Crazy Weekend in Arizona!

Ok people. This weekend was pretty interesting and long.  Friday we found out that if the government shut down, we would have to pack up everything and head back to Denver (which is a 2 day trip for most people) until the government came back up.  This was a good test as to how much I've grown being in the program because the old me would have FREAKED out and packed and worried and stressed over everything.  I ignored everything everyone was saying about it, I didn't pack, I just knew that it was out of my control and when someone told me we were leaving, I'd pack and do it because that's what I would have to do.  So officially at like what, 9pm we found out we were in the clear and that didn't surprise me at all.  So I'm glad to know that being in a program like this where I should be expecting the unexpected at all times I'm a much calmer and more collected person.  Pretty excited.

So because we didn't have to start trecking back to Denver we had a Community Build planned but, hmm it rained and was only 55 degrees here!!!! So we left at 6:45 am to go see if it was still happening or not, a 30 minute drive later we were told that it had been cancelled.  On one hand I was pretty bummed because I loved doing the last community build, but on the other hand after such a long day Friday I think most everyone was excited to have the time off! So we had a full weekend because otherwise we would have only had Sunday off!  So I went and spent most of my day at Starbucks (after a 2 hr nap of course) and was able to finally catch up on some shows! LOVED Grey's Anatomy...but anyway....then we went on our weekly fast food adventure this time to In & Out burger...wasn't impressed but I don't think i was in a mood for gross unhealthy fast food that night!

Sunday was fantastic, we had a trip planned to go to the Sonora Desert Museum which is just west of Tucson.  I love love love these kind of museums!  It is partially a zoo and has a bucnh of different displays about everything about the desert!  I will put pictures up on facebook the next time I go to Starbucks cause the internet is too slow here to do anything with them!  After that we went searching for some lunch and we found this absolutely delicious Greek restaurant named "Opa!".  They thought we were University of Arizona students and said we get free fountain drinks, so we took them up on that, and then they brought out a plate of pita with hummus and tziki!  Just like mexican restaurants give you chips and salsa for free! We were pretty excited by all the free things we had been recieving!  Then my friend Louise order flaming cheese, i forget what the cheese is called but the table next to us ordered it, and they bring the cheese out on this huge platter, and then set it on fire in front of you and it makes a huge flame! So that intrigued her enough to buy one and it was absolutely delicious.  Then I order a gyro cause I have been craving one ever since I was eating one in Morocco in Epcot at Disney World last August.  It was soooooo good and hit the spot.  It was a great price too so I would definitely go back there if I were ever in Tucson again!  Then we went down to an area with some shops and walked around, and it's a very cool area with a bunch of bars, coffee shops, thrift stores, I would also love to go back there too!

So as you can see it was a busy, exhausting, and exciting weekend for me!  And today we got back up on the trail and the temperatures are slowly rising, we had 79 degrees today, 84 tomorrow and should reach 92 by Friday!  I'll get all nice and tan for those of you that I see in almost one week!!!  And I had a crazy realization that I get to eat as much Red's as I please when I come home and I can't wait to bite into a chipper!! NOM and I've got all my meals planned out so I can go to my favorite places, Amatos, Otto, Margaritas, Thai food, possibly Clambake if they're open, and of course Red's! SO excited.  But for now I'm going to go relax in the sun!  Will add pictures soon!

Arizona Contd

Hello. So. Been doing a lot of trail building since I last wrote.  As of today we have built 3623 feet of new trail!!! Over half a mile, it's crazy to know what 10 people can do (especially in this heat!)  Since I last wrote we obviously worked during the week on our trail, but on the Saturday before last we had what is called a Community Build in which people from the community come out on a Saturday and help to build a different part of the trail than what we work on during the week.  I got to work with a troop of Boy Scouts that were 12-14 years old, I had a great time, luckily I have experience working with kids and was able to with help from their scout leaders keep them on track and we made some pretty darn good trail!!

The weather has been amazing here, obviously.  Last Friday it got up to 97 DEGREES! AH! it was so hot, but we've been starting our days earlier (6am, can you believe it?!) so we can try to beat the heat and not be out in it for too long.  It's nice when we do that cause then we get out at 1:30 and are home by 2:30 and it's like having a whole other day off!!!  I have some pretty interesting tan lines right now from our boots, shorts and tshirts but I'm hoping to even those out by the time I come home! Speaking of!  I booked a flight to come home for Easter weekend!  I'll be taking a red eye flight into Boston and get in at 11am on that Weds before Easter, and will be leaving bright and early Monday after!  So, if you wanna see me let me know!  I'll be around all day mostly Weds and Thurs if anyones available!  Otherwise I'm pretty jam packed busy.  

