Tennessee should be "the snake state"

ahhhh, the smell of coffee in the morning, small talk around the water cooler and checking your e-mail before the work load kicks in for the day. walking in and out of air conditioned and spotless rooms to pick up a fax or chit chat with a co-worker about who got kicked off of last night's "Next Top model." And always, every ones favorite part of the day is LEAVING work. i used to feel the biggest sigh of relief and joy when i was pulling out of the parking lot at work in Des Moines. It meant a night of freedom and screwing off with friends (sometimes until 3 AM) before i had to hop back into my car and go back to the same drab job. take allllllll of everything i just said (minus the coffee, which seems to be a staple in most peoples sanity every work morning no matter what job) and throw it all out your sun roof at 90 MPH on the interstate in a downpour. instead of a water cooler i meet up with my group of ten girls every first work day of my new week at a little place we lovingly refer to as "Chuckwagon." picture a small town hall, or a rustic log Elk's club dining hall. That's Chuckwagon. It's the place where we eat our 3 squares a day. Oh yeah, and there's no "driving" to work. i live about a 1/4 of a mile down the gravel road in the T.O. housing. That's just one of about 2397 acronyms we throw around camp routinely. Time off housing is what it stands for and that's where i live. i have 2 other people as my roomates and another 4-9 as in and out guests who want to hit up the Internet or cable T.V. on their day off. Anyway...i have to pack up my awesome Dueter backpack (thanks Marie and David!!) with my rain gear, clothing and everything else i will need for 5 days in the woods and kick my ass to work. The days are filled with routines routinely broken. we set up time goals, behavior goals, and education goals in the morning and during the day we often break all of them. goals have to be "reset" dozens of times throughout the day and arguing is commonplace for 99.9% of the campers. when i give corrections the girls have to either listen to the correction and change their behavior, or we all "huddle up" as a group and take responsibility for our actions and set up a solution or problem solve for the next time. Outside of the girls and our routines some of the really cool things i have seen lately are as follows: One skunk, dozens of frogs, deer, deer, rat snake (named Alfonzo), box turtle, and today....a copperhead. i get a little uneasy walking home alone at night through the wooded trails back to the T.O. house due to the fact that i could get eaten alive by a pack of rabid coyotes, OR be taken captive by a toothless suspender wearing mountain man. I'm not sure which one scares me more at this point, but regardless i have taken to carrying a large walking stick with me and humming a nice church camp song in my head when i do have to walk at night.
speaking of....I'm tired. i think i wanted to hit a little more on how completely random and out of the norm this job is, but i think you may get the point. yesterday we did canoe certification, and sometime next month we will go out on a 5 day backpacking trip somewhere in the smoky mountains.
oh yeah, and i have a new tick species to add to my list of "known ticks." it's called the seed tick and the little SOB is about the size of a pin head. stupid ticks.

I almost forgot....there's also a lot of dead snappin turtles on the side of the road. they are as commonplace around these parts as dead raccoons are in iowa. i find it odd and sorta sad since i was raised to love turtles...but what can ya do?

p.s. i flipped this guy over after this pic and although he looked liked he had been jumped by a escargoratoire of snails he managed to move around a bit before i drove off. (so i like to think he just walked it off and went on with his happy little turtle life.) .....

Up and sorta running...

Instead of regurgitating the same information throughout a string of phone calls to friends and family about what I am doing and where i am doing things I have decided to start a blog. yea me.

So here goes y'all.

