You know a storm is going to be bad when it is given a name

The past two weeks have been crazy. We're currently living in a hotel, but I'll get to that in a moment. Last week we worked with the facilities crew which is mostly in charge of road maintenance. We were able to partake in the annual bison census which involved driving around the island for 8 hours and stopping to count all of the bison we could spot. The crew were divided into about 6 different teams, each responsible for a different section of the island. Most of the roads on the island are dirt and I have never been off-roading for such a long period of time before. My team spotted 47 bison, while other teams that had the shoreline counted only 2 or 3 bison. One bison came close enough to our vehicle that I could have pet it through the window, but I refrained. That was definitely my favorite day on the island thus far. It was really nice that our team was split up, and we got to learn more about the island and the individual facilities' crew members that we worked with.



The wind is intense on the island and last week we were all woken up to what sounded like our tent collapsing. We remembered that we had left our laundry out to dry and we all ran out frantically with our headlamps to grab our clothing that was strewn all over the campsite. The joy of camping.



Monday morning it started raining so for work we drove around the main roads to make sure they were safe and that there wasn't too much debris in the roads. In the early afternoon we drove by our campsite to see how it was holding up in the rain and realized it was pretty destroyed by the wind. Our whole kitchen was torn apart, the pantry that contained most of our food, dishes and silverware had opened and plates were strewn everywhere. The grill was sliding down the hill and the canopy covering the kitchen had broken apart. The canopy on the guy's cabin had blown away and there was a hole that allowed water to seep in. I have a short video of what the campsite looks like when it was destroyed, but I'm unable to upload it now, so I'll try again later.



We were warned that the storm this week was going to be pretty intense so our sponsor was prepared to have us stay in a hotel for the remainder of the week. We are SO lucky about this. We were given 5 hotel rooms for the 10 of us and I have never appreciated heat and electricity so much. The last few days we were able to get in a few hours of work before it started raining again, but it has been raining all day today so we didn't have work and who knows what will be in store for us tomorrow. There's always something exciting in the Americorps world. There is another campsite that was not as badly damaged by the wind, so we will be moving there later tonight or tomorrow. Our sponsor says she's never seen a storm this big in Catalina and she's lived here for 30 years so we're very happy to be out of our tent and in a room with real walls.



Next Friday we head back to Sacramento for a week before heading to our next project! We'll be moving to Central Los Angeles (Compton/Inglewood) to work with an organization tutoring and mentoring K-12 students for 2 months. I'm really excited about working with people again, especially tutoring students. I was initially disappointed to be staying in socal for another round, but living in central LA will definitely be a different experience than anything I've ever had before. We'll be living in a three bedroom house attached to a Lutheran Church which sounds pretty spacious in AmeriCorps standards.



I hope everyone in CA is safe from the storm! Miss you all!