check out those vests.

conrad loves GPSing road signs!

this is what we work with everyday...what an expensive little bugger

.

our doublewide and Mable = heaven.

see, we work. in the pouring rain while getting attacked by mosquitos

the wild conrad does work.

roof frame of a bird blind (not for hunting..) we built. thank you.

conrad and crystal love nature walks.

gator.

gator.

badger 4.1 loves the days inn and route-95

Street Signs Are Complex.

Day 21 of Round 2: We have gotten into a groove in terms of our new project...finally. Our sponsor, John,  is awesome. He is an AmeriCorps NCCC alumni...so he knows the drill. We are working with the Public Works department of Gainesville helping them take inventory of their street signs = we walk around all day with fancy GPS systems recording every sign we see. Now, for those who arent so hip to the signs...there is a lot more to say, the average STOP sign than you think. For example...the material: is it engineer grade? or prismatic material?..both having different reflectivity... (so drivers can see them at night..) There are many different sizes of signs...24x24?..9x30?.. And the poles they are stuck to? Yep, is it 10ft or 12ft? U-channel or square? So...all of that junk has to be recorded and we are the suckers that got the job. It's actually not that bad, we get to spend the entire day outside - allowing me the perfect opportunity to work on my super sweet suntan and who doesn't love a good 6mile walk everyday? Apparently Gainesville loves their weekends because they recently moved to 4day/10 hour work weeks meaning on Friday's we will be working with the Nature Department...i think tomorrow we are building a roof for a bird viewing house? We'll see how that goes. 

Our housing is actually quite spacious. We are living in a double wide in a park called Boulware Springs...there is 15 miles of trail behind our house and a natural spring with turtles. Gainesville gets all of their water from natural springs and it was one of the main reasons the University of Florida built their campus here. The spring that is behind our house is nasty so, no swimming but one of the weekends we are down here John is going to take us to some springs that we can swim in and float on. One of the trails from our house leads to a pretty radical places called Payne's Prairie...which is a wildlife preserve. On Monday we went an walked the trail hoping to get a glimpse of wild horses, alligators, bison and many birds. The only thing we spotted was a ton of giant stinky alligators..and baby alligators! Everyone escaped with all of their limbs. (i'll post some pictures) The only downfall to our housing is that we had to bring all of our own furniture = cots. I hate cots. Cots hate humans. I got an early birthday present though!..a fabulous air mattress! (thanks mom & dad) 

So far things are going pretty well! This is a great project and we are pretty bummed we are only here for the month of June. Gainesville has a lot to offer in terms of history and things to do. I'm definitely looking forward to taking advantage of that and just have a good time! (John is pretty big into making sure we have fun too so, it shouldn't be a problem!) 

Peace&Love

this is the uh...only good thing that came from being in Kissimmee...

Psych.

I am here writing this in Perry Point after a wonderful weekend spent at home. Why am i in Perry Point? Well...it all started when we went to our first day of work for the Nature Conservancy and they informed us that we were unable to work until further notice...Why you ask? Legal junk...more or less. We soon found out that the legal junk could not be resolved so we packed up. Said peace out to Chucky and started our journey back to Maryland. Yep. Another two days in our trusty van..(recently named Mable..because apparently that's the thing to do, name the team van) Luckily for me i was able to get dropped off at the airport on Thursday and headed home! 

It was really great to get away and have a short break from everything! I had a hard time returning but here i am...back with the team...minus three. There was flooding in W. Virginia so, a team of 16 headed out there today to do disaster relief for around 2weeks. Three of the sixteen were two of badger 4's corps members and our team leader. We're down to 5 and it's a riot. We found out today that the 5 of us will be heading BACK to Florida (yep..go ahead, laugh) tomorrow or Thursday to work with for the city of Gainesville. We will be doing GPS data collecting around the city..also known as geocaching. People do that stuff as a recreational activity. We are doing it for our job. It should be interesting...we don't really know much more...except for there's the possibility of tubing down a river. 

We were warned from the start that being a part of NCCC is all about being flexible...and here was our biggest test of that. Sometimes it's frustrating not knowing exactly what we will be doing and when we will start working again but things happen and we just gotta go with the flow. yo.

Chucky the Alligator is our neighbor...

We made it Florida on Friday. It's hot. We left Maryland on Thursday and began our 2 day excursion. I've spent more time in that van than i ever want to...and it's only the second round. We spent a night in S.Carolina in the middle of nowhere only to show up to our new housing..which just so happens to be...in the middle of nowhere. For our directors brief(part of pre-round prep) we showed a really nice picture of what was THOUGHT to be our house...come to find out its the offices of the Nature Conservancy. Silly us...for the next 6weeks we will living in a double wide...which is actually bigger than our last house. Hearing the reaction of the team when we drove up was priceless though. We met Dan..who works for the Nature Conservancy (who we now work for) and he showed us around and let us know that the only things we needed to watch out for were...ahem..: every single type of poisonous snake in the USofA, poisonous spiders, bobcats, ticks, scorpions, the two gators that live in lake in our front yard (Chucky and Chica...they are only 10ft & 12ft - no biggie), ferrel hogs (there is a hog catcher living in a FEMA trailer)...and well i'm pretty sure the list went on but i my attention span is pretty minimal these days. I don't know what i feel more comfortable with, that speech or the "if you hear gun shots..hit the deck" speech by our last sponsor. Oh AmeriCorps. 