I am so exhausted.  We just had a 3 day weekend in which I napped a lot, so having to go back to work today killed me and it's not even 9:00 yet and I'm ready to pass out!  Our living situation is still going well!  Excited to sleep in my own bed rather than an air mattress but I'll take this air mattress over one of those cots anyday!

This weekend we have another community build on Saturday and Sunday we are taking a trip down to Tucson, so I'm pretty excited about that!  And we just found out that the last weekend we are here we get to go to a Diamonbacks game up in Phoenix!  That'll be fun too!  I'm glad we get to travel and see more of the state!

 I can't think of much else to talk about, but I have some pictures to share so you can get an idea of what I do for 8 hours a day!  Love to all!



Girls night out getting margaritas in our fancy new glasses!



What I get to do day in and day out. That's my big butt in the middle.



Team Fire 8 in Denver the morning we departed for Arizona!






This cactus is called a cholla(pronounced choy-ya)
It is bad. Stay away. It will stick to you and it will hurt.
And yes, we are surrounded by them all day!



Part of the awesome trail we get to build everyday!



My team minus Louise (she was sick this day) on our first day
getting ready to head up to the mountain!  We look this hot all day, don't worry! ;)

Casa Grande, AZ HOT HOT HOT

Hello from Arizona!! We made it here to Casa Grande last Tuesday, a week ago (times flies when youre having fun)! It is about an hour and a half north of Tuscon and an hour south of Phoenix. The work we are doing here is we are building new trails on Casa Grande Mountain.

Our hike up Casa Grande Mountain!

My team on a part of the trail we already built!

Our beautiful view from the mountain, cacti galore!

 So far it’s been pretty hard because I’ve had two projects inside that consist of sitting and not doing too much physical labor! This is a lot of labor. We have to hike about a mile and a half just to get to where we start working. When we get up there, we all take turns pick axing new trail and using a McLeod to flatten it out. I have mostly taken over the job of following behind everyone and making it look pretty and even (if you can imagine with me and my semi-ocd with having things perfect) The two days we had up on the mountain last week its been HOT it was in the high 80s and I was dying! But this week is supposed to be mid 70s so I hope that will help me adjusting to this hard work! I’ve been bringing about 5 water bottles. The first guy to help us on the mountain suggested we drink ¾ of our body weight in ounces, so basically I should be drinking 4 nalgenes worth of water in a day! So I freeze most of them and they stay pretty cold all day.But I haven;t been drinking as much as I should because I refuse to wilder-pee!  We decided we are going to have early work days so we aren’t out in the hot all day, we start at about 7:30 and leave the mountain around 2:30 for our half hour hike down. So it’s nice to have the afternoon to get home and shower and do whatever business needs to get done.

Speaking of our home! We have a pretty good setup! We are living in the city’s aquatic park, which is essentially a large outdoor pool with a large sweet slide! (pictures to come soon) Bad part is, we can’t swim in it L not only is it against AmeriCorps policies but the city doesn’t want to be liable for anything that would happen to us. So that stinks especially when we will be dealing mostly with 90s and 100s by the time we leave Arizona! So we mostly all sleep in this one square room, but some people have been sleeping outside its so nice at night (not me, im very picky with my sleeping situation).

Our tease of a backyard, at least we can sit by it...

Little picnic area where we eat dinner

one side of the square room we live in (my big mess is the air mattress)

Our backyard of fields with kids playing sports all the time!

Also! I finally booked a plane ticket to come home to Maine for Easter weekend! We have Friday the 22nd and Monday the 25^th off for a long weekend, so I took Thursday the 21^st off from work to give me extra time to travel since it will take me all day (or all night in my case) I am going to take a bus up to Phoenix Wednesday night and fly out at 11:50pm and take the red eye to Boston so I can have an extra full day at home! So I’ll get into Boston at 11am and may stay in Boston for the day, or take a bus home and hopefully see some of your lovely faces!!!! Don’t have many plans really, so let me know if you want to see me at some point!
So for this project (im sure I already mentioned this, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it) we have a whole new team. I only have one person from my old team which I am thankful for because I love her and shes an awesome support for me! But so far this team is fantastic! There are a lot of positive people who like to get things done as I do and aren’t just lazy butts. We have 7 girls (including our awesome team leader) and 3 guys, so its nice that the females have the majority it makes things a little easier to handle! I think I’m going to really like this team, but at the same time I miss my original team but I’m sure theyre having a fantastic time!
We had this past weekend as a three day weekend (Sat, Sun and Mon off), we will have some weeks like that but others we have community builds on some Saturdays and work those Monday’s when we have the community builds. I’m excited because this city is absolutely amazing. They used to have only like 10,000 people but have grown to have 50,000 people not including the snow birds that come from the Midwest and other places. So they are a town that has recently boomed. The people we work with are fantastic and everyone has great connections to make our time here a great time. Also these people are so grateful for our help. I never realized that just by helping to build a trail for a community would have such a large impact. There was one day this week we were in the middle of working and a biker came up behind me and I said “um….the trail kind of ends here!” He was so thankful that we are extended what he was used to doing. It’s going to eventually be a loop that people can get from one end of the mountain to the other. So far one our first day we built 170 ft of trail (we were down 3 people that day too) and 240 the next day (with 2 more people back) so we are off to a great start because apparently we are on a fairly difficult section of the mountain.

