Dawn's Blog

After 10 long months, my AmeriCorps term is coming to an end. We have one final week to finish up paperwork, clean and pack, and go on a short camping trip. At the end of the week I will be driving home to spend a few days (not nearly long enough) with my family and friends, and then I am off to Beijing! 


Yesterday afternoon our AmeriCorps team went out the high ropes course we have here on campus and did the Dream Catcher. The goal of the Dream Catcher is to climb a 30 foot pole and then jump off and try to catch your "dreams" ( a piece of pvc pipe) that are hanging several feet out from the pole.  It was a lot of fun.

Here's some of the stuff I've done in the past month:

Gave Blood

I did this yesterday. It was my first time. I tried once before but they wouldn't let me because my blood pressure was too low. This time I made sure I ate lots of salt and got really stressed out just before going to the blood drive, and apparently this worked. I was a little nervous because I don't enjoy needles (who does, really?) and have had trouble with dizzyness other times they stick stuff into me. I still can't decide if the dizzyness thing is totally psychological or really the result of the stuff they're putting in (or taking out, in this case) of me, or maybe a combination which has classically conditioned me to become faint when a needle penetrates my skin.  Anyway, I got a bit dizzy a couple times, but really not too bad. And I got a free T-shirt.

Climbed a Mountain

Well, maybe not quite as intense as it sounds. More like "walked up a mountain".   I went with a couple friends to Stone Mountain. According to Wikipedia, Stone Mountain is "a quartz monzonite dome monadnock" that stands 825 feet above the surrounding area. Basically it is a huge piece of granite sticking out of the ground. And it has a huge carving of Confederate leaders on it. Anyway, we went up the mountain, saw a 4-D movie, and watched the Lasershow Spectactular.







Watched World Cup Soccer

First I cheered for the US. When they got out, I cheered for Germany. Still cheering for Germany. Go for the Bronze!



Here's some of the stuff I did NOT do in the last month:

Run the Peachtree Roadrace

This is the big race to run down here. Its a 10K. I didn't sign up in time. I got excited when I found out about a friend of a friend who had signed up, couldn't go, and was looking for someone to take her number. I trained hard for a week. Then I found out that the race packet had gotten lost.  No race for me. However, I did go for a run on Peachtree street with my friend Kyle the day of the race, which I think was better anyway.

Get a Tattoo

Nope, didn't do this either.  And I'm not planning on it.

Two posts in two days!  Here's the pictures of our Americorps community garden.We have black-eyed peas, several peppers (not sure what kind), some zucchini, cucumbers, and I think squash. We also have some tomatoes in another location.

These are the black-eyed peas that I planted. Yay! They are so big!











I went out one morning and found this in the garden.











Turns out it was fake.



Our scarecrow. Seems to be doing a pretty good job, animals have not eaten anything as of yet.

Contrary to what the title may have suggested, this post has almost nothing to do with shoes, except that I was wearing them during most of my adventures.

When I last posted, I was in the midst of a quarter-life crises. And while the crisis has not been resolved, I'm feeling a lot more at peace about my future. God has given me some really awesome people around me that have shared a lot of wisdom and been praying for me. Still no where near a decision, but feeling at peace about things.

I should probably tell you about Drum and Dance Camp. I spent 5 days last week in the mountains of North Carolina learning about African drumming, dancing, and various other things from some of the most talented African drummers in the world.  Highlights included:

• Learning to play the balafon (wooden xylophone) and performing it with a group in the talent show. 
• Learning new songs on the Djembe and just generally having an awesome time playing it. 
• Performing with our group from Douglasville (someone told us we won the Ms. Congeniality award)
• Learning African dancing and performing it in the talent show. Also, watching my friend Austin dance may have been the funniest and most awesome thing I have ever seen. 
• Experiencing some of God's most beautiful creation. 
• Successfully organizing a silent auction fundraiser. 
• Getting a small taste of some genuine West African culture. 

It was also probably the most time I have gone without wearing shoes in my whole life. So my shoes spent most of their secret life under my bed; not very exciting.

Shortly after my return, I went on another drumming trip. We took a group of the kids from Inner Harbour up to Helen GA (refer to previous posts) to perform for an arts festival they were having for the local school kids.  Highlight of this trip: my awesome drum solos got me the nickname "Thunder Hands".

