A Super Sized Post

Hello, Bill fans. It has been a little while since I have last talked with you my friends. I know what you're all thinking and no, the rumors are not true. I did not eat myself to death by eating too much pizza. Well I guess I will get that out of the way. No, I unfortunately did not complete the pizza challenge. I'm not proud of that fact, but I never gave up. We did the best we could and my partner, Nicole, and I each ate around the same amount of pizza which totaled to be a little more than half the pizza. In the near future, I'm hopefully going to be doing a post of a bunch a pictures that will include pictures from the challenge. But for this post I'm just going to try to update you on what I have been doing the last few weeks.

The day after the pizza challenge, we volunteered at a fun run for kids to teach them health and fitness at an early age. I was a course guide and pointed out where they needed to run. But here's the kicker. The race took place at Lego Land amusement park and it is amazing. We actually got to walk through a lot of the park. The best part is an area called Mini Land, that holds 1:8 scale replicas of areas around the United States including New York City, Las Vegas, New Orleans, San Francisco, LA, and Daytona racetrack. The area I found particularly amazing was in Washington DC where on the mini Capital Building they had the Obama Inauguration set up. Wait till you see the pictures of this. No detail was spared. They even went back to change the color of Michelle Obama's dress to yellow after they had already set it up.

Later that weekend, we did some sightseeing. First we went to an area called Sunset Cliffs along the beach. The cliffs overlooked the beach and had a neat erosion look from all the years of waves pounding against it. Next we went to this cemetery at a Naval base that offers a really great view of the city. Next,we went to an area downtown called Balboa Park. It's a beautiful park that holds many museums, trails, and fun things to check out.

Then comes Monday, which means the start of another work week. A week full of digging holes, building deep water holes to irrigate the trees, planting trees, building berms of dirt around the trees to save up water from rainfall. The work gets a little tedious at times but I still over all really enjoy the work. But the free time we get has been so amazing here that it seems like we're always working for the weekends. Although, this particular week, a little excitement took place because the mayor of San Diego came to campus to give the Alliant International University, at which we are staying at and doing our tree planting for, a proclamation for 80 years of service to the city of San Diego. We got to meet the mayor and then he was kind enough to check out the work we have been doing.

The next weekend we volunteered at an urban farm/community garden downtown at the City College of San Diego. We learned a ton about local farming, agriculture, and how to garden (all topics I am thoroughly interested in). One of the guys who runs the garden works with a movement called "Farms Not Lawns," in which they suggest that the world would not have food shortages, people would be healthier, and there would be less fuel costs because less food would have to be shipped if everyone grew a small portion of vegetables on their lawns.

Later that day, we went to Coronado Island which is adjacent to downtown San Diego. It's a beautiful island with a nice beach, a touristy area, and the Coronado Hotel. The Coronado is an extravagant historic hotel that was built in the late 1800's. They used it to shoot scenes from the movie Citizen Kane (as shots of Kane's mansion) and in the movie Some Like It Hot (as the hotel where the men... I mean women perform). The next day was relaxing and we just chilled out and watched one of the most exciting Super Bowls I can remember.

Then another work week. A couple of the nights though, we got volunteer at the San Diego Food Bank which turned out to be a lot of fun. The first night we separated expired donated food and then the second night we worked on an assembly line making boxes of food for the elderly. We were able to move through over 2 tons of food. I guess I should explain why we're always volunteering extra at places outside of work. As part of the Americorps NCCC program, along side our 1700 hours required to graduate, we also need 80 hours of Independent Service Projects. These ISP's have to take place outside our work and have be done at a non-profit organization, a faith based group, or a school.

That brings us up to this past weekend. On Friday, I went up to Los Angeles with my teammates Sara and Nicole. Nicole's twin sister lives in Santa Monica and she was nice enough to let us crash at her place for the weekend. I had such a fun time. We did a few of the touristy things such as go to the walk of stars, see Gromann's Chinese Theater, drive throughout Beverly Hills and on Rodeo Drive, see the Hollywood sign, and go to the Santa Monica pier. And it took us all weekend but we saw a celebrity on Sunday. As we were walking down the Promenade (a series of a shops in Santa Monica) we saw Billy Mays. That's right. The Oxy Clean commercial guy. I know how impressed you all must be.

Well thank you for reading all of this. Unless you just scrolled down to the last paragraph. Which in that case, what the hell are you doing? There is some pretty interesting stuff up there. I tried to make this a big one on purpose just because I missed it for a few weeks. I'll try to put up that post full of pictures soon. Also, I hope to get back in the habit of this becoming a weekly or at least semi-weekly blog. A missed one week due to the internet being out. The other two weeks I must blame on sheer laziness. Well, thanks for taking time out of you're busy day to read about my life. Peace.