Welcome to Boonville!

  So I am officially in Boonville, CA and oh boy what a small town it is!!  I feel as though I have stepped back in time to Dr. Quinn Medicine woman days.  The town is literally one street long.  I had a mild panic attack as I drove into town, but then quickly recuperated as I reminded myself, "its only 10 months, I can do this, its an adventure!". 
   I am staying at my bosses place tonight which is quite up in the mountains.  We picked our dinner from the garden which was awesome!  She is going to be a fantastic contact for me here.  She said to me "anytime you want a bunch of kale just let me know and I'll pick some for you" (kale for juicing of course!) and she also was throwing out all kinds of ideas which were very appealing to me about what I can do with the program.   We were talking about having a group of kids once or twice a week get together and I'd teach them how to make fresh juice (she bought a juicer for the school) or other things like that.  She was also talking about wanting to get a fitness class started for the women I'd be working with (um hello yes!!) so already I am super excited about the program.

    Tomorrow my orientation starts and I will be at a yoga retreat center (hoping I get to do some yoga!) but there will be no wifi so I wont be able to update for this week.  But I will update more often after that for sure.
    So let the adventure begin!! I'm nervous, excited, and a bundle of "omg what am I doing" feeling right now.... which I'm sure is totally normal... right?? I hope it is because that's how I'm feeling right now.

  More to come later, hasta luego!

Day 5-7 - Boulder, Salt Lake City and Sonoma!

  Sorry for not updating for a few days, but have been busy visiting with folks and LOTS of driving.  So I left for Boulder Colorado bright and early Wednesday morning.  Did not like Nebraska at all.  A big thanks to Josh and Elle for hosting me though, but Nebraska, at least the parts that I saw were not all that appealing.

  Boulder however, was GORGEOUS!! I truly wouldn't mind even living there.  I am finding that I am becoming much more intrigued with these kinds of cities.  Even though I will always love big cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles.... etc... Anyway, so I met up with my friend Jordan from high school at his bike shop.  He owns his own company that sells bike, snowboarding equipment thats used or they sell for big companies.  Quite impressive what he's built up and he's only 25! 
  We went to pick up some dinner and wine and then went up to his mountain "casa" as he calls it.  The view was in-cre-di-ble!!!

  (these are all from my phone or the web, ill upload my pics later today)

   The next day I was off to Salt Lake City.  I went up through Wyoming which was both very beautiful and very boring.

I stayed with my Uncle Michael since Aunt Mary was back East taking care of Mom-mom while my mom and Katie were away.  As I pulled into their driveway, my car hit the big dip in their driveway and ripped the front part of my exhaust pipe!! All of a sudden my car was majorly loud.  So that was no good, but we left my car and headed off to dinner.  Had a lovely dinner then went back to the house and off to sleep!  The next morning I went and got it fixed and it only took about an hour and $133.  So I was incredibly relieved!!  Then I headed off towards Sonoma, an 11 hour drive!! 

  Nevada was BOOOORRRRIIINNNGGGGGGG lots of long long stretches with nothing around, not even gas stations, which had me mildly worried for a bit.
   At one truck stop I ran into another girl who was wearing a tierra, so I of course asked her what that was for, and she said "oh I'm driving across the country and just decided to add some flair." So I of course said "hey me too!! I left from Arlington, VA where did you start from?"  she said "New Jersey" and we then chatted a bit about how awful this stretch of drive was, but at least we were almost there!.  She was headed to San Francisco with her dad. 

    Then finally I came across this lovely sign:  












      I was SO EXCITED!!!!  I finally made it!!

    So I am now in Sonoma staying with Leslie and Owen at their gorgeous house with their amazing back yard.   It truly is quite a magical back yard.  I'll take lots of pictures for sure no worries there!! 

    Its lunch time now so take care all!

Day 4 - Omaha Nebraska

  Today was a LONG day and an extremely boring one at that.  I came to really dislike seeing corn.  I primarily was driving through Iowa.  There is NOTHING in Iowa which excited me.  Boooo.  I even got tired of listening to music!

   I eventually decided upon seeing how big I could blow bubbles with gum.... I concluded Trident gum does not blow very good bubbles.  Major fail.