In other news, wildlife in the woods is out in full force. We find scorpions in our breezeway a few times a week, and we've kept a couple as pets. We are still looking for good name ideas. They're actually pretty cool pets, we threw a moth in with them the other day and it was pretty cool to watch them catch it.

I think that's all I'll include for now. Happy Sunday!

Yesterday was an amazingly beautiful day here, so a few of us took a day trip up to a place called Helen. It's a little town in North Georgia that has been made to look like a German Alpine Village. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome. Highlights of the day included:

• Eating Schnitzel
• Eating the most amazing funnel cake (see below)
• Using German phrases all day
• Seeing the largest pitch pine in the state of Georgia
• Taking pictures of all of these random activities
• Getting a sunburn in February (don't worry, I'm just a bit pink)

The really interesting thing was that it is basically just a big tourist attraction of Georgia, so alongside the Alpine village theme, they also have just about anything else touristy you could want, like redneck T-shirts and a haunted house. One of my favorite places was a Mexican restaurant right in the middle of the "authentic" Bavarian village.

Oh, and there was also this place:
which I think might be trying to be a knockoff of Giordano's.

Last night I began my first ever Dungeons and Dragons campaign. For those of you who are not familiar with this game (most of you, I hope), it is a role playing fantasy game where several people create characters for themselves and these characters become part of a narrative told by the Dungeon Master. Basically we sit around a table and role dice to see whether or not we get eaten by a six-headed horse. This game is also ranked somewhere around Star Trek conventions on the nerdiness scale.

In other news, the Colts lost the Super Bowl.  I was feeling pretty proud to be from Indiana (and still am) and glad that they made it that far, even though it was the only football game I had the chance to see this season. I did have to suffer a little ridicule when they lost; my favorite quote was, "Why is Indiana so bad at everything?" (This coming from an Iowa native, not really sure what she had to brag about).

In more positive news, our Americorps team is currently playing Assassin (aka Ambush, aka the best game ever). In this game, each player receives the name of another player and tries to assassinate that person, while avoiding being assassinated by the person who is coming after them. In our version, you assassinate a person by clipping a clothespin onto them (it can also be played with water guns). It creates a lot of excitement and paranoia in the community. Highly recommended.

 (This was written last night)
I’ve been getting a lot of criticism lately for not updating my blog. And I guess it has been a while.
So, to make up for it, I’ve decided to give you not only an update on what’s going on with me, but a story about an awkward situation I was put in today. First, for the update:

I went home to Indiana for Christmas. It was awesome. My family is great. I spent the night in 5 different cities (and 2 states), including a night at camp during which I hid in the bottom of an industrial refrigerator and someone (won’t mention names) broke a hole in a wall. We also went sledding, and coined the term “snowy face”. I built a snowman on Kevin’s car, participated in the 3rd Annual Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother’s House After Christmas Run (3rd place, by the way), ate a lot of unhealthy food, and got to spend some time with Taylor.

The day after I got back to Georgia a few of us decided to use our day off to do a little exploring in Atlanta. It was a great day, except that it was about the coldest day that Atlanta has ever had, and we spent most of it walking around outside. But we saw some cool stuff like this:

Last week it snowed here. We got about a half inch. They closed school the night before just to be safe. Which I thought was a little ridiculous, until I went for a drive the next day and saw that the roads really are pretty icy when you don’t have any trucks to put salt out. Anyway, since my students had the day off, I just got to hang out with them for the day. We ended up watching the first two Harry Potters and then had a snowball fight. Sooooo, pretty good day.

But my job is definitely not all fun and games. With the upcoming MLK Day, we have been assigned to do a 3 hour activity/lesson/etc. with our students tomorrow morning. All of us have been working pretty hard on getting this ready, and right now most of us are getting together last minute stuff. Which is what I should be doing right now. Hopefully I’ll let you know how that all goes in my next post.

Oh, and the awkward situation.

So one of the teachers here is known for her, well, outgoing personality and uniqueness. I don’t really know her that well, but she reminds me a lot of Ms. Frizzle.  Anyway, I was walking out of the cafeteria today when I saw her alone talking on her phone behind the building. In the midst of her animated phone conversation, I heard her say, “How are you doing?” and turned to see if she was talking to me. Turns out she was, so replied that I was doing well. As I kept walking I heard her say, “Oh, William, now there’s a nice girl for you.”  Slightly confused, I turned around again with a puzzled look on my face, to which she replied, quite matter-of-factly, “Oh, I was just recommending you to a wonderful, good-looking, wealthy young man,” as if this is something she does on a regular basis.

