Of mice and women

Hello all! I miss you all and I hope you are having a great holiday season!
 
Now, what should I start out with? How bout the mice!? Or should I say, little, evil, menacing creatures out to get me! Let me paint this picture for you: It was a cold Iowa morning. The beautiful and innocent Jessica rest in her sleeping bag, listening to the eerie howl of the wind outside. Four of them slept in that room, unaware of the additional company that had joined them. From the silence came the gnawing, crunching sound of tiny teeth within the walls. Then, out of nowhere, a scream! The girl sleeping across from Jessica bolts straight up out of bed, and pins herself on the wall, swearing something was just on her face! Jessica laughs and tells her she was dreaming. As she tilts her head to glance at her clock, two beady little eyes stare down at her from her shoulder, ready to attack!!!! AAAAAHHHHH! Ok, ok…. So that was a bit overdramatic, but I almost died guys, really!!! In addition to deciding I would be fun to walk over, they also enjoy stealing my yarn, eating my bananas, pooping in my shoes, and scaring the living daylights out of me in the shower!
 
Moving on, so we are about done with our job here in Coon Rapids. So far, we have cleared almost 24 acres of woodland, planted 850 flower bulbs, filled and hauled 3 tons of seed, and emptied out most of a large barn. The blizzard prevented us from doing more, but I am proud of how well our team did! Not bad for about a months work. We have about four more days left here and it doesn’t look like we are going to make it out into the woods again because of the weather. We could finish the barn we were clearing, but it holds a lot of hay, mold, and chicken poop which gave me and two others asthma attacks the last time we were in there. Needless to say, we can’t go back there again. So unfortunately we can so some small things around town until we leave, but that’s all.
 
The blizzard we had was fantastic! It got down to about 30 below with the wind chill and dumped over a foot of snow which was exciting for me! Even more for the two women on my team who have never even seen snow before. We couldn’t leave our house for almost 3 days because the plow couldn’t reach our home, but we got to play in it! The snow drifts created these 8 foot mounds of snow which were perfect for making caves out of (see Facebook pics). You really don’t know funny until you have seen grown adults, who look like marshmallows with all their layers on, attempt to run through five feet of snow! It is a lot of falling down and not being able to get back up. I found it was easier just to roll everywhere.
 
Last night, the Whiterock Conservancy (the organization we are working for), threw us a Christmas party! A lot of people came including the editor of the local paper. I ate so much though….blah! The cuisine included pretty much every local animal you could eat like pheasant, chicken, beef, pork, and deer, though to my delight, there was no squirrel. Elizabeth, our sponsor, gave a really nice speech about how thankful everyone was for us coming and it made me really happy. It sometimes doesn’t seem like we are making that big of a difference, so it is always nice to hear that we are.
 
When we leave this town on the 15th, we drive back to Vinton, IA for debriefing with our supervisors and a little break. Then, on the 19th, I fly home to Washington! Just one week away baby, yeah! Here is a list of things I intend to do once my plane lands: hug a large tree, go to 10 different kinds of coffee shops in one day starting with Starbucks, look at a mountain, eat a salmon, say hi to a hippie, listen to Pearl Jam, wear colors… I can’t wait! Look out Washington, here I come! Woohoo!
 
If you are reading this, please respond by letting me know what you guys have been up to! Miss you all!
 
Smooches from Coon Rapids!

