Happy weekend to me...

At the end of the driveway to our group of houses there's a laminated A4 piece of paper, attached by string to a traffic cone, which reads "caution: lazy cat". And sure enough, that mangy cat is always there, permanently lazing around in the middle of the road, ignoring any of the 4x4s or person who passes him by except for those who will give him some attention.

The sign might as well read "caution: lazy island". That's the feeling the place seems to exude this Saturday morning, and indeed each of the afternoons and evenings after we've finished work, when we've wandered down to the beach to put on a snorkel and check out the sea life, or borrowed ocean kayaks from the boy scout camp at emerald bay, or rocked up at the "pot luck" dinner with the island conservancy guys with a plate of stuffed eggs. People just seem to be relaxed and happy wherever we go.

Before you go getting too jealous though, I have to point out that this pace of my post-2.30pm weekday life contrasts dramatically with that of my 5.50am-2.30pm working day.

I don't like waking up in the dark. I guess you'd say that I am more of a "morning" person in general, but there's something wrong about an alarm clock that goes off before 6am. Getting up and ready in a house is a hell of a lot easer than in a campsite though, and the drip coffee machine in the kitchen makes the whole thing taste better too. The 6 of us are out into the jeeps and on the dirt tracks that qualify as "roads" on the island at 6.30am, from where we've watched a couple of spectacular sunrises over the cloud inversions.

Then, after some morning stretching, our fennel-killing tools (pulaskis, cut-o-matics and shovels) in hand, we get to work.

It's usually around 8am that I make my first complaint about the heat, which is at this stage higher than any temperature reached in York or Stockport throughout the whole summer. My jeans cling to my legs and sweat carries sunscreen down my forehead stinging my eyes, and it feels like all my energy is being washed away with it. The temperature then continues to rise throughout the day, probably reaching around 100 degrees at its peak. It's hot enough that even if I were in shorts and t-shirt and lying in the garden I'd probably still think about going inside for some shade and a cool-down, but this island climate doesn't seem to lend itself to growing big shady trees and so there I work, cocooned in heavy jeans, ACE t-shirt, gloves and, if I'm behaving myself, hard hat, in direct sunlight for the whole day.

And the work is physical. For those of you not familiar with fennel's growth tactics - and I would hope that's most people reading this - it likes to hide in cactus, establishing huge roots which often lie horizontally under rocks. Lots of the roadside patches we're "treating" (which sounds very 1984 to me) are on 45-degree-plus inclines and we have to do battle with the weed on this steep, rocky, spiky terrain.

All in all, it makes for a pretty hot, tired, stressed, Jen. I mean, I signed up for this: I knew it was going to be tough at times, and I suppose I do want to be challenged, but sometimes, when I stumble for the third time on a rock and come crashing to the ground bruising my hand yet again, that I find it really hard not to have a huge temper tantrum. Which is kind of silly, when I'm the oldest member of this crew by a couple of years and everyone else seems to be coping just fine. I comfort myself with the knowledge that to be fair, 2 of them are from Israel, and the others have been working in this heat for a while now.

Anyway, I've survived a week of it already, and I do love living here. We've been working well as a team- with the exception perhaps of last night's doomed attempt to walk out to watch the sunset, ending up with us lost in a sea of cactus (and at least one rattlesnake) on a mountain with nothing but moonlight to guide us. I'm loving island life, and looking forward to camping out somewhere tonight and then going to the island's only city, Avalon, tomorrow, where there's a blues festival going on, and then taking a boat trip into the ocean in the evening. I'm enjoying hearing debates and conversation that switches between English and Hebrew depending on whether or not I'm in the room. I love being able to drop a couple of emails to friends and family before I go to bed at night and knowing I'll probably have a reply when I wake up in the morning. I like having Turkish coffee and banana pancakes made for me, and I like bbqing beefburgers on the beach. I love those big orange garibaldi fish (why would you name a fish after a biscuit?) that swim right up to you when you're snorkelling. Yeah, I like Catalina.

Sun, sea, sand and wi-fi!

In case you haven't been able to tell from what I've written so far, since arriving in the USA I've definitely experienced one or two "what the hell am I doing here" moments. Times when, sweating profusely and at the end of my energy levels and dealing with homesickness I've been unable to control the urge to reassure the people on my team that I am actually really quite good at some things - lots of things, actually: things like set theory, and troubleshooting computer problems, and talking to large groups of children. It's just that I'm not very good at this.

But then there are moments like today, sailing out of San Pedro harbour in the brilliant sunshine, leaving the famous LA smog behind and heading for my desert island home for the next 4 weeks, when I wonder how the hell I got this lucky. Admittedly, I am here to do weeding for 40 hours a week (ACE has been nicknamed "American Killing Experience" - presumably by illiterate volunteers. Probably Americans.) and perhaps after my first day's work tomorrow I'll not be feeling quite as spoilt as I do right now, but it's hard to deny it's a pretty cool place to be.