We live and will be working on the Nature Conservancy's Disney Wilderness Preserve. No, we aren't working for Disney... The preserve was established in 1992 as an offsite mitigation project to basically make up for all of the damage that occurred to the wetlands when the Walt Disney Resorts and various other sites were developed. There is a law in florida that when someone wants to develop over wetlands they either have to find another location to move the wetlands or find and preserve existing wetlands. Our orientation is on Monday but when talking with the sponsor during transition we found out that we will be doing a lot of herbicide treatment to invasive species, different species removal and relocation (in terms of plants such as maidencane, saltbush, cordgrass...yea i don't know what those are yet) and trail widening/restoring. No one on the team has really done this type of environmental work before so it should be a pretty educational experience for all of us. One of the coolest things about this round is that we only work four days a week...3day weekends will be glorious (Cocoa Beach is only an hour) 

We have only been here for a couple of days and have already come to realize that our entertainment is minimal....Yesterday we took a walk to the office which only took us two hours (from our house)..but we saw a turtle and some wild turkeys!  The walk also allowed us to refill our water bottles because well..drinking sulfur water isn't very legit..which is what is spit out to us from the showers and the faucets. We have a volleyball net. And a frisbee. And while we thought there was wireless in the office...it proved to not work yesterday so i am sitting at a Panera about 20 minutes away from home typing this. This round will definitely be interesting. We have a chance to actually spend some time with each other since we had a difficult time doing that in New Orleans. SPF70 will most likely become my new best friend since i already got fried. I am definitely excited to get started and am hoping to really make the most of my experience here and am looking forward to maintaining a positive attitude. constantly. hah. PEACE&LOVE!

Wrappin' up...

So, it's our last day in New Orleans. It's been a fun run but the entire team is definitely ready to bust a move outta here and head to our next location. We found out last week that we will be heading to Kissemmee, FL! We will be working with a branch of Disney doing environmental conservation work. It sounds like its going to be a lot of hard work but should be pretty rewarding! We havent gotten into all of the nitty gritty details of the project yet because right now we are working out this rounds project debrief (we have to give wrap up presentation to the directors and staff upon our return to perry point)

We finished work on Friday..which was pretty exciting. The past few weeks still consisted of a lot of painting and random carpentry work. A couple of weeks ago the team traveled to Baton Rouge for a night to work on a home. It was nice to get away from the United Saints project...not to mention we got to stay in a really nice hotel...(that bed sure beat the air mattresses we have been sleeping on for the past 8 weeks..) This past week i spent my time in the tool shed and running tools to projects in some pretty sweet cargo vans. We got a lot of work done for United Saints and everyone is pretty sad to see us go. Luckily another team from the Denver campus will be arriving in a few weeks to TRY to fill our shoes...(doubtful) We got pretty close to all of the people here so, its going to be sad saying goodbye.

Over the past two weekends we volunteered a Jazz Fest. Selling $65 tshirts is a pretty boring and ridiculous job but we got to get into the festival for free which was pretty radical since the price for a one day pass is $50...lots of money being made. I got the opportunity to catch a few minutes of Dave Matthew Band, Earth Wind and Fire, Etta James, Neil Young, Avett Brothers...and a few others. Etta James was by far the best...Neil Young is old. Unfortunately i didn't get to see Ben Harper (my all time fav) because i had to play a rousing game of kickball....i don't want to talk about it. We also go a free t-shirt and some kind of cooler bag contraption. Badgers love free tshirts.

Our entire team finished all 80 of our Individual Service Project (ISP) hours...which is pretty huge. We were the first team done and Travis was the first Corps member done. Apparently there is rumors circulating that we get a pizza party. woo. Having all of our hours done is a pretty fortunate thing - we basically get some of our freedom back.. free time on weekends and after work! 

We have a long drive tomorrow and Wednesday. We will be staying in Perry Point for about a week and a half before we leave for FL. I have no interest in going back there but it will be nice to get a break from living in a 3 room house with 9 crazy humans. 

This has been an awesome first round. I got the opportunity to meet a ton of great and interesting people and learned a lot about the history and culture of New Orleans. Our team has learned a lot about each other and while we dont always get along or see eye to eye..we are all that we've got so we had and will still have to learn to live with one another.  I also learned a lot about myself and know that everything i learned here and had to deal with during these 2months will make me stronger....or so i hear.