City Year is always ready.

As part of the team-feeling of City Year (that’s what the Americorp program I’m doing is called) we do Physical Training or PT in the mornings together. This involves doing push-ups, jumping jacks, or lunges all together in a certain rhythm. There are also call and responses such as “How are you feeling” “Fired-up”, “City Year, are you ready for 7 powerful push-ups” “City Year is always ready”, and “We live to serve another day” “And that’s a beautiful thing”. It is both sincere and funny at the same time.

In other news, on Saturday I went for a hike with my roommates and several other corps members. It was awesome; I feel so much better when I get out in nature and exercise a bit. We climbed a “mountain”. Not to belittle east-coast mountains, but it is hard to get excited about 3,000 feet when you’ve lived at 7,000 for the last four years. But it was very steep at we went practically straight up. There was a fire watch post and we saw some fantastic views.

A little further down the trail was a “pond” (in New Mexico we would have called it a lake). It was spring feed and refreshing, we all went for a swim. After lying about to dry off we found some wild blueberries and raspberries just growing by the trail. Food does grow in New Hampshire!

To add to my excitement we stopped at a farm stand on the way home. Basically people have big gardens and the put up signs and set up little carts right off their driveway. We got sweet corn and tomatoes and homemade apple butter. Yummy. I’m hoping to start an herb garden sometime soon.

And…City Year is housed at the Timberland headquarters. If you haven’t heard of Timberland (I hadn’t) check out their website. They are a wicked cool company. Each employee gets 40 paid hours off to do service in the community. They have two global service events a year, one coming up next week. They are pledged to be carbon neutral (not adding any carbon dioxide to the atmosphere). They are committed to human rights in all their factories, plus there shoe boxes all have a “nutrition label” on them letting you know what exactly went into making that pair of shoes. Wicked cool. To top it off, I get a 40% discount in the store here. Oh yeah…

On Monday we get our team assignment which means I’ll actually know what I’m working on this year. I’m very excited.