So as you can see I am very excited about this project and the work we’re doing! It’s going to be the most work I’ve done in my life but it will be so rewarding. I’m expecting to come home in one month at least 10 lbs lighter and much, much tanner than most of you Mainers! I can’t wait to finally become healthy and in shape all just by doing my job. I will try to post more often this project! We have internet access at our “home” but not enough for skype or watching tv at all, but enough to post!  See some of you in one month!!!!! J

Hola from Denver!

Hello hello! Currently in Denver, we got here last Saturday after a long road trip from Wichita Falls! I say that because we stopped in Amarillo, TX on Friday night.  On Saturday morning we decided to be early risers and make a 7am start. Good thing we did.  We had both a 15 passenger van and a cargo truck.  I was riding in the van when 15 minutes down the highway apparently the accelerator decided to just stop working...so our driver was smart enough to pull over safely on the side of the highway and no one and nothing got hurt thank goodness.  So we were following the truck so the truck pulled over about 1/4 mile ahead of us.  There was no restarting the van so we had to call a tow truck, about an hour later the tow truck came and picked up the van.  Luckily Amarillo was a common place to stop for the night, so 2 teams from a different unit (a bunch of people i didn't know) stopped and picked us up because there were 10 of us and only 5 or 6 can fit in the truck.  They gave us a ride to where the van was taken and we were told it wouldn't be looked at till Tuesday!!! So we piled up in 2 vans and 2 trucks and trucked it back to Denver without our poor van which is still in Amarillo!

So once we got back to Denver (only 2 hours later than we were originally supposed to get in, not too bad) a bunch of us went out downtown because it was one of the only nights we didn't have anything the next day.  On Sunday I took complete advantage of what the city has to offer and I woke up at 8:30 and took the bus to the light rail and took that downtown.  Went to Starbucks for a while and had some breakfast and just used the internet.  Then I wandered down to Walgreens and Barnes and Noble then I treated myself to a delicious lunch at Noodles and Company (they definitely need to get one in Maine if they haven't already)  So it was just amazing to have some time to myself and not rely on anyone else to get around and go where I want.  Especially after more than 2 months of not having any alone time!!!

This week has been pretty busy, within the first 2 days back we had meetings and we debriefed about our project in Wichita Falls.  Then Tuesday we officially switched our teams.  For our third project we switch who we have as a Team Leader as well as team members.  I only have one person from my original team on my new team (sorry if ive already explained this before) and don't really know many of the other people yet! So of course I'm nervous and hate the whole new to everyone experience but it'll be fine!  So I'm excited to get to Arizona, I think I'm finally going to have a chance to meet my goal of losing at least 10 lbs.  We are going to be doing some intense hard work in the heat.  It's inevitable that if I just do my job I'll lose weight!  So we've been spending some time with our new team and so far I'm raelly excited to get to know these people! They all seem like great and I think we'll do really well together.  My team leader seems like she is going to be really great, the past two rounds she has stayed here in Denver and was in the office doing work here, and now gets to go out in the field with us!

So we actually have this whole weekend off which will be nice then Monday we head off to Casa Grande!! We will be stopping in New Mexico on the way.  When we are in Casa Grande we will be living in an "Aquatic Facility" aka a pool, there is one large room in which we all (10) have to share, we'll see how communal living goes, it'll definitely push my boundaries.  This weekend Denver apparently has an excellent St. Patricks Day parade that I hope to go to, I'll be sure to let you know! 

