...hasta ahora

Driving across the U.S.:
So I just made this blog last night but I've been here for almost a month. I'll try to recap some important things, but there's no way to get everything. It would be a small series of books :) Anyway, the 5-day drive out here was the coolest road trip ever (right Mom?) - even the delay in Bakersfield, CA after part of my bumper fell off! The Saturn dealer of Bakersfield fixed it up and we were good to go - almost $200 later. But whatever, there was no time to dwell on that. I was in California! We stopped at the Grand Canyon (before Bakersfield of course) which was amaaazing! Do you see the sunset picture? The whole trip was unforgettable.

However, when we finally got to Marina, getting out of the car was the best thing ever!

Who/What/Where?...
Just to clarify, because I know I've told people differently, I actually live in the small coastal town of Marina. AmeriCorps helps all the volunteers find cheap housing (semi-affordable using the "living stipend") on CalStateU.Monterey Bay campus. I live with Mary from Iowa and Delia from Massachusetts. We each have our own bedroom because Delia moved into the laundry room (we don't have a washer/dryer so the room just sat there!) Marina is in the county of Monterey (which also contains the cities of Monterey and Carmel, etc.), 100 miles south of San Francisco, 40 miles south of Santa Cruz (which is a pretty cool place), and 300 miles north of L.A. I work in Salinas, my neighbor city to the East. Salinas is pretty big (I guess I'd compare it to Lansing in size) and surrounded by vegetable fields. Lettuce and spinach are HUGE out here! On my way to work I drive by hundreds of men and women in the fields working faster than I ever imagined. That was something I didn't expect (I don't know why, but I didn't think the fields were RIGHT there next to the road. But where else would they be?...) Injustice sits right in front of you everywhere - here I am with a nice reliable car and in general lots of opportunites, and I have probably never put in such a hard day's work as I see out here.

Which brings me to why I'm here - to read with kids! I work at Cesar Chavez Elementary, a semi-bilingual school with no hallways (the classrooms stand on their own and are "connected" by a courtyard), which means I get to put on my sunglasses most of the time when I walk from classroom to classroom! My Spanish is getting better every day, especially working with three other AmeriCorps volunteers (Lupita, Claudia, and Marina) who are Spanish-speakers (and Noah is cool too :) Most of the teachers switch back and forth from Spanish to English in class. I recently started tutoring one-on-one literacy with 1st through 4th graders. So far, I'm just trying to get to know them more. We've read some Eric Carle books, Dr. Seuss, etc. and played some flash-card games. Soon I'll start planning and actually teaching more phonetics related stuff. I've had some down-time and helped out in a Kinder classroom with my little amigo Luis. He is the cutest little thing, a full head shorter than the rest of the kindergarteners (seriously he makes all the 5-year-olds seem extremely mature). He needs a lot of attention so I read with him/help him trace the number 1/make sure he doesn't run away... If I had favorites he would be one of them. He is super friendly and gives out a lot of hugs, so it's easy to forget how hard you are working just to get him focused.

Pretty soon Chavez will start an after-school program and I might be able to get paid for 2 hours a day to teach gymnastics!!

I'm finally feeling settled in here and I love it. there are plenty more stories to tell but I don't have the time to type them all and you probably have stuff to do!