also designed a beautiful shaded patio that included murals on the walls and benches where students could eat their lunch, read a library book, or safely wait for a ride home away from the busy streetside curb. Not only did he come up with the idea, but he and his daughter installed the decorative brick pavers themselves! The kids were adorable too, with their itty bitty shovels scooping up spoonfuls of soil into the wheelbarrow. Despite their meager efforts, you could tell they were so proud to be a part of creating the garden and were having loads of fun playing in the dirt!


And here it is, the finished product. I forgot to take a "before" picture, but it used to be just an empty brown field of dirt. Now imagine these beds filled with green foliage and beautiful flowers planted by bright, eager elementary school students. Beautiful, no?


After lunch, we headed to an apple orchard, where Americorps teams picked two tons of apples that went straight to the Sacramento Food Bank. As an added bonus, we also got to pick some incredibly fresh plum and pears for ourselves that now sit in a plastic bag in our kitchen.

This was definitely more of the Sacramento I was envisioning. The orchard was beautiful, awash in golds and greens as far as the eye could see under a cloudless blue California sky. The ground was littered with fallen apples, so there was a sweetly decadent scent of overripe fruit that permeated the grounds. This is something I probably would have paid to do just for pure entertainment but was enjoying it even more knowing that it was all going to a great cause. After picking the low-hanging fruit, we started climbing into the branches or using ladders to reach the higher extremities. We also had some help from these nifty apple-picking tools that consisted of a rake and a basket on an extending pole. It took quite a bit of practice and coordination to get the use of those things down, but we eventually got the hang of it.

After a few hours of picking, we sorted through the apples and chunked the bruised, holey, or unripe fruit on the ground. We wound up skating on an entire walkway of apples and had quite a bit of fun with apple-throwing contests.

It's getting late, so I'll have to continue this post another time. (Yes, I now consider 10 p.m. "late," but you would too if you had to get up at 5 a.m. for PT, or physical training!) So far, you've only heard about my week until Saturday, so stay tuned for much, much more to come! Next time, I'll give you some details on my weekend leisure trip to downtown Sacramento, fill you in on the nightmare that is physical training, and let you know about the food situation. I'm sure I've left plenty out, so if you have a question about my life here in Americorps, feel free to leave it in the comments, and I'll try to address it in my next post.