I'm staying with five other people in a lovely USC-owned house in the town of Two Harbours on Catalina Island. We have a kitchen (clean!), a bathroom (clean!), beds with bedsheets, towels provided, and perhaps most importantly, wireless internet. The clear blue ocean, which allegedly boasts some of the best snorkelling and diving in Southern California, is just a few hundred feet from our door. At $65 for a return passenger ticket on the ferry, there really don't seem to be many tourists able to escape the claws of Los Angeles to reach this island, and it seems to be mostly populated by those rich enough to arrive by private yacht. And somehow, I, a redundant youth worker, am here too!

My weekend off in Santa Cruz was pretty cool too. Highlights included:

Spotting an official sign with Arnold Schwarzenegger's name on it at the skate park (and I'm pretty sure it's spelt wrong)

Being watched by this small (but very committed) burrowing rodent as I did my laundry outside the house

Finding there weren't any waves to go and surf in, so blowing the money in a great burger joint instead

But this is where I am right now:

HA!

Back in Santa Cruz for 3 whole days!

It's strange how even though I only spent one whole day in Santa Cruz before leaving for Yosemite, it still feels like home to me. Although really I shouldn't say "still", because I don't think that back then it *did* feel like home. I think it became home to me the moment I walked back into the house yesterday and realised that I was sharing living space not with strangers but with friends - people with whom, over the past 18 days, I'd been camping, labouring, hiking, drinking, surviving bear "incidents", and even having the odd emotional moment.

Yeah, I suppose it's been a good three weeks. There have been times when I've not been sure whether I'm having the time of my life, or just hanging on to sanity by my fingertips, but as I look back now I can see I've got some great memories, and hopefully learnt a fair bit too.

Like, I've learned that the American health system is really expensive. I guess I knew that before -as does most of Britain, which seemed to become uncharacteristically patriotic over Republican attacks on the NHS. But SERIOUSLY, it's bad. I came to experience this first hand as a result of those pesky insects that kept eating my arms and face as we worked on cutting those pines around Wawona meadow.

Now, I'm used to having reasonably bad reactions even just to midge bites, so it wasn't a huge worry for me when my arms started to swell up and go a strange yellow colour - although admittedly I'd never had anything quite that bad before - but when the Park Service workers started to look at me like they'd just realised I had some fatal disease, and others started saying things like "spider bites", I wondered whether I should check it out. Chris exercised his supervisor duties and announced he was taking me to the clinic the next morning, and I thought a nice picturesque drive into the Valley didn't seem like a bad alternative to slaving away in the woods, so I didn't complain.

It wasn't until we were about half an hour into the drive that I noted that I didn't have my wallet with me, and asked would I need anything. Chris looked at me like I was a stupid English girl and said, sure, you'll have to pay something. I explained that yes, I suppose in this case I was a stupid English girl and wasn't used to having to hand over cash at the doctor's.

I couldn't fault the efficiency of the system - five minutes after entering the clinic I was being ushered through to a triage nurse who took my blood pressure, and a couple of minutes later a nurse practitioner came into the room. Very friendly, she asked me where I was from, and what work I was doing ("slave labour eh?" she asked). She glanced at the bites, concluded it was just a local reaction, and wrote a prescription for some Claritin.

I was directed to the receptionist/cashier, and charged $140.

I kid you not.

America, I love you, but you're mental.

Other things I've learned from this time in Yosemite: you can fit 13 people into a small five-seater car. Well, I say "into". As we made our way back from the brilliant Wawona village country barn dance (which the Americans were very disappointed to discover wasn't really a novel concept to any Brit who's been to a Ceilidh) on one of our evenings off, the one vehicle which had driven the mile down the road from our makeshift campground became transport back for any of us who could sit on a knee, or grab onto a towbar, or climb onto a roof. (Don't worry Mum, I was one of the ones inside the car).

I've also learned that bears really do come and get your food if you don't put it into the bearproof boxes in the campgrounds. After two weeks without even seeing one it's easy to start to get complacent, but waking up at five o'clock a couple of nights ago to discover Liz's (one of my co-volunteers) backpack contents strewn on the ground, the bag emptied of its Goldfish crackers and the bottle of Head and Shoulders with little bear teethmarks, and a very shaken up Liz who'd been cowering terrified in her tent for the half hour that the little guy was roaming around outside, I realised that the Park Service guys are probably justified in going on so much about putting your stuff away! Still, it was a pretty funny experience, and we all laughed a lot.

Time for a few pictures I think...

It's hard to get tired of this view!

Along with Alex from Holland and Erle from Estonia, finally making it up to Vernal Falls (over a year after my first abandoned attempt - I was so ill last time I was here!)

Not a posed picture, honest! Cutting trees at Wawona meadow. The fence you can see is what we're trying to protect - the planned burn of the meadow isn't allowed to damage it because it's "historic", so we were emulating what the fire would do, as well as taking away the fuel that could cause it to get out of control.

Our reward after a 5-mile hike up to the top of Chilnualna Falls on one of our first days off.

