On my way

After almost two weeks of debriefing, meetings, out processing, and finally, graduation, NCCC is finally over. I'm on my way home today.

In our debrief we reflected on some of our favorite moments and gave some pluses and EBIs (even better ifs) on the program over all. Some people might have had more eye-opening, paradigm-shifting, life-altering experiences, but as I reflect back over the past ten months I see this experience helped me see first-hand the things I already knew were happening--the struggles of the public schools to overcome the challenges of standards and No Child Left Behind; the struggles to rebuild in hurricane devastated areas; the cultural richness of enclaves like Seattle's International District. And I know now I want to spend at least part of my time working for the greater good, either through direct service or through more indirect avenues.

One over all theme came to mind, as well. I thought about people's incredible resilience in the face of the worst tragedies and hardships. This was something I saw each phase in a new situation. In New Orleans and Cameron, I saw people who'd lost everything continue smiling and laughing, enjoying their food, culture, and still getting excited about Mardi Gras, music, and family. I saw people whose land had betrayed them continue to stay true to their hometowns, rebuilding happily and stubbornly. There were the kids at F.C. Joyce, many of whom live in poverty, go to school hungry, go home to a crowded house or abusive relationships or deal with other issues beyond their maturity level. But they still laugh and play and learn--not always perfectly, but much better than I'd expect someone facing such huge odds. And the elderly gardeners, fighting heat and cold and rain and terrain and age to keep doing what they know and love even thought it must be extremely challenging. They have carved out lives for themselves in a city that is intimidating even to another American.They've shown amazing resilience coming to a place far away from home and, despite language and cultural barriers, they've made lives for themselves and their families.

And there's our resilience, too. We survived cold showers, 5 a.m. physical training, rough and crowded living conditions, harsh weather, long days, long commutes crammed into vans, hard work and emotional challenges and so much more, to come out of it all accomplished and proud and much stronger than when we first began. We, too, are survivors in our own right.

It's been bittersweet to close this chapter out, to part with friends I've grown close to or say goodbye to people who might have potentially been very close friends had we had more time together. Scattered to the wind, we go our seperate ways to digest our experiences and start all over again, again.

Thanks for reading.
The end.

Don't eat the durian

It's official: I'm finished with NCCC....almost. We're back in Sacramento for the next two weeks for out-processing and graduation, but it's pretty much all over now.

The last week in Seattle was pretty rough. We worked with some contractors who helped us finish our work in the garden. They were extremely helpful, keeping us moving at a steady pace, bringing a bobcat to ease the transportation of heavy materials, and completing a plaza area with flagstone around the pig roasting pit.

Since the contractors worked from 7-3, so did we. I found it hard to adjust to waking up so early when I'd gotten used to later hours. And we usually ended up staying late to finish our work. We completed our wall, but weren't able to finish backfilling it. It had to be backfilled first with gravel and then with the dirt we'd removed when we dug out the railroad ties. But we ran out of gravel, so it's only about 3/4 finished. Our days were long and exhausting, as we took fewer breaks and rushed to finish as much as we could before the pig roast.

The week was also filled with events in our honor. Our supervisor, the garden manager Jon, treated us to dinner at his house on Wednesday. He's quite the chef, and cooked gourmet pizzas with tasty ingredients like buffalo mozzarella. On Thursday, Inter*im, the non-profit we worked for, treated us to dinner at an upscale Vietnamese Restaurant in the International District. The meal was delicious, but dessert was quite the adventure. We each tried different things, such as red bean shaved ice and fresh ginger ice cream. The 6 or so ice cream flavors, besides the ginger, were completely foreign to us, so one of my team mates simply picked a random one. When she got it and took a bite, she coiled in terror. Everyone else had the same reaction--what on earth was this strange flavor that tasted like....lighter fluid, and I'm not exaggerating at all. When Jon saw our reactions and asked what it was, he threw back his head in laughter. Durian?! You ordered durian ice cream?! Durian, he told us when he calmed down, is a large, spiky fruit native to Southeast Asia. And it's horrible. Apparently it's so foul-smelling that it's banned in public places in those countries. Rental car contracts restrict drivers from carrying a durian in the vehicle, much less cutting one open. They are similarly banned in hotels and other public spaces. And the burning, rancid taste of lighter fluid stays in the back of your throat for much longer than is appropriate. I sincerely hope none of you ever find yourself privileged enough to sample this disgusting delicacy.