I mean, I appreciate the gesture, but I’m just not sure if I should trust her judgment.

First, I'd like to apologize for not writing for so long. I've been busy. How this happened, I'm not sure. I started getting involved in things because I was bored, and I may have overdone it. Or maybe its just the Christmas season. Anyway, to the interesting stuff.

I participated in my first triathlon today. Well, not really. Well, it did fit the definition of triathlon, and it was my first. So that is a true statement. But it wasn't exactly official. A few weeks ago a few of us got a family  pass to a rec center nearby to use their machines and pool. The employees were a little skeptical at first about 5 young adults (of various races, I might add) claiming to be a family, but they said if we had the same address, it was ok.

Anyway, my friend Jay decided we needed a little competition and organized a triathlon for us. We biked 5 miles on the stationary bikes, ran a mile on the treadmill, and then swam 200 yds. in the pool. I think I got third place. Out of three. But that's ok. We didn't really have accurate results because between the biking and the running a couple of us had to wait for a free treadmill.

All in all, it was pretty fantastic. We even got sports drinks at the end. And I'm pretty sure that's what makes a race official.

So this past weekend I went on my first-ever overnight backpacking trip. It turned out to be one of the most  in-tents (haha) things I've ever experienced. I went with a group of people from the church I've been going to here, which consisted of about 8 middle-aged men, two younger men, a dog, and four of us young ladies.  Saturday morning we drove a couple of hours to Amicalola State Park, where our trek began. The weather was awesome all day and it was a pretty nice hike. I saw a lot of this:

When we reached the top of Springer mountain, there was a pretty incredible vista, which looked like this:

This spot was also the official end (or beginning) of the Appalachian Trail. There were some plaques there that looked like this:

We had the really cool experience of meeting a man there who had just finished his 5-month-long hike of the entire trail, starting in Maine. His family was there celebrating with him. He ate an entire half gallon of ice cream.

Anyway, we made it to our campsite, set up tents, and had dinner around the fire. As you know, it gets dark around 6, and there wasn't a whole lot to do out there in the dark, so a lot of people went to bed early. Turns out, it's really cold and windy on top of mountains at night, even in Georgia. I had a little trouble sleeping, what with the cold and loud wind and being afraid that I was going to be attacked by a bear at any moment and all.

In the morning the cold and wind turned into rain, not too long after we woke up. We had a very wet day of hiking, but we took a slightly different trail on the way down that was really pretty and went past an inn where we stopped and warmed up.

So, overall a great trip. One of my favorite parts was the hot shower at the end.

This past week turned out to be a very eventful one.  I've been working with the youth group at the church I've been going to, and it turns out that this has some unexpected perks. Wednesday was the annual Douglasville Veteran's Day parade, and I got to ride in the parade with the youth group in what they called a "deuce-and-a-half" (big green army truck), and afterward we had a bonfire. Douglasville doesn't do parades quite as well as Macy's (most of the people I talked to who live here didn't even know about it), but I did get to meet the mayor before the parade, so I felt pretty important. 

If you didn't already know this, every Friday is a service day for our Americorps team. This means that we leave campus and basically do a day of community service at a location picked by our team leaders. On Friday, we went to a nature preserve just outside Atlanta, where we spent the day waging war on the evil Wisteria vines that are taking over the other plants at the park.

Yesterday morning a few of us set out for Sweetwater Creek State Park for a day of hiking and general merriment. It turned out to be a gorgeous day with some great weather and beautiful fall foliage. We ate our lunch overlooking the creek (seemed more like a river to me) and later did some wading in the water across some slippery rocks (not real safe, I know, but only one person fell in). We even saw the ruins of an old grain mill, but I must say this was really disappointing after seeing the mill at Spring Mill State Park that was still in operation. Here's some pictures:

 Today was a pretty cool day at Youth Villages - Inner Harbour Campus. This morning we had the end of our tutor training, where we learned about how to manage young people's behavior in the classroom.  I thought that our speaker had a lot of good things to say and she was very knowledgeable, but she might have wanted to add one more thing to her list of classroom management techniques. As she demonstrated her positive reinforcement methods to us as if we were a classroom of kids (giving us candy when we were paying attention, praising those who asked her questoins), our behavior basically turned into that of junior high kids. Several of us started doodling, some people were making comments to each other from across the room, and we had a really hard time organizing ourselves into two groups.

