SAN FRAN!!

So Last weekend... wow it's been a week already.... geez anyways, Last weekend all the girls on my team except for my team leader headed to San Francisco for the weekend. Three of us took the bus and five people got a rental car, it was cheaper to do it that way instead of renting a van. So we got to San Fran around 8pm on Friday night and once we got back to the hotel and the whole gang was together we walked down Lombard street to find some place to grab a bite to eat. We ended up at this diner which was really cool and had the best malts every... almost as good as my dad's :D Afterwards we headed back to the hotel were four of us slept on the floor and the other four got the beds... and let me tell you there was no room to walk around after streching out on the floor... it was a good time though! On Saturday we headed down to Fisherman's Wharf and walked down next to the water past all the Piers. We stopped and took pictures of Alcatraz from far away, the sea lions at Pier 39, and the farmers market farther up near Pier 1. Around noon we split up, half of us went and hiked up to Coit Tower which let me tell you was amazing!! It was well worth the $5 to ride the 60 year old elevator to the top. (which by the way I don't like elevators and almost had a panic attack!) Anyways after taking tons of pictures we headed back down and walked on over towards Union Square where part of the Chinese New Year Parade was going to be going on. We grabbed a bite to eat and visited one of my team mates friends at her apartment near union square and at 5pm found a great spot to stand and watch the parade. We only stayed for about and hour and half of the 3 hour long parade and then started back on our 25block walk back to our hotel. Let me tell you walking 8miles in San Francisco is no easy task, those hills are crazy but i'm so glad we walked them cause otherwise we wouldn't have been able to stop and look around at the city from such high points. We ended up walking up the crookest road which was sweet... it cool to watch cars go down that road at night! Sunday half of the gruop headed to Hayatt Ashbury and the rest of us drove to get some good pictures of the Golden Gate bridge and stopped by the Full House houses which was fun! We were going to all meet up at the Golden Gate Park but realized none of us really wanted to pay to go into any of the museums and stuff so we all met back at Pier 39 and spent the rest of the day there! All in all the weekend was GREAT!! The city is so beautiful!!

This week was a four day week so on Monday we had to do a small project which was going door to door in three different neighborhoods and pass out brochures about a way that the people of Sacramento can get their taxes done for free... which by the way one of our AmeriCorps teams has a project! Thank goodness its not us... which brings me to Tuesday when we found out our new project!!! READY... I'm going to Oregon!! YEAH!! I'm super pumped about this project. We will be working on the Oregon Gardens (check out the website... www.oregongarden.org) It is located in Silverton, OR which is 45mins south of Portland. It is an 80 acre garden which to put into perspective for those Grand Rapids Folks the Fredrick Meijer Gardens is 70 acres. We will be working in the plant nursery, some trail building, and invasive species removal (aka weeding) I guess there are a lot of blackberry bushes that need to be removed. So we leave Feb. 26th and will be there until April 3rd! AHH so excited! I don't know how often we will get internet access cause the house that we will be living in doesn't have internet. Oh yea we will be living in a house that is located somewhere on the grounds of the garden and it will only be our team up there... first project just as a team... We will see how it all goes! :) Anyways back to my week... The rest of the week went as normal except for Friday in which we celebrated Valentines Day!! Thursday I didn't feel well so I ended up coming back to campus and sleeping from noon till 5pm and at night we made valentines cards so lots of heart cutting out. I headed to bed early aroun 9pm, which really helped cause friday I felt much better... still the runny nose but wasn't so drained and everything. It was a lot of fun to get all these little valentines from the students and everything.

Other then that not much is new... we have another three day weekend so tomorrow we are hanging out with one of the teachers and she is taking us out to lunch and going down to old sac which i haven't been to since we found out our teams back in Oct. I'm looking forward to it! I'll be posting pictures of San Fran later but right now i'm not on my computer so I can't get to my photos... oh sad note.. my camera finally crapped out on me after 6 years so hopefully my tax refund will be able to buy me a new Camera :D So for now i'll be stealing my team mates pictures! :) So stay tuned for San Fran Photos!