After dinner, Jon presented us each with the one of the best, most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. He gathered us in a circle and gave a speech about how we reminded him of superheros, and how many people we help probably look at us as such. Then he presented every one of us with a comic book about a particular super hero that he compared us to. Mine is Wonder Woman, which Jon said he picked because she possesses incredible strength in mind, body and spirit.

The pig roast began with a party on Friday night. It reminded me of a Fourth of July barbecue, with a small gathering of people around a pit, eating and drinking and smoking cigars. Two of my team mates and I ventured back to the garden after what was already a long day of work, to partake in the event. There was free food and good company, and we each took a turn turning the pig on the spit. The huge pig, 152 pounds, was the biggest in memory of the garden's 33 years of pig roasts. They were actually afraid it wouldn't fit in the concrete pit. It took 40 bags of charcoal and about 14 hours of slow roasting. As the night wore on, the numbers dwindled, and we finally left at about 1:30, catching a ride from the non-profit's former executive director. The three of us immediately sat on our wall when we got there, enjoying the completion of our labor under a full moon. Later, Jon, an expert swing-dancer, danced on top of it. I figured that was a pretty good way to judge our success.

The next day we went back to the garden as a team for the actual eating of the pig. When we arrived, the pig was still being carved, but there was a huge line of old Asian ladies (many of whom were gardeners) snaking up some steps. They hovered, waiting anxiously and scolding anyone who looked like they were going to cut in front of them. After the food was gone, several of the gardeners made quick work of the scraps left over.

The whole team sat on the wall as we ate a variety of unidentifiable Asian dishes and the pork. Then, we cleaned up and left, all a little sad to be leaving a project and a supervisor that we all grew to love.

A few people thanked us for our work, but nothing compared to the gifts we received from the 86-year-old gardener I mentioned a few weeks ago. This woman hobbles through the garden, and the echo of her cane hitting the pavement is unmistakable. She often gave us bananas (badly bruised) and a box of crispy wafers in different flavors. On Friday, she quietly walked over to our work area, beckoning us to come over by waving her hand and shouting "Hi!" She presented some bananas, some more bananas, and several packages of wafers. We were excited to get the gift, and began inspecting the packages' flavors. Coconut, coconut, cappuccino, and one final flavor that made us all cringe and howl with laughter.

The fourth flavor was durian.

Winding down

This week begins my last in with NCCC in Seattle. Most of my team has achieved the 1700 hours required to graduate the program, so all that's left is for us to (hopefully) finish the project in the garden and head back to Sacramento for the closing ceremonies.

It's unclear whether we'll complete the two walls, the flagstone plaza and the benches before Saturday's annual Pig Roast. I'm not really sure what the original goal was for our project, but I think it's been scaled back. And I'm not sure we'll complete the scaled back, adjusted goal, either.

Most of this week's work was centered around building a wall of stone to replace the one of railroad ties we tore down. For some reason, the supplies we needed (crushed rock and keystone) wasn't delivered until Thursday, so we had to find other activities to do while we waited for the delivery. This pushed a lot of our work back, and we might have to put in some late days this week to finish it. We did get trained on using a builder's level to measure the height of the wall on unlevel ground. I tried to pay attention as best I could, but I didn't know we'd have to use this information later to measure and build a second wall. Had I known this, I would have asked more questions and really tried to understand the principles behind using the level. I was busy working on digging the trench for the first wall when my supervisor recruited me to use the level to mark the stakes for the second wall....only she didn't know how to use the equipment and neither did I. We tried to improvise, putting our heads together, but marked the wall height 8 feet in the air...clearly incorrect. After taking a break and thinking harder than I've thought in a long time, a lightbulb went off in my head. I successfully marked a few stakes with the right height, before we ran into a problem that needed to be solved by the landscape architect who designed the plans.

We ran into another problem with our trench: a water pipe was leaking into it, causing puddles, and you can't build a wall over wet clay. So we had to dig out the wet part, which was a very muddy activity. The trench had to be a certain depth, which was also time consuming. After a week of digging and preparing for the keystone, we still haven't actually started building. It'll be interesting to see how much we actually complete before Saturday.

