Go west young men and women...and three chaperones

So June was sort of a "start-stop" operation when it comes to my blog. But there is a good reason! (I know, I always think I have a good reason, but this time I think it really is valid!) From June 11-26 I was in Tohatchi, New Mexico with eight students and two colleagues for one of our Jr. Experience trips. Yes, we have this wonderful, quirky, (potentially...hopefully) life-changing graduation requirement that our students spend two weeks in a dramatically different environment. I happen to have invested a lot of time, energy, thought, and summer breaks to this graduation requirement because I believe in it so strongly. (I'm not the only one!!! As a faculty, we're really committed to this graduation requirement.) I've been to Oaxaca, Mexico (with the entire 9th grade...something we did NOT repeat again!) and to Costa Rica for an Outward Bound program. But the majority of my trips (I figured this past one was my eighth Jr. Experience!) have been service trips...first to Honduras (to an Episcopal church and school in Villanueva - outside of San Pedro Sula); then to Beards Fork, West Virginia; and this past time to Tohatchi, New Mexico. In Honduras we taught elementary age students English and we helped restore the school and church there - lots of painting, cleaning, cement mixing, sand hauling, wall building...eventually a classroom took shape! In Beards Fork we worked through Global Volunteers with a program that has been established there. I have great memories of my weeks there with St. Andrew's students and colleagues plus Artie, Dave, Sue, Daniel, and others... The holler, the beauty of Appalachia...I think because of my childhood summers spent on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, I always felt like my time in WV was a bit of a "homecoming" experience plunging me back to the days of little creeks running by and kudzu vine climbs over everything. My heart is really committed to running service trips as Jr. Experience options...and I have also felt drawn to domestic service trips. WV fit the bill nicely, but last summer a colleague and I dreamed up a trip that we might be able to do by driving...thus reducing the cost of the trip overall. Another thing that I feel committed to. I don't think we have to spend oodles of money or go half-way around the world to serve. Heck, I could probably even create a trip right here in Austin that would be incredibly life-changing...but I haven't delved into that too much right now because I recognize there are inevitable challenges in separating from home and getting to see your own life from an outsider's perspective when you haven't actually left your city. (More on this later...) As a school, we'd already traveled east...so we looked west. We considered El Paso. We considered places in Oklahoma. But the response that we got from the folks in Tohatchi seemed the most promising.
So after nearly a year of planning, three of us faculty members hopped in two suburbans with eight students spread out between the vehicles and we headed west...out of Austin, through Lubbock and other parts of west Texas (complete with the wind farms that I'm slightly obsessed with...check out the picture to the right), spent the night in Clovis, New Mexico at St. James Church...and then continued on I-40 (where we sometimes saw a "Historic Route 66" marker!)...through Albuquerque, toward Gallup where we hit 491 and headed north...until we reached Tohatchi. And the days that followed from there are another story...to be told over a number of posts...that will hopefully be on your screens before this month's end.