The night Chris decided spontaneously to get rid of his (admittedly pretty gross) dreads. He wasn't entirely sure about the decision, which he left to fate and flipped a quarter: heads, he loses his head; tails, he keeps his tails. You can see what happened. His friend and debutant hairdresser Brittny was definitely happier about the whole thing than he was.

The day off on which Julie (from Michigan) and I decided to hitch-hike to Tenaya Lake and eventually got a ride with four Mexican/'Friscans all the way to the meadow, where we were rewarded with cheeseburgers and a great day swimming and sunbathing. We were lucky enough to hitch a ride back too, from a lovely couple from Michigan. No hiking but lots of chilling - not a bad day off at all!

Desperate times: short on lunch food on the last couple of days (probably owing to the boys' competitivity when it comes to how many sandwiches you need to make for a day), our Israeli friend Timor eats honey from the bottle.

The whole gang: Chris holding Timor, then Ben, Brittny, Conor, Erle, Liz, me, Julie, Henry and Alex. Good times.

So, I get a couple more days here in Santa Cruz and then on Monday I'm heading off for a whole MONTH with Liz, Timor and a guy called Asaf to Santa Catalina island, just off the coast of LA. But I'll tell you more about that later. I think I'd better go back to the house now - not quite sure for how much longer I can take advantage of free wi-fi in this coffee house where I've only spent $1.65 on an iced coffee.

By the way, Mark, if you're reading this: thank you for your text, it's great to know that school is thinking of me too as I think of you all and wonder how the new year 7s are settling in. I miss you guys!

I really appreciate facebook messages by the way. My English phone is pretty much dead so that's the best way to contact me, and I love hearing from home. Love to you all.

xx

Hanging in there in Yosemite!

How far would you walk for internet?

Personally, I quite like the adventure of leaving our makeshift campground, crossing a stream and walking through woodland, carrying a netbook and a bottle of water, just in order to get to a place with wi-fi. Wilderness meets technological dependance.

Today is my second off-day from project, and I'm lucky enough (well, I consider it lucky anyway) to be not so far from civilization to make the necessary journey to update this blog. The chances are that on my next project I may be in the backcountry somewhere, and then there really will be no chance, but for now I take pleasure in retreating into the comforting arms of news.bbc.co.uk and facebook after a gruelling week's work.

My first project has been cutting down pines that line a meadow. It's hard to communicate here just how incredibly hard, tiring, and mind-numbingly boring each day's work is.

Firstly, though, I suppose I should say that I am staying in the most incredible place. Yosemite, for anyone who's not had the pleasure of visiting, is just beautiful. Here is the view that greets us at 7am each morning when we arrive on site for work:

Pretty nice really. And a few times through each 10-hour day I have to look up and tell myself again that I am incredibly priviliged to be able to be here. But those of you who know me well will know that I sometimes have difficulty sitting though one two-hour film, and so ten hours of the same thing - cutting, carrying, cutting, carrying... in the heat that's caused forest fires throughout California and just down the road from where we're working... it's not easy at all.

The 10-strong ACE crew is a great bunch really, with representatives from America, Holland, Canada, Estonia, and a couple of English kids. We're led by Chris, who celebrated his 22nd birthday a couple of days ago (which makes me feel pretty old!), and who is a typical Californian dude, if you know what I mean. Upon arrival at the campground on the first day we were given very little instruction but were expected to be ready for work within about half an hour of getting to the site, which included making lunch, pitching tents, etc... when I said to Liz, a Canadian volunteer who's already spent three months in Flagstaff with ACE, AZ, that I felt more than a little hassled/rushed, she said "yeah, that's because there's no order". I like a bit of order in my life, but I guess different people operate differently.

Many of the volunteers have been on other projects together and it's easy for me to feel a bit like an outsider, but after talking a bit to a couple of other people I realise that I'm not the only one struggling a bit with the whole thing.

I guess you could put it down to homesickness, or just exhaustion, but I am finding the whole thing kinda difficult. I'm sure it will get better as I get used to the pattern of life with ACE, and later today I'm going rock climbing with some people in the valley which should be a pretty cool day! In fact, I should really get going - there's a lot more I could say but I think I'll just put some pictures up instead.

This was my favourite view on the way to Yosemite. Reminds me why California is so cool.

Here are some of the thousands of trees we cut down (it's partly a firesafe project -they're planning a controlled burn of the meadow and don't want it to spread to this old fence that you can see here.

Me and the other girls on the project - I'm the idiot in the bandana.

Me, Ben (English) and Julie (American)

Our campground for our work days. We don't spend much time here - breakfast at 6am, then after work we go in the river for a swim to cool down and feel slightly human again, and then usually in bed by 9pm through sheer exhaustion!

One of the National Park Service workers at the van.

The view from our off-days campground.

Me, eaten alive by mosquitos. I have to try not to look at myself in the mirror at the moment as I've also recently acquired bites all over my face which look like really bad acne!!!