Now I'm an expert at digging and at using a builder's level, if anyone should need someone who can do those things. Next week begins the last of everything: the last day of work, the last days of NCCC, the last days with my team, etc. Right now the end isn't really palpable and I feel more focused on finishing as much of the project as we can.

Dumpster diving and cherry picking

This week culminated in me going dumpster diving, but not before several days of heavy lifting and cherry picking. And no, those are not metaphors.

Last week, most of my team dug huge holes to free the railroad ties we are taking out and replacing. Work resumed to finish this task on Monday. I wasn't assigned a hole since I was busy ripping out bamboo rhizomes, so I was assigned to do some gardening with two other team mates. We transplanted some pole beans (they were inhibiting the hole digging) and disassembled the homemade trellis they were wrapped around. While we were transplanting, one of the gardeners approached the garden manager, John, and conveyed to him in broken something, including lots of hand motions, that the beans should be twirled around the poles clockwise, because that's how they grow. How he understood that in his limited knowledge of whatever language that was, I have no idea. He uses some of the language, some English, and lots of hand motions to convey any sort of idea to a gardener, and it's a pretty interesting process.

After we did that, we worked on a new garden plot at a far side of the garden. First, we moved compost to the plot and mixed it with the soil. Then, we got to pick the plants in two plots! John told us a lot about what plants go good in sun, how they should be arranged, and lots of other considerations. It's a pretty big process, but it was a lot of fun to do something that wasn't digging-related. John also let me help him fertilize the corn he planted with something called blood meal. Apparently, corn is a high-maintenance crop. It needs lots of sun, flooding twice during its growth period, and can't survive competition with weeds. He's planted them with squash and beans, which all complement each other for a few different reasons. This method is called the three sisters, a Native American tradition. Blood meal is a natural fertilizer rich in nitrogen made from dried blood from slaughterhouse floors. It's brownish and powdery and doesn't really smell. Just a little tiny bit by each plant is enough to make a really big difference for it.

Kerri and I planted sunflowers, beans, cantaloupe, and tomatoes in one little plot. I misread the seed packets and read "inches" instead of "feet" for how far apart the cantaloupe must be planted, so we kind of messed that up. But John said he can always thin out the plants once they're germinated. In the second plot we did squash, lettuce and beets. We water our "babies" twice a day and give them lots of loving words of encouragement.

All day on Tuesday was spent moving the railroad ties. It was a very slow process, that included prying up the ties, moving them onto cinder blocks, and slicing through them with a circular saw. Since the blade doesn't go all the way through the thick wood, we hammered them apart with a mallet. Because they are treated with creosote, they are toxic and we needed to wear Tyvek coveralls. See the unflattering pictures attached. After we cut them to a more manageable size, a few of us helped move the chunks, either by hand or wheelbarrow. We had to go up steps and up two hills. The entire process was very sweaty and difficult, but we had breaks in between each trip to the dumpster.

Wednesday began with my usual watering of the baby plants I'm cultivating with Kerri. We take turns watering the seeds we planted and John's "Children's Garden" he planted for instructional purposes. Once we did all that, we talked with John for a while, asking lots of questions and learning about tomatoes and herbs. He's very knowledgeable so I feel I'm learning a lot about gardening.

As I was standing around waiting for some work to get underway that I could get in on, I noticed some ripening cherries on the tree above my head. They were too high to reach, so I spent a half hour climbing the cherry tree and sending down delicious cherries to my team mates. Later in the day, John approached us and told us that the berries he thought were blackberries on that vine over there are actually raspberries! I probably ate my day's pay in raspberries and cherries.

On Thursday, we spent most of the morning dodging our first rain storm of our stay in Seattle. Once the rain passed, John had Tim, Kerri and I drive to a local food bank and then to Tully's warehouse to procure cardboard boxes. He uses the boxes along with burlap bags and shredded mulch in a process he calls "lasagna mulching." The three layers do the work of keeping the weeds away, and in time they decompose to provide a nutritional compost for the plants. After we got a van-full of cardboard from the food bank, we drove to Tully's and climbed into a huge dumpster smelling strongly of coffee beans, again filling our van. We spent a good portion of the day slicing the boxes open and laying them around the Asian Pear orchard in the garden.

