Last week was Thanksgiving and school was out, so my team worked with Sacramento Parks and Recreation cleaning up local parks. On Monday we raked and trimmed hedges, Tuesday we raked and cut down trees, and Wednesday we raked 6 trucks worth of leaves, by Thursday I was so happy to do something besides raking I got excited over picking up the trash from the over 30,000 people who were at the Sacramento Turkey Trot. The Turkey Trot was probably my favorite part of the work week. We woke up early and cheered on over 30,000 people as they raced to feed the hungry. I danced for and high-fived as many people as possible.
Thursday night we had a very AmeriCorps Thanksgiving. It was nice to have traditional food, but I missed my mom’s green bean casserole. Afterward we hung out on campus and enjoyed our break, and talked of our plans for Tahoe. 
We left Friday morning, with the intentions of going straight to Tahoe. Unfortunately, no plan goes off without a hitch and we managed to spend an hour running errands including buying snow chains. The drive up was beautiful, I’ve never ridden in a car while it was snowing so I was in awe with the way it fell against the trees and landed on my hands as we drove up the winding roads. My ears popped continually from the increasing elevation. The pictures I have are beautiful but they weren’t able to fully capture the essence of it all.
As soon as I had the opportunity I loaded my hands up with snow and started packing and throwing at all of my unsuspecting friends. Each hit was accompanied with a cry of delight, and fortunately my friends were more amused by my ear to ear grin and ignored the fact that I just pelted them with a huge ball of ice. Most of Friday and all of Saturday I played in the snow. I even made my very first snowman with the help of my friends Harmony, Chewie and the other Sarah. We also managed to find a hill that was just steep enough to sled down. I was overjoyed with the miracle of snow. As a born and raised Floridian my encounters with snow have been few and far between, and I have never really had the opportunity to play in it.
It was great to be able to kick back with friends and enjoy our time out of uniform and away from campus, before starting back to our regular workweek once again. Now we’re back to work as usual. Although, the kids don’t seem to be re-energized and focused after their week off as they are still in the same mindset of there is no point to school. My team seems to be in good spirits in spite of being surrounded by people without ambition, and the other misfortune that has recently affected the way my team is running.
Our team is down by 1, as our team leader had to return to Virginia for personal reasons. She will return soon and we will function as close to normal as possible in the mean time. Our thoughts are with her and her family at this time.
In other news there is talk of a possible writers group to form on campus in the near future and I find myself very excited by the prospect, as I have been slacking off recently. For now though, I shall finish watching the Sand Lot as James Earl Jones is about to grace the screen. 
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