Back in Sacramento

My blog has clearly been neglected for the past few months, and I will now make some sort of feeble attempt to update it.

Currently I am in Sacramento, California. I am working as a Support Team Leader for the Gold Unit. A couple weeks into our Miami Spike, our team received word that two new support team leaders were needed to work in the office in California. I applied, and flew out to start my new job the third week of March.

I spent 7 weeks in Miami and my Miami experience was amazing. I was able to participate in a Blitz Build (we built ten houses in two weeks) and was able to assist with collegiate challenge (hundreds of university students descended upon Miami to help Habitat). Both opportunities were amazing.

The Blitz:
10 days- 2 weeks. I was assigned to help be a task manager on the Herrara home. We arrived at 6:00 am everyday. It was still dark out and a bit chilly. 6:30. Coffee and breakfast would arrive. Possibly the best moment of the day. 7:00. Volunteers arrive. Hundreds of them. 7:30. Speech and welcome time. 8:00. BUILD! 10:00. Snack. 12:00. Lunch. 2:00. Cuban coffee (my favorite!) 3:00/3:30 clean up. 4:00. Head home!!! The Blitz was intense. All day I was on my toes finding tasks for volunteers, teaching them how to build something or another, tending to any issues-cuts, lost materials, mistakes... It was so busy and so awesome to be able to lead the volunteers in the completion of the home.

The home owner worked along side us many of the days throughout the blitz. Her name- Susanna Herrara. She has three kids. She is a realllllly hard worker and we found out that she is excellent at drywall! Habitat even offered her a job post the Blitz! She says she does everything for her kids and she even let them pick out the color of the house- blue. It was so amazing to start the house at an empty foundation and finish by giving Susanna her keys. I was even able to help her out on move in day and the kids showed me which rooms they had picked.

Colligiate Challenge:
For a space of about 4 weeks, each week, hundreds of college students (and a few high school students) came to Miami to spend their spring break helping Habitat for Humanity. During the weeks I was able to meet some awesome students from across the country. We had a lot of fun working on the homes together. At the end of the challenge we had a huge celebration and the CEO of Habitat came and spoke. It was pretty awesome.

Miami Living Situation:
While in Miami our team lived in a Habitat Rehab House. The house, previously owned by a Habitat owner was in the process of being redone and resold to a new Habitat owner. Our house was pink and had three bedrooms. We had four girls in each of the two rooms and the four boys shared the third room. My room mates were: Lindsey, Meghan, and Renee. We were able to get some mattresses from the Habitat Restore and stacked them in a pyramid type of shape in our room. It was verrrrry cramped for space. All of our furniture in the entire house consisted of our mattresses, a love seat, and a table with four chairs. We were, you could say, very creative. We would use cardboard lunch boxes (brought home from the boxed lunches at the blitz) to spread out on the counter and dry our dishes on. We used construction gloves as hot pads to take things out of the oven. We found some wire scraps in the backyard and one of my team mates twisted them into shower curtain ring-- we also used twisty ties for this and alternated wire and twisty tie shower curtain rings. We used sam's club boxes as dressers and paint buckets as chairs. We had no blinds for the majority of our time in the house and walking pretty much anywhere was a saftey concern. It was defintely an experience to be living in the pink house.

Food:
Miami was certainly an amazing place for food!! We had lots of Cuban food--bread and coffee--and lots of fresh fruits. One of the site supervisors would bring coconuts to work for me that he had picked off of a tree. We would use a machette to cut open the coconut and if a machette wasn't available, we would use the table saw! It was awesome to eat fresh coconuts all the time. Another site supervisor had a huge florida avocado tree and would bring us loads of avocados. Once we even went to his house and I climbed the tree and picked the avocados myself! And Florida Avocados are HUGE and amazing and delicious. We also had the opportunity to visit a few fresh fruit stands-- an Amish one (in Florida- who knew?) and "Robert is Here."

As for our daily food, we cooked for ourselves this project. We split into "food groups" and would plan meals and take turns grocery shopping and cooking. It was pretty awesome because we got to try all sorts of family favorites and everyone had the opportunity to improve their cooking skills.

