Hello St. Johns!

This place is amazing! We got here yesterday midday after a six hour drive, it was by far the shortest travel we've had which was nice. On the first day we met Tom who is our sponsor, he surprisingly looks like my uncle Tommy :p He's a really nice and eager to learn EVERYTHING about NCCC; we gave him a thorough debrief on who we are and what we do. It's nice to serve someone who is genuinely interested in your background and what you're hoping to gain from this experience.
Today was our first day - we had a tour of the grounds which are lovely (I suggest googleing the campus, it's beautiful) and met a lot of people we'll be interacting with the next couple of weeks. This place is literally a self sustaining little town, it has more people than most towns in Minnesota. It has a power plant, fire station, police, post office, pottery studio, art gallery, library, church, restaurants, and more...there are like at least 100 monks living here at any time, they live here all their lives and many of the students (at this all men's school) come and live here for four years without leaving so they offer a lot of things! I don't know much about sports but they're a title 3 school and their coach won so many games (more than ANYONE else) they basically let him do whatever he wants..it was really cool. It was nice learning so much about where we are. Best of all there is a lake! I've been swimming each day :) it's going to be a daily activity I can feel it. I love it. The rooms we live in are dorms, they're earth homes though so it's semi-underground. It's a little warm but not too bad. I love the living arrangements and the grounds! This is going to be a fantastic project...
okay onto the work......
We're installing a 9 ft deer fence around 19 acres of oak forest which was rated as excellent condition. It's important because the deer population is out numbering the oak trees which isn't allowed the forest to replenish. The forest isn't only beautiful, it's functional! Everything on campus made of wood came from that forest! It's amazing to see. The work included in putting in the fence is pretty intense. Today we put in poles for the fence, they have to be 3 ft in the ground so the hole are already drilled for us but we have to do the final edits to it and make sure the pole will go in smoothly and evenly..then once the pole is in we have to level it and add tons of sand. Lots and lots of shoveling, honestly the worst part is the bugs! We have tons of bug spray and tick block and what not. They're intense though, never have I ever been so attacked by flies.
I love the site, I love the sponsors, and I love the work :)

so far so good.

LAA Reflection

We had to do a reflection today based on our life after americorps..I feel like it was pretty good so ill just post my responses here so you guys can see whats going on in my head:
1) demonstration and mastery of change: the entire time I've been in americorps I've been out of my "comfort zone" but I've accepted it and learned to embrace the discomfort and try to grow from it. I feel like my greatest contribution to the communities weve been serving has been my openness to learn as much as possible both through hands on work and service learning opportunities. The skills I've gained throughout my time have primarily been focused on team work ie compromise, communication, and coflict resolution. Flexibility is now a very strong trait of mine, not everything you do is "desirable" but it has to be done and sometimes you have to be willing to take the bad job or do extra work when you don't want to for the overall being of the team.
2) build and sustain effective teams: although my team is solid we still have issues when it comes to communication, often it takes someone being pushed too far for us to even acknowledge a problem. I've learned a lot from being on a team, mostly about myself. I learned im not always right but that doesn't mean im necessarily wrong, I also realize everyone should partake in group decisions thst effect us all because when that fails to happen it's impossible to work as cohesive group, it then becomes individuals. Living with so many different people has introduced me to ideas I've never even considered so im thankful for the diversity even if its not apparent when you look at us how different we truly are. I bring flexibility to the team as well as a sense of organization. I try to contribute these attributes in team meetings. I've learned I need to communicate my feelings to the team better, even if it is difficult.

Where's Waldo?

I feel like Americorps is just one big "Where's Waldo" search book, they give you a region you're in but then after that good luck finding WHERE you are in that region. Family back at home only knows where I am if I update them, and on campus it's a big "have you seen so-and-so...oh well how about so-and-so" it's a big hide-and-seek game.
Well to update you all...
I'm in Iowa, yet again. Will be here for a couple weeks, I'm technically on vacation right now then when everyone else comes back there will be a week of transition/midyear trainings. During break I have three days I'm working, tonight, Monday, and Tuesday. Today I'll be working at a parade to make sure traffic doesn't interfere with the parade. Monday and Tuesday I'll be working at an animal shelter. During midyear we'll brief on our next project and I'll get chain saw trained! I'm really excited to go through chain saw training, but underneath the excitement is a bunch of nervousness and doubt...but it'll be okay! I am looking forward to getting every new opprotunity out of Americorps that I can :) I don't want to pass up a chance to do something potentially life changing just because I'm nervous...what's the fun in that?!

