The New Roots Community Farm

This post will be dedicated to a project of the International Rescue Committee here in San Diego (where I work) that is so inspiring and exciting to me that I want everyone to know about it.
First of all, if I haven't mentioned this already, the International Rescue Committee is a refugee resettling agency that has a very big office here in San Diego and also works all over the world. They provide a number of wonderful services for refugees and I work part time there (and part time at another organization) as a Volunteer Coordinator.
Anyways, the project is called the New Roots Community Farm. The IRC has been working for a few years to buy this 2.3 acre plot of land just a 5 minute walk down the hill from our house to create a big urban farm for refugees and other immigrants. Earlier this year they finally got all their permits and got the farm all ready. Then, through 3 different community groups (one for Mexicans and other Central Americans, one for South East Asians, and one for Africans), the 80 plots were given out to families. Over the past few months the farm has really started growing quickly and has been such an amazing positive influence for the refugees and the community of City Heights. I wrote down a list of all the great things I can think of that have come out of this, but I'm sure there's many more.

• A big vacant lot of dirt was transformed into a beautiful, green, life giving space in a neighborhood much in need of that.
  
• The farm has provided a way for refugees coming from agrarian backgrounds to do something productive that they're good at. For example, a Burmese man that my coworker tutors had been sitting depressed at home during the days watching videos on the internet about the war in Burma. Now he works on his plot every day and he's great at it.
  
• This project brings diverse refugees and immigrants together and breaks down stereotypes and encourages commonality. Many of the refugees have negative stereotypes of each other and don't realize how much they have in common. When they work the land together and share tools and spend time together outside they learn how similar they are and about each other.
  
• The farm allows the refugees and immigrants who have plots to supplement their diet with healthy food. The zip code I live in is by far the least healthy in San Diego and it's a big problem because unhealthy food is so much more accessible and cheap. This is a way to combat that.
• The farmers can sell their produce at the City Heights Farmers Market to earn some much needed money and even possibly be given much more land in North County later on if they're serious about farming.
  
• This project educates the community about the important community health and refugee issues.
  
• It encourages community involvement. People volunteer, clubs and churches have been supportive, the neighbors guard the farm and lend their electricity outlets sometimes. These things all better the community of City Heights.
• It will serve to educate the community about gardening and farming since they are just finishing an outdoor classroom and will conduct free gardening classes every Saturday.
• Very soon they will be working to create cooking classes led by refugee women who often are stuck at home and don't feel they have anything to contribute. I'm helping to recruit volunteers to advertise for and coordinate the cooking classes as well as putting together a cookbook filled with native dishes from our diverse refugees.

I've been told that the New Roots Community Farm is the first of its kind and that other IRC offices and other refugee resettling agencies are hoping to imitate it. I hope that they can because it seems to be such a positive thing for refugees and our community.
-Michael

Honeymoon pictures!

At last we got a card reader and were able to access the pictures on our dead camera. They only cover the first half of our honeymoon due to the sneaker wave that killed our camera while were trying to enjoy a sunset... but it's fun to finally have the few pictures that we did get!

The whirl-pool tub and complementary champagne that came with the "romance package" at our hotel in Portland. Thanks mom!

Our first day in Kauai.

Fancy sushi dinner night.

Breakfast on the balcony every morning was maybe our favorite part of the week. Michael made me so many delicious pancakes!
Wiamea Canyon was very impressive but would have been more enjoyable/worth the windy drive if I wasn't too sick to hike or walk around.


At least I wasn't too sick to be adorable...Spouting horn

This is a view from the secret little cove we found by taking a hidden trail that I stumbled across.
We were pretty excited about finding it.

This is a beach that a local waiter told us to go to. Something of a local secret he said, and "the prettiest place on earth to watch a sunset."




Unfortunately the clouds mostly blocked the sunset and a sneaker wave came up and killed our camera a couple minutes after this picture was taken...
And thus, that is the end of the honeymoon pictures.

Prison Injustice

I just read this column by one of my favorite columnists, Nicholas Kristof. I had been reading an ethnography about the prison system here in the States a few months ago and wasn't able to finish it because I was still in college, but the injustice of our criminal justice system has begun to really upset me. If that doesn't speak to everyone, hopefully the economic wastefulness that this column makes apparent at least will.