Recreation:
Of course we went to the beach!!! Being in Miami, we spent quite a bit of time at the beach. However, the beach was 40 minutes away so we didn't spend as much time as we would have like to, but never the less, it was great. We spent time at the infamous South Beach, and also checked out the amazing Key Biscayne. Key Biscayne is beautiful and has a really nice lighthouse and beach front as well as biking trails. We went bike riding a number of times.

We also spent one weekend down in the keys. A few of the girls and I (Lindsey, Ali, Bridget, Meghan) all took a bus down to Marathon Key and spent the night in an awesome hotel. We spent lots of time swimming and sitting by the pool. We also relaxed in our hotel room and went out for a nice meal that was ocean side.

Everglades was an AMMMMAZING trip. Nearly the whole team went and we went on an airboat ride. We saw soooo many alligators. We went to the Everglades National Park and walked along the boardwalks and saw tons of native birds and were practically stepping over alligators. It was so neat.

Black Point Marina was only a few miles away from where we lived sooooo I spent a bit of time there. I would ride my bike down to the marina and sit next to the bay and relax, read, catch up with friends, and just enjoy. We once did PT at the marina and it was pretty nice. The marina also had AMMAZING food. A brie chicken mango sandwhich--seriously?!

Local spots such as the mall and target were also places that we spent our time in... We would also go to the local community center and volunteer with the after school program. Play basketball with kids, color or play games with them. The community center had a nice track so we would regularly do our PT there.

Visitors:
My grandma, her boyfriend Gaylyn, my cousin Janell, and my aunt Kellie all came to visit me! It was awesome. We went to check out the beach at South Beach, the light house at Key Biscayne, toured my lovely pink house, ate dinner at Black Point Marina and got some icecream from Dairy Queen. It was great! So sooo nice to have family visit.

Events:
We were able to check out a few events while in Miami. We (Lindsey and I) went to the Coconut Grove art festival and many of us went to cheer on an American Cancer Society Half Marathon. Carlos, the volunteer manager for Habitat, also scheduled a few events for us. We went to an very crazy club type place with all of the college students and had a habitat dance party there. We also had BBQs at our site supervisors house. The volunteers that we met while down there were also super generous and invited us to a number of BBQs and brunches. It was so nice. We felt very welcomed.

One awesome event was Cory's fake birthday. A few team mates decided to throw Cory a birthday party even though it wasn't his birthday. They bought cake and party hats and "suprised" him at work. They sang to him and convinced everyone on site that it was Cory's birthday. Over 300 people even sang Happy Birthday to him! It was sooooo funny.

Another awesome time was when Cory and I went to the beach and spent the entire day relaxing, swimming and walking around south beach. Cory also saw a shark and I think it made his month!

While in Miami I was able to participate in a number of "CAP" events. Meaning I went to a few colleges and told students about AmeriCorps. I was able to spend some time on the University of Miami campus and on the Florida International Universtiy campus- it made me very pumped to return to school next fall.

Bananas. One Sunday the team did an ISP at a March of Dimes walk. At the end of the walk, the March of Dimes people gave our team 11 cases of bananas. Thousands of bananas. Our house smelled like bananas the second you walked in. We made banana bread, banana chips, fried bananas, banana pancakes, everything banana you can think of. In the end, we were not able to eat all of the bananas and the team ended up taking the bananas to the Monkey Jungle and they fed the monkeys. (I'm not even joking.) It was pretty crazy.

Internet:
Who knew that in todays world, the internet would become a thing or "place" that you go to. We didn't have internet in our pink house and would often "go to the internet." We spent a bit of time in McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts and Paneras. Having to go to the internet definitely made it harder to keep in touch (or update this blog.....) but it also freed up a lot of time and we ended up spending time having other valuable experiences as opposed to surfing the web.




Fast forward to real time. I am now sitting in the computer lab and will update you on what I have been up to in Sacramento for the past month soon. I now have regular access to the internet and will hopefully have a bit of time to keep you a bit more updated.

My address is still the same:

Cassie Holtz
Gold STL
3427 Laurel St.
McClellan CA 95652

and feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email whenever. I miss you all and hope everyone is well!

Cassie