I've been hearing feedback that people really enjoy reading this, so I'm glad to know SOMEONE is reading it!  But please please please send me an email or fbook message if you have any feedback or want to just talk more!!!  I love hearing from everyone!  Here is my new mailing address while I'm in Arizona (Starting Tuesday)

Annie Cavallaro
AmeriCorps NCCC
404 E Florence Blvd.
Casa Grande, AZ 85122

feel free to send me anything!!! I can't explain how amazing it makes me feel to recieve even a silly little card once in a while.  It's nice to know people are still thinking of me!! And I'm trying my best to respond if anything is sent!  Hope to hear from everyone!!! Love! I'll probably post next once we settle in Arizona!

Ranch pictures!

On that last very long post I forgot to tell you guys abour our day going to a ranch!!!  Someone within the United Way community owns a ranch about 45 minutes outside of Wichita Falls and invited us to go out to visit.  When we got there we were able to take turns riding some horses around a little corral for a while.  It was fun because I haven't riden a horse in a veryyyy long time and forgot how fun and exciting it is!!  After that we played some horseshoes, then one of the cowboys that work there took us on a little hayride out onto the property and cows starting crowding around us because we were on their food truck!!  So they started yelling at us and came up and grabbed hay off the truck.  After that we headed down to another part of the property (these people own quite a lot of property) and we shot some shotguns.  I always get nervous when I hold guns and especially when I shoot them.  Then it scares me as to how good of a feeling it is to shoot a gun!!...anyway, after that our supervisors from United Way took us out to eat at a yummy mexican restaurant (I have eaten SO much mexican and BBQ while I've been here in Texas!) I had a delicious quesedilla!  But I forgot to add that into our exciting filled week a week or so ago! 

My team at the Water Gardens in Fort Worth

Me riding a horse!

Longhorn at the ranch!

Shooting a gun!

My team with the Wichita Falls mayor when we at some
BBQ cooked by the Mavericks!

We're all busy packing and cleaning today.  We have to completely clean out this house of everything that exsists in here! It's like we're moving out of a houst but aren't taking anything except our personal belongings!  We are heading out early tomorrow morning and we are going to stop at Palo Duro which is apparently the 2nd largest canyon next to the Grand Canyon.  We were going to spend the night in some cabins there, but things got too complicated and we are just going to drive an hour more after to Amarillo to stay in a hotel.  At Palo Duro we hope to be able to take a horseback riding tour, if not we'll just take some time hiking the canyon and see what it's all about!  and Saturday we should arrive back in Denver and spend a week there debriefing and briefing!

That's all for now!! :)

Its been a while!

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! 

This place was HUGE! they were cleaning up after a rodeo

Think their locker room is big enough??

cheerleader locker room

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.

Longhorn Cattle Drive!

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.

Me and Greg at one of the water gardens

Me and Josh at the water gardens

Fire 6 at the water garden

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. 

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

Me working on the trail with some people

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

Snow Wichita Falls

Hello! So, not much new has really happened in the last week and a half...been doing taxes, same old same old.  This past weekend it was 70+ degrees here and it was nice while it lasted! Until the snow hit Monday night...At first it was sleeting and then it snowed, so theres ice hiding under the snow and Texas doesn't really have the equipment to deal with it.  So Tuesday we had a snow day and stayed in all day except we walked down to the park down the street and I went on the 12ft slide and made a big snow pile at the bottom and made makeshift sledding!  Then we had yet another snow day yesterday cause the roads were still iffy, but we couldn't take one more day of being in this house so 6 of us went to the mall (driving verrrry slowly of course) and got some lunch at On the Border and walked around the mall so we didn't go crazy!!  Now today we are delayed at work until 1:00 and tomorrow delayed until 12:30.  So it's been a long boring week this week!  But last week some of us went to this little nature conservancy place and I have a couple pictures from there and then we went to a hockey game last week as well and have a picture from that.  Sorry this post is all over the place, if I don't blog at least once a week, all our activities run together because I have been having very bad time conception lately, today doesn't seem like Thursday at all but these snow days have completely thrown me off!

Me, Emma, Greg and Kiera at the Nature Conservancy, we found a cool wagon to sit in!

Emma and I as ladybugs!

Mary, Me, Josh, Greg and Emma at the Wildcats hockey game

So on the 18th there's this group called the Mavericks that have BBQs for groups around the city and the Mayor hooked us up and apparently it's the best BBQ around so I'm pretty excited!  And there's a chance we might get to go to someones ranch and go horseback riding and canoeing and I'm sure more BBQing, but we'll see if it works out!!  We were going to try to plan a trip to Fort Worth this weekend, then someone was smart and realized...the superbowl is in Dallas Sunday....we aren't going anywhere NEAR there!!!! pretty cool the superbowl is only 2 hours away though!  We have Sunday off and it's one of my teammate's birthday so it should be a fun day! I'm sure I'll have some more photos to share later on! Byeeeee