Welcome to Camp Kostopulos! My name is Africa.

Week one of training has finished and I can confidently say that I can belay campers and run the high ropes courses.  The majority of the week was spent practicing and climbing all over the ropes courses, rock walls and zip line-it was so much fun!  I should back up a little first. 

Silver 3 left Sacramento May 21 and drove Kuna all day until we arrived at a little hotel on the border of Nevada and Utah, where we spent the night before leaving early the next morning to get to Camp K in time for training.  The first day was filled with team building and ice-breakers, getting to learn names and all sorts of fun activities.  Our team was quite exhausted by the end of the night having been traveling and up awake from 5am two mornings in a row.

 We have meshed well with the other counselors and are trying not to be too exclusive, as our team is used to being a close knit family working and living only with each other.  It’s helpful that the other counselors have similar passions for service.

Memorial Day weekend has been very relaxing; I got a chance to explore Salt Lake City a bit with some of my teammates.  The Mormon Temple was stunning, and although we could not enter it, there were two visitors centers and the park and the tabernacle choir amphitheater. Chilled at a coffee shop to get some internet and just walked around downtown.  Its beautiful here, I’m hoping to go for a bike ride later today........

BECAUSE I SHIPPED MY BIKE HERE!!! THAT’S RIGHT I HAVE MY BIKE HERE WITH ME IN UTAH.  The road that camp is on, Emigration Canyon Road, is actually one of the top 10 bike rides in Salt Lake City, there are hundreds of cyclists that zoom by every day.  I love it.

This next week is more training and then the next week we get campers! It will be challenging no doubt, being a camp counselor from 7am to 9pm every day for children with mental and physical disabilities, but absolutely worth it.  Its funny how I’ve wanted to work at a summer camp for years but have never gotten the chance, and now in my AmeriCorps NCCC year my last placement is at a summer camp for children with disabilities. 

(From the pre-site check list)

“Since 1967 the Kostopulos Dream Foundation has been dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities through the medium of recreation and leisure education. Their longest running program, Camp Kostopulos, accredited by the American Camp Association, is a residential summer camp where kids, teens, and adults with disabilities are able to choose from two options a five day residential camp or travel trips.

Campers enjoy fishing, horse riding, swimming, camp outs, sing songs, create arts and craft projects, challenge themselves on the ropes course, make new friends, and renew old friendships.”

The mission statement of the Kostopulos Dream Foundation is:

To improve the quality of life of individuals with disabilities through recreation and education experiences

Also, all the counselors need camp names.  Examples from my team include Pickles, Ziggy and Hobbs. My camp name given to me was Africa, by Marianne or “Elm” from my team.  So Africa I shall be for the remainder of the summer.

love and miss you all

k

Idaho: rocks, mountains, sage, fences, BEAUTY

I successfully completed another round, this one with zero blog posts! I’m disappointed in myself to say the least.  However, I have a feeling that those who read my blogs are used to this behavior from me having followed my Bike & Build and South Africa blogs where similar lapses in posts occurred.

Idaho was phenomenal, even better than I could have imagined.  Having done Bike & Build two years ago and having biked across Idaho, I knew how stunning of a state it is and was ecstatic to spend more time there in AmeriCorps.  The drive there was quite eventful, filled with snow and ice, chains on and off Kuna’s tires, mountains, and a full 12 hours of driving.   We ended up spending our first night in Boise in a hotel because the propane for our campers wasn’t set up quite yet.  In the morning we were greeted with a snowstorm, the last snowfall we would experience in Boise. 

Orientation at the Boise River Wildlife Management Area  (WMA) was excellent and we met Ed and Krista, our supervisors along with Michael, our sponsor. While at the Boise River WMA we did many thing to restore the natural habitat for mule deer and elk.  This included planting sage brush and bitterbrush, taking down barbed wire fences, installing H-brace fencing, and clearing debris in addition to various tasks around the office itself (making it fire safe and building new gate and fence).  Krista and Ed were really incredible about service learning and educated us on invasive and native species.  They really cared that we knew the reason for why we were doing the things we were for the WMA and the true impact we were having on the wildlife. 

Boise was tons of fun; it’s really clean, filled with BIKES, lots of good food and drink, the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, and great people. I could picture myself living in Boise for a while at some point in my life. 

 We had a “spring break” long weekend so a couple of teammates and I rented a car and drove to Stanley, ID (where I spent my 21^st birthday while on Bike & Build)!  It is very cold in Stanley this time of year, but still beautiful.  We also drove to Ketchem, Craters of the moon and then back to Stanley driving our bike route through Arco and Challis.  We went to the same pizza place (Antonios) in Challis, the same hotsprings as my birthday (plus two more!) tried to go to the same cafe as the day after my birthday but alas it is only open in the summer. It was a lovely road trip. It was fun to see my friends see what I was talking about with the diversity in Idaho's geography and hear them ask "you really biked this?!?!"

Time went too quickly and soon Silver 3 had to pack up and move to the second half of this spike which was at Cecil Andrus Wildlife Management Area which was up north west of Boise about 2 hours, just outside of the tiny town of Cambridge, ID.  It was stunningly beautiful.  Within the first week of being there the landscape exploded with wildflowers and green grass.  Small yellow sunflowers (actually called Arrow Leaf Balsam Root) covered every hillside.  We got to work in this beautiful atmosphere. 

One particular project we had had to travel into the depths of wilderness about 45 minutes down a dirt road through the WMA in the Idaho Dept of Fish and Game trucks because Kuna certainly couldn’t handle those roads or crossing three streams.  Along the drive we saw black bears! Two times!  I feel so incredibly blessed to have seen and experienced all this wildlife.  Also I can confidently say that I know how to build h-brace and barbed wire fences, so if we are ever in the same area and you happen to need a barbed wire fence, you know who to call!  Anna and Ross were our sponsors and were just as passionate about service learning as Krista and Ed.  Learning about insects and scat certainly enhanced our experience with them (as did receiving elk, venison, dried apples, pears, apricots, apple butter, apricot preserves, choke cherry syrup, spinach, and water cress, all coming from Andrus WMA land!)

Other fun things we did while at Andrus include taking Ellen’s rental car (a convertible no less!) to the Oregon trail interpretive center, going camping, volunteering at an ultra marathon (50K!), hiking and a Cinco de Mayo party!

Round three was definitely my favorite so far.  But we shall see. Sad to leave as always.  Every spike we develop these relationships with sponsors and then leave.  It doesn’t get easier, but it’s worth it.