Break is so relieving, people are still on campus but there's a lot less people since many people went home..it's really nice. I am also a Van POC so I have keys to a van on campus so if I can gather enough people (which hasn't been an issue thus far) we can go travel a little bit..while staying in our 25 mile radius area :p

My next project is in Collegeville, Minnesota. We'll be working at a college helping to build deer fence around acres of Oak trees! Apparently the deer population has outgrown that of the oaks and they're hindering the growth of the forest! So we're just going to fence in the trees to give them a chance to grow! Also removing some invasive species? I haven't had the chance to do that really yet..should be a new adventure! Also there's a chance we'll be bottling some syrup? They have the best syrup in Minnesota apparently but it's not sold...you only get it if you work with it somehow SO MAYBE I'LL GET SOME SYRUP yay :) the perks of community service! We all know how I love pancakes soooooo yeah.

That's about it...I miss Minot but I'm sure to have a break.

Last week in Minot!

My time here is coming to an end, and honestly im excited to move on. Minot is an awesome city with awesome people, and the work here has been super fun - however there's just not enough work to go around sometimes. The times we have work its always fun and interesting, but sometimes we're doing a lot of busy work which is very defeating. Personally I rather be doing hard labor amd helping than doing easy busy work. It's not our sponsors fault its just slowing down around here a little, but the sponsors positivity helps the team to stay focused on the task at hand no matter how trivial it may seem. For example, we've sorted and wrapped a ton of siding for homes..the task itself is tedious and annoying but in the bigger picture wrapping/sorting the siding has helped the warehouse make more siding deliveries...so althoughits annoying in the long run it still is helping home owners get closer to normality.
BUT this past week some of us have been doing restorative lawn care! That has genuinely been fun, we worked with a few older men from another church hydroseeding yards. I love  the work, sometimes raking a tilled yard can be tedious and annoying but you get instant gratification from home owners, and seeing who you're personally helping is a good feeling! They're all so thankful its very rewarding. The old men we work with are fantastic too, Vern, Marlan, Dennis, and Blaine have all taken us under their wing and been very nice. Blaine is probably the one I like the most he was special ops Army, actually helped rescue Marcus Lutteral who wrote Lone Survivor...he is an all around amazing person who has given so much to his country and continues even though he's retired.
Im very thankful for the people and places I've met/gone with A,Americorps but I think Minot will be one of my best memories..you cant quite explain the feeling of giving back to a community who needs help,  it feels good to do good

And its not over yet, this coming week we'll continue yards and warehouse deliveries (hopefully there are deliveries) and next weekend we're doing a community day in which we'll paint 1,000 stars of hope for Moore, OK. Its going to be fun! I hope to leave Minot a little better off than when we got here, I know im already better off because of Minot....but it will be nice to have cell phone service again :p

Relay for life!

Let me start off by saying it was one of the best nights of my life, one of the most touching and inspirational events I've ever been apart of.
After working 8 hours at the warehouse, we came back to Hope Village for a hour then headed back out to Minot State University to help with the relay which went from 6pm-6am! It was quite the event...

We got there and helped set up a few things, then it was really slow (work wise) for a while. My team was there along with Ceder 6; we helped moved chairs/tabels where/when needed, take down inflateables, and keep an eye on the candels.

The event started with the introduction of the event to the relay teams, some speakers, then the initial lap was done solely by survivors...it was a beautiful sight. Truly inspiring. The next lap was done by the caretakers, the love and compassion was almost tangible in the atmosphere. The relay start and throughout the night there was music and side things such as zumba, hip hop dancing, bingo, raffles, silent auctions, and other various games.