So what did I really learn today? Well, first of all, that if I write my name on my paper like I'm told, I will get a KitKat. But more importantly, I learned that people often behave in accordance with how you treat them and expect them to behave. And that's something worth knowing.

As many of you know, I spent this weekend making a drum. A djembe, to be exact. I have yet to name her, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Anyway, here's a quick summary of the drum-making process:

1. Obtain a hand-carved drum shell (the wood part) and a goat skin from Africa.
2. Give the shell a couple layers of wood stain.
3. Cover the three metal rings (two for the top and one for the bottom) with colorful fabric strips.
4. Tie loops of rope around one top and one bottom ring.
5. Put the wet goat skin on top of the drum between the top two rings.
6. Run rope back and forth between the loops on the top and bottom.
7. Using some clever lever action, pull this rope really tight so the skin has a lot of tension on it.
8. Cut off the excess goat skin and make the edge look pretty.
9. Repeat step 7 again the next day when the skin has dried.

The most challenging part for me was trying to pull the ropes to make the drum head tight. Apparently my entire body weight pushing down on the lever is not enough force to do it well, so I kept having to get help. And at one point the rope actually snapped and we had to tie it back together. But other than that I am very pleased with my drum and excited to use it. It was by far the best drum-making workshop I have ever been to.

"What is this thing called 'Americorps'?" you might ask. Well, let me tell you. It's all summed up by our motto, "We get things done." Pretty vague, I know.

To clarify things, I've come up with a new name that is a little more descriptive. I actually can't take credit for this new term, because it was actually introduced to me by the one and only Alayna Pietsch. And probably used by hundreds of people before that. If I were in charge, I would call it (drumrole please):
Ameri(hard)corps.

Why? you ask. We live in the woods. We hike to work. We gut houses. We scoop poop. We work with kids. We share a bathroom with 10 other people. We eat cafeteria food. Every day. We have a 12 inch TV screen. If that's not hard core, I don't know what is.

Now, if only I could start that Ameri(par)corps group.

Well, another rainy day in Douglasville. Surprise, surprise. Which means that instead of using our day off to go explore Atlanta, we are watching movies in the library. It also means that I have loads of time to express my random thoughts to the world via blog.

Today was one of those days that I look back on and ask, “Am I really getting paid for this?” Granted, we don’t get paid much, but I definitely would have done today for free. It basically went like this: play in the dirt and rain, lunch, play games, supper, play more games.

It was raining again this morning, as usual. However, since we are so Ameri(hard)corps, we were not deterred from our plans of cleaning out an old cabin in the woods and recreating the path to it. The cabin is going to be used by the recreation therapy interns for their cool Halloween shindig they are planning for the kids. Let’s just say that what we did definitely could have made it onto Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs.

The afternoon was spent playing several fun icebreaker games so that we will have lots of ideas of things to do with the kids when we have time to fill. Here’s some of the things we did: drew pictures on other people’s backs, played a game of Mafia, wrapped an entire roll of tape around us, and navigated an obstacle course as a “cell” (I had the role of protoplasm).

Also, I found out about a local running club that I am almost definitely going to get involved in. It seems like a really friendly group who like to run trails when possible. I've been doing a decent amount of running on my own and with a few of the other Corps members who like to work out, but it will be great to have some people to do long runs with and to be in the know about local races.

And to top of the day, we played two intense games of ultimate Frisbee. So all in all, a great day.

I know some of you are just dying to know what kinds of amazing things I did for my birthday, so I'll give you a summary.

We spent most of the day gutting a house that had been damaged by flooding. The house we went to had had water about 4 feet deep in it, judging by the water line. We had to wear face masks to prevent mold spores from infecting our lungs, although the amount of my exhaled carbon dioxide that I inhaled again might be just as bad.

