I am so sorry I'm not good at keeping up with this thing. But I honestly think that during my next project there will be much more to post on, because honestly all I've been doing is taxes and more taxes!! We only have one week left here in Wichita Falls! Pretty excited for a change, not only in places but in people as well. It's difficult when you live in a house with 9 other people and there isn't much of an option to get away from them and/or hang out with someone else! But I've been dealing with it and making it through!!
So for my next project I will be going to Casa Grande, Arizona, which is between Phoenix and Tuscon, about an hour from Phoenix and two hours from Tuscon, pretty sweet location! I'm excited! There I will FINALLY get outside to do a project for AmeriCorps!! We will be doing trail building/maintenance for the area. Luckily we will have some sort of living situation that is not tents I'm pretty sure (most people for the next project are basically camping for 2 months!) We also mix up the teams, so the same team I have been with for 2 projects will be all over the place. There is one girl from my team now that will be going with me to Arizona and I'm excited to be with her again!!
So we go to Denver next week, stay there for a week, then head off to Arizona! I'm excited to get back to Denver for a little bit to see everyone and hear how their projects went.
We had quite a busy week this past week. First of all, one night I went to bed thinking how badly my stomach hurt, then woke up at 4am to throw up...not fun...I ended up staying home that day with what was probably just a small stomach bug, but the weird thing is, out of 9 people, me and my team leader were the only two to get it. So we stayed home and watched movies and napped all day! But the Monday before that we had off due to President's Day and we were able to arrange a trip to Fort Worth! We got to tour the Cowboys Stadium...for not being a sports fan at all, it was pretty sweet! Just the size of it was absolutely amazing!
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| This place was HUGE! they were cleaning up after a rodeo |
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| Think their locker room is big enough?? |
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| cheerleader locker room |
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| sweet panoramic I took with my phone! |
We had a lot of fun touring it! It was pretty cool to think that just 2 weeks before the superbowl had taken place there!! So after we took that tour we went to Panera for lunch, then headed to the Fort Worth Stockyards! It was a pretty cool place, we spent most of the day going in and out of the differnt stores they had and they sold cowboy hats and boots and your general Texas gadgets. We were able to watch them do a cattle drive down the street with the longhorn, pretty cool.
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| Longhorn Cattle Drive! |
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| Kiera and I at the Stockyards |
After the cattle drive we went downtown Fort Worth and went to the Water Gardens which was a really pretty place.
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| Me and Greg at one of the water gardens |
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| Me and Josh at the water gardens |
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| Fire 6 at the water garden |
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One of the really cool water things,
we got to walk down into this |
So basically it's a large park with three or four different water features, they each had their own really cool experience like one you could walk down into and be surrounded by walls of water falling, one where everything was just so much bigger than you with a pool in the middle and a lot of steps everywhere.
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| Downtown Fort Worth |
After going downtown we went to a delicious mexican restaurant and then headed back to Wichita Falls!
Going backwards, the Friday before this trip we did an ISP (individual service project) with Habitat for Humanity and were able to help out painting a house they are building! Here is a picture of the team with some people we worked with that day!
And going forward from there (Im all over the place) on Sunday we had our Day of Service where we got together with a local organization to bring local volunteers together and we worked on a trail on the Wee-Chi-Ta trail
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Me working on the trail with some people
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So I think that's a fair amount of what I've done in the last 23 days!! I do have to say with the taxes I love having the instant gratification of making someone's day. The fact that these low income families have the chance to not pay H&R Block and Liberty $200 or more to file their taxes takes a big relief off their backs. They are able to get their full refund back with no gimmicks, and without having an AmeriCorps team here helping out the United Way and the VITA (volunteer income tax assistance) program, it wouldn't be able to happen. Although I hate when I have to break the news that someone owes money, it is worth it to see the shock on some of these peoples faces when they aren't expecting a refund or weren't expecting as much as they got. This money plays a big role in these people's lives because they really aren't getting a lot throughout the rest of the year.
Well folks, it's time for me to go have some fun. We found a cool pool hall/bar down the road about a 15 minute walk away and we're going to head there since we have a lovely Sunday off tomorrow. This is a picture of Josh Greg and I at that pool hall, Greg and I ruined the first one we attempted to take so Josh decided to ruin this one.
SO! Hope all is well, and sorry to hear about more snow :-/ Don't worry, I'm definitely enjoying this 80 degree weather even more for every single one of you up there!! Miss you all! Feel free to email me or send me a message on facebook if you have any questions or just want to say hi! Trust me, I'll take anything!! As soon as I know my address in Arizona I will be sure to pass it along so you can all send me some goodies :-D
