Service Project and Sonoma/ Napa Valley

So for the most part the week was uneventful. Same old stuff. PT each morning at 5:30 then classes till 4:30. It works out to be a pretty long day. Normally it is then naptime afterwards and then dinner around 6 and cards or TV afterwards. However, on Friday afternoon we were finally told our first project! We had to wait all day long to find out where we were going and what we were doing…deal with PT, sit through a 4 hour class on emotional intelligence, then run around downtown Sacramento doing a scavenger hunt…but when we were finished at 4:30 we were told we are spending the next 2 months in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi!!! Thank god I learned how to spell that in 5th grade.

Ok so here is what I know about my project so far. We are doing interior house work, cabinets, plumbing, molding, etc. Very exciting. We will be living in bunk houses with wireless internet, 12 common bathrooms and showers. All of our meals are provided for us, and we are right on the water. Water means I get to go sea kayaking! Which is something I’ve really wanted to do for awhile now…so that’s really exciting for me. Bay St. Louis is apparently a very small town, about 2,000 people. It is an artsy town with a lot of coffee shops and galleries. The people there are very welcoming and are likely to invite us into their homes for dinners and what not…we are an hour from New Orleans, less than 25 miles from Biloxi, MI, and about an hour to Mobile, Al! The other exciting thing is that we get weekends off! We are working a normal work week, which leaves a lot of time for exploration! That is about all I know about the project and area so far…

Ok and now for the weekend adventures…Friday night 4 of my friends and I made plans to spend the night outside of Napa Valley and spend Saturday exploring it. So, we took a cab to the airport where our rental car is. Being the dummies/ cheap poor children that we are we decided to go without the care insurance on the car…two of our drivers have insurance so no big deal. We walked out to our car and had a lovely white Pontiac Grand Prix. It was actually quite roomy and we had a nice 1 hr drive to Napa Valley. Now on our way to the hotel we were discussing what they hotel would be like…it’s called the Deluxe Inn and it was very inexpensive. So we are following the directions and all of sudden one of the guys starts shrieking…there is our hotel the Deluxe Inn, it is basically on top of a highway in what is similar to a Spanish Harlem. Basically we were checking into a murder hotel. We checked in, went and got our booze, and then went to the room…there were stains on the walls in the hallway and the doors were a mess. However, the room was large and had a porch, pretty nice...no alarm clock, no bible, and no hotel information, but beds and a lot of space…we were good. We played card games all night and had a fantastic time. I even sang rent…whohoo. We woke up the next morning to find nasty, brown stains all over the box spring, lovely. Now began our visit to Sonoma.
We visited three winery’s/vineyards. Two were in Sonoma and were very enjoyable. We asked a lot of questions about wine and learned quite a bit. There were Alpaca’s at the first place we went to and the second place we had a special tour in the barrel room…we also received our tasting for free. We found a fantastic deli for lunch and then wandered around in the little town of Sonoma. There were celebrations for the Day of the Dead along with galleries, wine stores, book stores, and much more. We finished our day at a Napa winery where we had a bubbly brut rose wine, looking out over the vines and ponds. It was really beautiful and extremely relaxing to get off campus and really just take our time enjoying another time.

That’s the end. I came home and was supposed to go out to the bar and fell asleep instead.