I spent a blissfully cool Fourth of July weekend with my favorite team mates, exploring some fantastic local parks with views of the city, the Puget and the Olympics.

Where are the panda bears when you need them?

This week was horrendous. I spent a great deal of my time sitting in the dirt, baking in the sun and digging up countless amounts of bamboo roots. We are clearing a lot of overgrown vegetation in the garden to make way for new benches and flagstone. There happens to be a great deal of bamboo, which is a stubborn plant and an invasive species. If you trim it, it grows back with a vengeance. If you leave any of the rhizomes underground (of which there are endless networks buried about a foot beneath the surface), they will reconnect and reform their (almost) indestructible chain. The rhizomes tunnel through and under anything, sending up new shoots. Think grass--you can't pull up just one blade; you have to destroy the entire runner and even then it'll grow right back. The bamboo would surely ruin our flagstone job if we left any. After a week, the job is finally finished.

With all this time in the dirt, I found myself wishing for (besides pandas) a job that lets me use my intelligence and creativity instead of being a poorly paid grubber. But I'm enjoying Seattle quite a bit, and I've even learned my way around the area. I consider this a huge accomplishment for someone who is very horrendously directionally impaired. It helps there are mountains to orient me. I've almost mastered the bus system, too! Be proud.

Seattle is easily my new favorite place. There are countless festivals and museums and events to attend on any given weekend, not to mention great restaurants and interesting neighborhoods to explore. And there's lots of things to do for free. The local parks are my new favorite. Even the smallest ones are well maintained and many offer amazing views. I located one on the other side of Queen Anne hill from us called Kerry Park. This park is in Queen Anne's richest neighborhood (take the best parts of New Orleans' garden district and put it on a hill overlooking the Puget Sound and you'll be able to picture it). Kerry Park is in a neighborhood of multi-million dollar mansions that overlook the quintessential postcard view of Seattle. It's only a quick bus ride away and happens to be in Frasier Crane's neighborhood. I couldn't get a great picture because I was shooting into the sun, but you'll get the gist from what I've attached. It was absolutely breath-taking to see in person

This week we'll start removing the rotting railroad ties that serve as retaining walls for the garden, and replace them with stone walls that will better hold the soil and will not rot out in 30 years. Hopefully it'll be better than sitting in the dirt all day.

Getting our hands dirty

Our fourth and final phase began last week in Seattle's Chinatown. This project is definitely the best yet, and our team has been in great spirits.

Our housing is amazing. We are in a student apartment building at Seattle Pacific University, in the hilly, tree-studded neighborhood of Queen Anne. There are two to three people per apartment, complete with a kitchen and a large common area. And the best part: each of us have our own room! My apartment is the largest, with a fireplace and a balcony. We're about five miles from work, so our commute is relatively easy except that we keep getting in the wrong lane and ending up crossing one of several bridges in the area. But we're catching on.

Work so far has been hard, as I've gotten out of shape from not doing much physical work, but it's a great project. We're working in the International District, or Chinatown. Technically, there are lots of Asian immigrants from all different countries, so it's p.c. to say "ID" instead of Chinatown. Specifically, we're working in the Danny Woo International District Community Garden, a terraced 1.5 acre plot of overgrown land broken up into 100 plots for neighborhood gardeners. The gardeners must be over 65 and have a certain (low) income level, and live within the bounds of the ID to garden there. We have several tasks. First, we are bush wacking through some of the huge weeds there, clearing them to begin putting in a flagstone path. We've moved old compost piles, transplanted many plants, and done other prep work to begin the big job: replacing the rotting railroad ties that are currently serving as retaining walls for the terraces.

There are two interesting scents in the garden. One is urine, which the gardeners keep on hand in gallon jugs to fertilize their plants. The other is fermented beans, another fertilizer. The gardeners place large quantities of what appear to be pinto beans in 5-gallon paint buckets, add some water, and seal the mixture to ferment for weeks. This is apparently really good for the plants, but it smells horrible. Apparently if you get it on your clothes, you might as well burn them--it's never coming out.