The most awesome part of this was getting to meet and work alongside the family and the other volunteers that were there. The family was really nice, and the wife's sister and aunt had come down to help them clean up. We were also working alongside some Samaritan's Purse volunteers and it was cool to hear their stories about how they got involved here. One of the guys was a mailman from Florida who just felt that God had called him to come and help out, so he took a week off work and came.

In the evening, several of us went out for ice cream at Cold Stone (which, in my opinion, should be one of the seven wonders of the world). When I returned to camp, I found, to my surprise, a little surprise party for me. It was fantastic and I really appreciate all my new friends here. We ended the evening by playing Rock Band for several hours. Oh, and did I mention that my rooommate told me happy birthday at about 10 minute intervals throughout the entire day? So, all in all, a wonderful birthday.

Friday
We spent the morning doing some cleanup work to help out maintenance. A bunch of stuff (two-by-fours, tires, and smaller objects) had gotten swept away in the flooding and carried out into the woods, so we carried it back to the dumpsters. We also saved some awesome stuff that they were going to throw away that we claimed for ourselves, like a table and chairs for our community cabin. I am now the proud owner of a "Smoke-Free Facility" sign, which I plan to post in my future residence.

In the afternoon we got to do some work in the community gardens alongside some of the kids, so that was really cool. It was really the first time we have gotten to interact with them, and it went very well.

That evening the drumming instructor's drumming group was performing at a restaurant/bar, so we all went to watch that. They were really good and it was really cool.

Here's some pictures of our campsite/views along the trail that I have walked approximately 18 times so far.

Saturday
I got up and went for an exploratory run around the campus. I found a disc golf course and two abandoned camp sites. I think that in the earlier years of the program more of the kids lived in cabins, but they now have a dorm-like building that most of them live in, so there are little groups of cabins out on the trails that are no longer in use.

In the afternoon a few of us came out to the office to use the internet, and then got stranded here by the pouring rain. The campsite is about a quarter mile hike from the office, so none of us were really excited to do this in the rain. We finally went back around 5:30 when the rain let up a little.

We spent last night playing board games and card games. Most importantly, I dominated a game of Scrabble, using the word "azul" (apparently you can use foreign words) on a double word score.

Sunday
This morning a few of us went to a church that we found in the area. Afterward we went on a quest to Target (we've tried to go before, but the road to get there was flooded) and Walmart. And that's about it. I know I wrote a whole bunch, but I guess maybe this gives a good idea of what things are like here.

That is the best word I can use to describe my first 24 hours in Georgia. It was expected to rain a lot this week here, but I had no idea just how much. Last night about 8 it started raining, and continued to rain until, well, actually I think it might still be raining now. We had a pretty intense first night in our cabins with an intense thunderstorm going all night, the thunder kept us up a lot and we are pretty sure that lightening struck our cabin at one point. A couple of the other cabins said they had sparks shooting out of their outlets.

Everything was flooded today. Trees near the lake had fallen down because the ground around them had washed out. Our path to our cabins now has a nice little stream running through it. We ended up not doing much of anything today because our leader people couldn't make it here with all the flooding.

So since we had a free day, a bunch of people decided to head into town to get stuff and just look around. I wasn't going to go, but for fear of being left at the campsite alone, I ended up going with the three guys on a trip to get one of the guys' breaks fixed and tour Douglasville. We didn't have any trouble getting there, and it didn't really rain while we were there. However, as soon as we left to come back to camp, it started pouring. And thus began the real adventure. Following our GPS guide, we kept running into roads that had been closed due to flooding. The way we came was closed, and after about 45 minutes of driving in the downpour we ended up at a gas station that I'm fairly certain was now an island. We started contemplating our options of waiting it out at the gas station (it had benches we could sleep on, and food) or driving a long way around to get back, which we weren't sure would even work. We ended up finding a way back that took us a good half hour, and actually had to drive down a road a little ways that was supposed to be closed, but we made it.

Oh, and did I mention that we didn't have any water in our bath house today? Because of this, and the electrical problems in the cabins, we are all spending the night tonight at the school's library. So, I guess you could say that its been an exciting first day. But more importantly, its been really cool to meet the other people I'll be living and working with. It seems like a great group of people and I think it will be great. This place is beautiful (probably more so when it isn't flooded and raining, but I haven't seen that yet) and I am feeling very blessed to be here.