Eight years ago (my freshman year of college) when I met my first friend from Texas I was quickly introduced to the word "yall." It can be used in a variety of ways. "y'all headin out?" "Is this y'alls ramen noodles?" "What's y'alls plans later tonight?" < As shown.
Now sitting smack dab in the middle of the Cumberland Plateau in Deer Lodge, Tennesee I find myself using the same exact grammar. It's not that I have forgotten proper English, or even that I am making fun of the word, it is simply easier to get across to people this way. It really ain't no joke how they all talk down here. And it doesnt just stop with using the word "y'all" either. I have also quickly become a "Yes Maam', and Yes Sir," talkin' child from the north. Being from the north (which is odd to me since I never saw Iowa as very far north??) has also burdened me with the brand of being a "damn Yankee." Whatever I guess, I don't even like baseball that much. Anyway...where was I.....
Shoot I almost forgot. I probabaly should have started this blog by telling people where I am and what exactly I am doing. Ok, sooooooooo....
As many of you may know about a year ago I was still living in Des Moines and really becoming frustrated with the fact that I was at a job that I didn't enjoy waking up to every morning at 5:30. Fast forward 3 months>>>>>>>>>>I end up in Portland Oregon through nothing but the sheer grace of God. I got a phone call which pretty much went like this;
Biddy Ho- "Hey Sara?"
Me- "Yeah?"
Biddy Ho-" Wanna move to Portland, Oregon and house sit for me for about 9 months?"
Me- "Can I tell people I'm moving there because I'm knocked up and I wanna get rid of the kid as soon as it's born and then come back to Iowa?"
Biddy Ho- "Yeah, I don't care."
Me- "OK! cool, I'm there gimme a month."
And like that, I was gone. Oregon was AMAZING for the whole 8 1/2 months that I lived there. I lived alone in a nice town outside of Portland where I got the chance to really figure out a lot about what I want from my life and how to achieve it. I won't dare bore anyone with the details of it, but let's just say there are probably a handful of country songs that could do a pretty good job summarizing my existence throughout those 8 months. Nearing the end of my stay there I hopped online and filled out every single online application which I found to be interesting, exciting and challenging. I'm talking white water raft guide jobs, airbrush artist jobs, cake decorator jobs, basket weaver jobs, brew master jobs, you frickin' name it, i filled it out. I was hoping for a nibble from somewhere within the continental United States and I did get a few bites. After weighing the pros and cons of two of them I decided that instead of drowning on the banks of the Snake River as a white water raft guide (which I have NEVER done, but got a call to start employment as) I would instead go to Tennessee to live in the woods with at-risk teens as an outdoor theraputic counselor. So just like that within a week of bitter sweetly turning in my green vest at REI in Oregon I was back in my car and headed across the country again to a small town that rests in the beautiful state of Tennessee. I spent a week in Iowa running around making sure my friends and family knew how much I loved them all and then I headed South. I stopped off for a night in St. Louis to see and old friend and of course had to swing down to the Big Easy for an unforgettable 10 days of Jazz Fest, but I parked my trusty rusty at my new home here in Tennessee less than a week ago.
So what the hell is it I am doing here you may be asking yourself????
Ahhh, yes.....sleeping with one eye open at the moment. I'm kidding.
Yes, I am working with at-risk youth in the middle of nowhere where my phone has little to no reception and access to an axe or pocket knife is usually within reach of these "at-risk" kids, BUT I feel extremely comfortable. I'm here to build relationships with kids who probably have a closer relationship with their iPods than they do with their parents and their teachers. I am a co-chief to a small group of girls who wake up every morning at 6:25 and try to be in bed every night by 8:30. We spend the majority of our day outdoors hiking and doing chores when we are not in class or preparing for a meal. We have very high standards to keep day in and day out or privileges such as eating in the community center are taken away from our group. Indeed I also have to set a good example and follow these same standards so I too have been walking around camp with my shirt always tucked in, keeping low tones when in the community building, and not interrupting or cursing. This place is sort of like boot camp, but without all of the yelling.
I live 5 days a week 24 hours of those days "in woods." Our camp is set back in the woods about a 1/2 mile from the main community center where we eat our weekly meals. There are trails winding in and out of beautiful gorges and over babbling creeks. Coyotes and hoot owls lullaby us to sleep every night and whipper whills wake us up. I'm not even kidding, and I'm seriously not trying to over romanticize the place either, it's just the truth. This place is absolutely gorgeous. It reminds me a lot of Iowa if it were on steroids.
I can't really disclose very much information about the girls I am "Chief Sara" to, but I can say that they have already tried my patience to the point of no return. In the same breath, I can also say that although they have already tried my patience....I'm not about to go anywhere. These kids have been walked out on their whole lives by friends, family, and doctors and I'm not going to be put in that category. So stay tuned for a bit more exciting details in the future as I get to know my group better and as the seasons change. So far my tick count stands at 2. I picked about 6 off of me BEFORE they attached their greedy little blood sucking heads to my skin, but 2 of the little bastards got by. Ta Ta for now...