The gardeners themselves are interesting people. Very few of them seem to know any English at all, and they're very committed to their ways. We've had to relocate some plots because they are in the way of our construction, leading some gardeners to get very frustrated with the garden manager who supervises us. There is also a slug problem in the garden because pesticides are against the rules. The garden manager thought about getting ducks to eat the slugs, but then he thought the gardeners would eat the ducks! The gardeners pick up any discarded item and use it in their garden. This includes plastic bags, bottles, milk jugs, wood, bricks, string, and just about anything else you can think of. The result is a sort of junk-yard, chaotic look to the garden. But other than the clutter and the smell, it's a beautiful place. There are great views of the Olympics, and there are beautiful wildflowers sprouting out of even the smallest patch of dirt, and lots of hummingbirds.

If there is one story that frames the entire experience, it is this one: There is one gardener who is 96 years old and knows only two words in English, seemingly: "Very good." She often likes to give bananas to the garden manager, or comment on the work being done, "Ahh, very good!" She came over to us quietly one day, setting down her backpack and revealing a sack of bananas and a package of chocolate wafer cookies. She gave them to us silently, nodding her approval of our work in her own quiet way. On her way out, she picked up a rebar stake, holding it up and smiling--something we had discarded that would now become a part of her garden.

The garden is extremely important to the 100 people who use it. It provides them exercise and activity, gives the good food to use and helps them retain their traditions of home--of nasty beans and urine, but also of fresh kale, onions, and more.

Very good.

Seattle or Bust!

This week we finished up our project at the elementary school in Sacramento. It's hard to believe we spent seven weeks there; time flew by. And it's hard to believe I once dreaded the thought of having an education project. I felt comfortable and even competent at times, and as the project wrapped up I found myself wishing I could stay, become part of this community and watch those kids grow up. I definitely got attached, and it was hard to walk out of those classrooms knowing I'll never see my little friends again.

It was a whirlwind week, as are all last weeks of school before summer break. We had our final intervention groups two weeks ago. My fifth graders learned absolutely nothing from me, and they made no improvements. I gave them final tests on subtraction and multiplication, and got almost the same results I got six weeks ago. They still counted on their fingers for subtraction, although I feel they might have memorized a few things, like 8-7=1. And they didn't memorize any multiplication tables. They knew how to count by 5s, 10s, and 2s coming into our intervention, plus how to multiply by 1s and 0s, and that's all they knew leaving it.

Math was always the most challenging for me, but when I did well in freshman geometry at Mt. Carmel, I was placed in honors Algebra II. For the first time, I struggled at the cusp of a B and a C, and I dreaded every day in that class. Several things stuck with me, one being a story of another struggling student my teacher had instructed years before me. This student was failing, but come mid-terms, her score skyrocketed. The high score was actually a mistake, but the teacher realized this after report cards had already gone home. Teachers usually won't lower a grade if they've made a mistake in scoring, so the student got to keep her high grade and never found out about the mistake. Shocked and surprised, the mistaken grade became a self-fulfilling prophecy; the student ended the year with a similarly high grade, which she earned because she was motivated and believed she had earned the midterm grade on her own. Or at least that's what we were told.

Anyway, this story made me think, and I wanted to give my fifth grade math students a chance like that, too. They were always discouraged, showed testing anxiety, and obviously dreaded everything about math and grades. So when it came time for them to take their final 5-minute subtraction test, which I knew they could pass if they were allowed unlimited time to count on their fingers for all 100 problems, I lied to them. I deliberately stopped keeping track of time after 5 minutes. They each took about 10 minutes, but when I graded them they'd each correctly solved at least 90 problems, meaning they'd passed subtraction and could receive a certificate from the school. They seemed pretty buoyed by this. I'm not sure it'll have any long-term effects, but for the first time they weren't the ones sitting and sulking while other kids were getting awards.

So the last week was a blur of activity. There was field day (done with water games, despite the current state-wide drought), an AmeriCorps slide show, and lots of cleaning of rooms. Several kids burst into tears as we prepared to leave, and I was mobbed by hugs from first graders as they left for home for the summer.

I hope the kids I helped learn to count money, to read the differences between "where" and "were," between "us" and "use" and that they memorize their multiplication tables and stop counting on their fingers. I hope they make good choices, develop good judgment and learn work ethic in the face of challenges. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about them.

After transitioning in Sacramento this week, we'll head to Seattle. We leave Monday with a two-day drive, arriving in the Emerald City on June 17. We'll be back in Sacramento in exactly a month for out-processing and flying home.