    So I am now in Omaha Nebraska and very tired.  I am going to be getting up super early to get a good start on my day towards Boulder Colorado!!  Very excited for tomorrow, I have a feeling I may fall in love with Colorado.  I have some strange fascination with states (or cities) that begin with the letter C... Chicago, Colorado, California.... is there something to that?? anyone??

  So tomorrow is another long day, any ideas of games I could play??  I'm not big on the alphabet game, must figure out other games to play.  Also the spanish cd is definitely getting on my nerves now... es un problemo mayor! (that may be spelled wrong).

   So thats all today.  Oh and I was highly disappointed that I did not find any road side stands that sold corn.... after seeing all that corn all day long! Iowa is such a tease!

  My route so far: 

Day 3 - Chicago Bound

  Today was a packed day!  But let me first preface with some exciting news!  I found out last night that Jessica is preggers!!!  So very exciting indeed :-)  Congrats again Jess and Brent!


    Anyway, so today I took off from Louisville and headed to the windy city.  It was an uneventful drive which is good, I got a little sick of my sing along cd for spanish so I switched over to some music.

    I arrived around 3pm... can't remember if it was 3pm DC time or Chicago time, in any case mid afternoon.  I dropped off my bike at where I am staying (which by the way I found out this evening is the house where Chris O'Donnell grew up! and I am staying in his old bedroom!! how super cool is that?!) then drove back into Chicago and met up with an old friend from high school.  We got some food at a place I had read about in VegNews magazine (my fav!) and it was quite good.  (Karyn's Fresh Corner)   Then we took quite a long but nice walk down to the North Avenue Beach and walked along the beach there. I put my toes in the water, which felt great!

Then walked back to where I was parked.  It was nice catching up with Brendan, since I hadn't seen him in about 11 years!!  Then I headed back to the place I am staying at tonight, which is Jaydee's cousin's place.

   I am quite wiped out though, and all that walking has made my hip incredibly sore.  So I am off to sleep.  I know I promised more photos, but I am way too tired to upload them right now.  They may have to wait till the end of the week.  Sorry!!

Day 1 & Day 2

   Welcome to West Virginia and Kentucky!

  

   I never really realized just how large Maryland actually is!! I left Arlington today and drove through Maryland.  I kept waiting to cross the state line into West Virginia… and after three hours of driving, I finally did!   Lots of rolling green hills, it definitely was all that West Virginia is said to be, quite beautiful.  However, definitely NO Starbucks!  I’ve got three gift cards to Starbucks and around 3:00pm I was in some need of a caffeine boost.  So I stopped off at one of those multi stop places and got some cheap coffee instead.  It did its job, but wasn’t very good, but nothing a packet of stevia couldn’t fix!

   Yesterday I was in Charleston West Virginia, and it is definitely a working class town, glad I stopped and picked up a good salad for dinner at Sweet Green before I left Arlington!!  That’s one thing that being vegan has taught me, to PLAN AHEAD with my meals.  

    I am now in Louisville Kentucky staying with my cousin Jessica and her husband Brent.  We are having a BBQ tonight so Jess and I went grocery shopping earlier and I helped her prepare the food and are now just waiting for Brent's family to come over for dinner.  Their new house is such a cute house, its a weird feeling being at the age now where we are all grown up and family cousins are buying houses!   

  Anyway, this morning I put in my new learn Spanish while driving cd, they have put everything into song which makes it more fun to learn, I had an amusing time bouncing around singing back numbers, colors, months, greetings and all the other basic sayings in Spanish.

   So that's about it for right now, tomorrow I am off to Chicago!! Very excited about tomorrow's destination!! I'll upload pics tomorrow :-)

The Road Trip Begins!

   Hello out there to whomever is reading.  This is going to be a blog that I will update as often as I can, and will be about my year with AmeriCorps, and the adventures of a city girl living in a VERY rural area. 
   My year with AmeriCorps is going to be adventurous, exciting and overall extremely educational.  I will be working as a nutritional counselor with the Anderson Valley Jr./Sr. High School.  I don't know much more than that as of right now.  But I will be sure to update once I know.

   Tomorrow I embark on a week long cross country road trip.  My car is all packed and ready to go!  Just finishing up some laundry at the moment and last minute things here and there.  I am quite excited about it all!

   What an adventure!!