Nigerians, Shotguns, and Squirrels

Hello from Cooooooooon Rapids! My team departed from Vinton early Monday morning and arrived later that day in Coon Rapids, Iowa which is about 2 hours west of Des Moines. We met our sponsor named Elizabeth who is a bubbly Ecologist that swears like a sailor. She brought us to an old, worn down farm house in the middle of no where. This will be our home until December 15th. It sits on about 4 acres and is accompanied by an apple tree, an oak tree with a tire swing, and a few run down barns. I'm absolutely in love! Coon Rapids sits in the darkest part of Iowa since there is no light pollution for miles. Therefore, the nights are absolutely breath taking with the amount of stars you see. Right now there is a meteor shower going on so I love to sit outside and watch everything and listen to the coyotes. Iowa is just full of surprises. :) What we are doing here is more invasive species removal in order to help an oak savanna thrive. We have been chain sawing and bucking trees so far, however tomorrow we are going to set our tree piles on fire. The Oaks will survive the fire, but the others won’t. Since we have now opened the canopy, the seeds that are dropped will now have sunlight and room to grow. Its kinda cool and I'm digging my new mad chain sawing skills!

We have been invited over to some houses for dinner which has been quite interesting to say the least. We arrived at this house and the first thing this woman says to us is "who wants to go check the squirrel trap?" I, of course, go and is led by the daughter over to grandma's house. I found myself at a gorgeous home with high windows and expensive paintings. This very well put-together elderly woman greets me with a shotgun in her hand. She asked me what my name was, and when I told her "Jessica", she starts to load her gun while asking "Jessica what?". "Uuuuuuuuuhhhh....Jessica Beckwith ma'am". She hugs her granddaughter and starts chatting with her while I dart my eyes around the room looking for my escape rout wondering if I can take the grandmother if I needed to. She then points her gun to a very scared looking squirrel in a trap on her porch and tells us to take it. I bolt out for it and wait at the door while I’m sure I look like the craziest person to ever set foot in Coon Rapids. We take the squirrel back to the first house as an already cooked squirrel is being set on the table. They decide that the best place to leave the alive squirrel would be right next to the dining room table! We ate in awkward silence while it gave us silent death glares. It was enough to make me go back to being a vegetarian! One thing that was cool though is there was an exchange student living there from Nigeria. It was a lot of fun to talk with him about Africa and it made me want to go there even more! One day....!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyhoo, being and incredibly goofy bunch, we have made up a ton of funny rules and games to help us pass the time. Here are some:
1. How to swear. I don’t know how we got on to this, but you take the first letter of the swear word and combine it with cinnamon. So one could say, "Son of a Binnamon!".
2. The blow dart game: You have to make eye contact with someone and do the motion that you are blowing a dart at them. If they see you do it, they have to drop to the ground no matter where you are until someone else walks over to you and "pulls out the dart". We have gotten so good at it that we can do it across long distances and in mirror reflections. It’s just really funny when you are talking to someone and all of a sudden they drop to the ground because someone across the room blow darted them. The funniest time we have had with this game is when we are in public places like Wal-Mart. I blow darted a couple people in the food isle and they dropped to the ground, confusing the finnamon out of a bunch of people. Hahaha... we are a strange, strange group.

Ok, that is enough for now cause I need to go, but I shall leave you with my new address for anyone wants to send me cookies. I know you all are!!! :D

Please send mail to:

Jessica Beckwith in care of Whiterock Conservancy
1390 Highway 141
Coon Rapids, Ia 50058

Peace Out!

Did you miss me?

I finally got internet so I can blog again! So stop crying, you can crawl out of that fetal position...you once more get to be blessed by my humble words.

I have a lot of catching up to do! I had a mini project this past weekend where every team was assigned to an organization close by so they didn't have to find housing. However, my team was assigned the coolest project ever so we left for the whole weekend. We actually did three things: acted in a haunted house, did some forest clearing, and… wait for it….. wait for it…. PRAIRIE BURNING! It was soooo cool! We set fire to 33 acres of prairie land and I found my new favorite past time. When we all got back from our projects, we discussed with the other teams what we did. I heard a lot of “oh, we helped the squirrels” or “we moved rocks”. Well I burned things down, lopped trees, and made grown men pee themselves! Man I love serving my country.

Moving on, we got our Rep Roles for our team. I’m a service learning initiator, a project outreach liaison, and on governance council. It’s a lot of fun and involves a lot of planning, promoting, and interacting directly with sponsors and the communities.