It was really nice to be there, but I must admit being up for 24 hours a totally new thing to me, I went INSANE! We didn't have constant work, just minor things between sit up and break down..so we were able to partake in activities and walking, I had several phases of sleepy-awake-borderline death-extremely hype-calm...it was interesting..one example was when zumba started we all were sitting at our table annoyed by the dancing people and how we couldn't dance (we're all very uncordinated) then a half hour later we're all up dancing with each other and running around like psychos...pretty sure we were all delierious. Another portion of the night was me laying on the bleachers face down, falling off the first seat onto the sub-bleacher which is meant to be a foot rest, then onto the asphalt, only to do the YMCA dance when the song came on while laying on the ground...I was a pitiful sight! haha  When we were working it wasn't bad though, it was really fun. I got to light the luminaries that spelled out HOPE. It was really nice. The woman working with us was so thankful and gave us goodies! I got a key chain, a draw string bag, and a lot of free food :)

I was truly inspired by the event and happy I was able to partake in it! I also got 12 hours of ISP work which boosted me up to 64.5 hours! Getting closer and closer to my 100 hour goal :)

being up 24 hours really allowed the team to show how insane we really are haha...it was one of the most memorable nights thus far! Loved every minute of it though!

Only two more weeks left here in Minot until I go back to Vinton...looking forward to a break but I will truely miss Minot. It's such a nice city with lovely people...it may be in the middle of no where but it's worth a visit. The people here are magnificent - one guy here helped us when we moved a lady out of her house, he was volunteering after school; then we saw him at a cook out we went to, then we saw him somewhere else, then at relay for life! He's just one example of how involved the the people of the community are and how hard they truely work around here...it's really encouraging to see someone put so much of their time into the larger picture.

It's June and still a chilly 40 degrees here in the mornings...during the day you break a sweat in the 50 degree weather...haha oh and tons of rain!

Quickly to answer the questions I've been getting from several people:

• In regards to Oklahoma, my team will not be going there. Here's how the program works: there are 5 campus' that serve different parts of the country and although a team CAN leave their region it's only for natural disasters...which may make you ask "well Brandy it's a natural disaster..aren't you going?"...No I'm not, the order of responders in this case is as follows: South Central Region campus in Denver, CO; secondly FEMA CORPS would respond is need be; thirdly, teams from out side of the region. FEMA corps is wrapping up their service year now, so they're outta here for the most part (from what I understand) and there are probably teams there was the south central region campus..and there has been rumors of teams from NCR going out there however my team cannot be pulled to go there. We're already on a disaster project which is a high priority - there's a heirarchy of projects that range from important to less important, for example, working at the YMCA camp was probably a little less important than flood repair...not saying the work wasn't needed but just in a disaster instance that's how it's viewed. So yes a team or two may be sent down there, highly unlikely though, and no I will not be going there in the future
• Graduation, What I know for sure is that graduation is 3pm November 13. On November 14, we all go home. It will be in Vinton at a local high school, if you want to come out feel free :) rent a care and a hotel room and explore Vinton...it'll take you all of 5 minutes to get around town!

We have been really slow with work - like really slow...last week we learned how to sanitize a house by observing another team do it...then we organized the warehouse...now we're putting up drywall. HOWEVER THERE'S A BRIGHT HORIZON...we'll probably be doing work with a different organization out here from now on just because LDR is having a hard time finding enough work for us, so we'll still be doing warehouse stuff but in adition to that we'll be working with the Minonites. Tomorrow we're doing deliveries then hopefully working with the Minonites after that.

Vacation is coming up which is exciting..although I'll be working probably the entire time but oh well. I will be staying on campus in Vinton, again if anyone has funds and wants to visit you're more than welcome to the little town and me! But I'll probably just hangout around town, relax at the pool (if it's not freezing) and work. I want to get some of my ISP  hours out of the way and I plan to just do a few hours (maybe 3-4) a day at the library or animal shelter...other than working and sleeping I have no plans...it's super exciting I know...


that's about all...speaking of ISPs I have a 12 hour one coming up soon, it'll be a 24 hour day for me...haha wish me luck! It's with the relay for life and apparently around 2am we can start walking with people to serve as motivation...should be interesting. I'm all about getting the hours out of the way..I need 100 and I already have a little over 50 :)


I'll be heading back to Vinton on June 24th so any mail people send please send accordingly :)


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