PT is getting more fun because now we just do it with our teams, no more scary ex army dudes. We still are getting up at 5am to workout, but we do all cool things since we are the ones who plan it. A few days ago, I brought my light up Frisbee and we played Ultimate Frisbee out in the field. We started the game by throwing the Frisbee over to the other team, and then in true battle style, screamed “UUUUUULTIMATE!!!!” at the others while charging them. However, because it was in the dark, I ultimately ran into people, ultimately fell into the compost pile, and ultimately introduced my face to every tree around me.

A couple of days ago, my team went to a local Elementary School to do a few things for them. One included putting together and installing a new playground toy called an X-Wave. Its basically a huge, curvy teeter-totter that fits about 15 children. The only problem was it was below freezing and we had to rope off a section of the playground so none of the students could get to our tools, leaving a lot of bitter children staring at us. One little angel of a 2rd grader led about 30 kids in an oh so funny (*read with sarcasm) chant of “HUUUR-RY UP” while one on-looking girl growled at me. Oh how I miss children. It ended up being a fun day in the end because I got to jackhammer- which I loooove! Its right up there with burning stuff down. Well, it was fun until I fell over and killed my knee. (You will note that this is a habit of mine. Prayers encouraged on chainsaw day…)

Anyhoo, today I received an e-mail letting me know I was accepted into AmeriCorps NCCC and that I was assigned to Vinton, Iowa. Uuuummm, a little late guys….

Anyways, that’s about it for now. Only a little bit more training left then I get inducted and then go on my first official big project on the 16th!!! Woohoo!

Happy EARLY birthday Danielle!

My new boyfriend, the "A" (plus address update)

Hello again! Its been one whole week here, bah! Got a chance to get into the computer room so I can catch everyone up on whats been going on in this exciting town of Vinton. Speaking of Vinton, I found out some nifty info about this town so I thought I would share some fun facts with you all. Have you guys heard of Laura Ingalls Wilder? She is the author of Little House on the Prairie. Anyhoo, you know how there is a blind chick in the books/show? That character is based off her sister who is blind and who, in the early 1800's, attended the blind school that I currently live at. Isn't that so exciting guys?! Wow. But wait, there is more! Vinton was also the birthplace of American artist Everett Warner who designed camouflage! Aaaaaaaaaand, scenes from the smash 1996 blockbuster Michael were filmed in Vinton. How can 4.3 square miles host so much thrilling details? How I ask? And now its home to me. Awesome.



Ok, 'nuff of that. Moving on... today we had PT which stands for Physical Training. It was the day where ex army guys get to relive their glory days by making us count off and right face. They then test us some more to see our physical skill level by making us run a mile and do push-ups and sit-ups and then place us into groups with others in the same skill level. We had to do five laps around the track. I got to about 4........ steps. My body protested and threatened me with embarrassing sweat and a funny running style. Think Pheobe from friends and let that picture just sink into your minds for a while. By the time I finished the first lap, I was not only passed by the guy with the injured leg, but I'm pretty sure I saw a line of ants pass by me. When I finished though, I was greeted by a very good looking water bottle and a bombardment of high fives from my team and then just random people. That's the cool thing about this campus, everyone is so supportive of you no matter what. I'm excited to see how much I improve in the next ten months. I feel that the worse you do sets you up to have the most improvement.


So yesterday, they brought a guy named John Craigie to do a concert for us. He is a folk singer from California and was awesome! He sang combinations of sad and funny songs, but what made him so great was that he would tell stores between his songs and he had us rolling with laughter. I know he goes to Washington a lot so if anyone has a chance to see him, do so! One story he told was about his experience with a hippie from Bellingham. I laughed so hard. Anyways, he also had an entire song about Chuck Norris. Its not his usual thing to sing about things like Mr. Norris, but I guess it was requested of him to write one so he did. For those of you who were at Ocean Shores this past Sept, you should find it on youtube. He also has a song called Tacoma. Its kind of sad, but really good. I highly suggest you look into him if you are into the folk music genre.


So we have this new rule that if we are caught swearing while in uniform, we have to kiss the "A" that is printed on our sleeve. Well, with PT and other training that requires me to run and duties like cleaning the knives, I now have an ongoing relationship with my sleeve. Lets just say, the "A" owes me a dinner.

Ok, address update. My team name is "Cedar 3". Add that to the address I posted earlier after "AmeriCorps*NCCC" on the same line.

Ok, I got to get back to things. MUCH LOVE FROM IOWA!

Iowa is where the wild things are

This morning was our physicals. I learned in about 30 minutes that I have good blood sugar, I'm not preggers, I'm not on crack, and I have good reflexes. Overall, a good time.

We then went on a tour of Vinton (pics on my facebook). I had a lot of fun, the town is tiny, but everyone is so nice! Everywhere I went, it was "welcome, welcome", "we are so glad you are here", "you are so beautiful and amazing." Ok, that last one wasn't true, but its bound to happen sooner or later. Anyways, AmeriCorps actually got us a bunch of bikes so I think later I will bike around so I can get more pictures.

We get the rest of today (sat) off so tonight I'm joining a group of people and going to Cedar Rapids to see the movie Where the Wild Things Are. Its about a 45 minute drive, but so worth it cause I loved that book!

Things I have learned in AmeriCorps so far (...continued)
-There is no such thing as weekends anymore.
-People who work at a blind school do not find Helen Keller jokes funny.

Mail me things!!!!

Keep in mind that within a couple weeks, I'll be put in a team so you will need to add the team# in the address. Ill post that laters :)

Address:

Jessica Beckwith
AmeriCorps*NCCC/Class 16
1004 G Avenue
Vinton, Iowa 52349

If you write me a letter, I'll write you back! :D

They were not kidding about the corn...

So I made it to Vinton safe and sound! I finally have a short second to get to the computer lab, so I can quickly fill all you lovely people in! (I’m sure you all are just quivering with concern and anticipation). I arrived yesterday and before I could even get to my room and unpack, I was rushed to meetings, tours, and classes. I was issued my uniform, which is a collection of all the exciting colors...gray, black, and the exotic khaki. I also got a body suit (which makes me look like a seal), a parka, and rain gear (which makes me look like a saggy crossing guard). As least we all look the same so it’s ok :). I met my roommate named Erin. She is from Washington too so I don’t feel like a nerd when I take pictures of all the corn or the tornado shelter signs cause she is doing the same. We get along really well, but my leaders inform me that they might move me into another building at any moment so I need to be prepared. The building I'm staying in is this really rad old school for the blind made in 1852 I believe. It’s full of underground tunnels which is where we are supposed to go if there is a tornado and we can also use them to get from building to building if we don’t want to walk outside. This will probably come in handy when its -56 outside and I don’t feel like having my limbs fall off. I’m not even exaggerating, last year it got to -56 with the wind chill!

Everyone here is very cool and very nice. Its amazing how in just a few hours, everyone is meshing despite differences. For example, right now some guy from the south is playing Sublime on his mandolin while some girl from the north is singing along with him... hahaha.

Later this week we continue with training from 5-6am until 6-7:30pm and get our first assignment. They say I actually won’t be spending that much time in Vinton cause I will be away on missions so much. On Sunday, I test to be a volunteer fire fighter. I don’t know if I would even be close to passing the test, but if I somehow got in, then I continue to train until January. I would still get to go on missions, but the cool thing would be that I would travel to fires outside my service area (many being back in Washington).


Things I have learned in AmeriCorps so far (to be continued…):

- If a leader finds your name tag on the floor, you get to sing “I’m a little teapot” in front of 150 people to get it back.
- You can make anything with corn.
-There is such a thing as 4:30 am.
- It is possible to keep your room clean for more than a day (cue mother falling over in chair…)