Getting Started

Alright, well Pamela and I have been meaning to get a blog started for a while now and finally it's getting off the ground. We'll use this blog to share about our lives, jobs, neighborhood, church, recipes, thoughts, etc.
Pamela has blogged a little bit on her blog and she'll tranfer her last few posts over to here tomorrow. We'll both try to regularly use this blog as we live here in City Heights.
-Michael

Recetas Latinas Saludables

A couple weeks ago Michael brought home a little goodie bag that the "foodies" (health and urban agriculture department) at his organization were giving out for free. In this goodie bag was a treasure so wonderful that I must share it with my blog reading friends: A small little cookbook called Recetas Latinas Saludables, or Healthy Latin Recipes Made with Love. It is a collection of recipes published by Champions for Change gathered from Latina women in California which are healthy versions of typical dishes . Though my usual cooking method relies more on reading several internet recepies until I can come up with some combination that uses the ingredients I have on hand than on cookbooks, I have been cooking almost exclusively from this cookbook for the last couple of weeks and am loving it. (as is Michael) The ingredients are mostly inexpensive (especially living this close to the border), the recipes are all very healthy, and the food is DELICIOUS. Our favorites so far were the Sopa de Abondigas (to which I reccomend adding a healthy dose of cilantro) and Mango Black Bean Burritos.

This past week at the farmer's market I came across a second edition from the same group called Soulful Recipes - equally delicious and healthy looking soul food recipes. I can't wait to try it out!

Cooking these recipes not only provides me with delicious and nutritios meals, it was also a fun way to connect with the ethnic groups directly around our home. Now if only they would publish verions for Somali and Vietnamese food I'd be set!

East City Heights

It is cool and overcast in City Heights this morning. Growing up in Oregon I never fully appreciated the wonder of an overcast morning. The cool misty fog spreads a layer of calm over the otherwise baking and busy street that we live on.

As I get up and prepare our ritual oatmeal and coffee this morning, the language I hear spoken outside my windows is Spanish. About every 30 minutes a car drives by blasting some form of Mexican music. Michael and I love this.

If you turn down the block however, you realize this is not merely another Latino neighborhood in San Diego, but something much more strange and interesting. Just around the corner a Vietnamese husband and wife sell an odd assortment of vacuum cleaners, DVD players, and other garage sale items (incidentally this is where I purchased my vacuum and DVD player 2 weeks ago for $20 each, the former of which works great and the later... not so much). Walk another block down and you come upon Buddhist monks in their bright orange robes preparing to serve the daily bread line at their brightly painted temple. Across the street from the temple Somali women draped in richly textured cloths from head to toe carry their groceries on their heads. Or maybe they are coming from the hair salon around the corner which advertises private rooms for Muslim women.

If I were to walk down my street in the other direction I would be greeted by friendly African-American women sitting in plastic chairs in front of their appartments. A young white couple walking down the street would look rather out of place on these blocks. How strange we must have seemed two nights ago playing croquet in our front yard with five of our friends. And yet "strange" takes on a different meaning on Altadena Ave. Everyone seems to take it in stride.

Houses in my neighborhood vary in size and maitenence, though most tend on the smaller side. Some are falling apart with dirt lawns, others have gardens more meticulously maintained than I've seen in the ritziest suburbs (albiet with more practical and productive vegitation). The cars are similarly diverse, from the souped up racers to the ancient camper vans blaring tinny music and plastered with ice-cream labels.

Just three blocks from our house is a large park where Thai women get their morning exercise under the protective shade of an umbrella or large hat, Mexican women burn off calories in swishy pants and long sleeved shirts. I'm probably the only person "working on my tan" in the whole neighborhood.

In this same park we gathered a week ago with our Asain, Latin, and African neighbors for our local National Night Out event. We ate hot-dogs, painted tiles, listened to brief speaches from localrepresentatives and politicians, watched the Asian youth preform impressive breakdancing stunts on the grass, and finally marched around the park chanting "No more violence!" We paused on the edge of this park at the small memorial cross of a young Mexican youth who was gunned down here two years ago. The fervor of our chanting increases as we brandish our candles in his memory and chant "No more violence! No more violence!"

Michael and I LOVE this.

Blogging bug is back

Since beginning my new life in San Diego I have suddenly rediscovered the urge to blog. There are so many new sights and thoughts and things to share about. On the downside, we don't have internet at our house (except for the ocassional 5 minute spurt of catching the one very weak unprotected signal here and there). We are looking at sharing internet with our neighbors however, and if this should happen I believe a new blog may emerge - a joint authorship between my husband and myself. For the time being, and in the spirit of taking advantage of free library internet, I thought an update might be in order.

A lot has happened in the last 2 months (wait, no, 3 months, has it really been 3 months since we graduated?!). So many life changes rolled up into one. Graduating and getting married have already been covered with their own brief picture posts so I will begin the update where the last post left off.

After a fantastic wedding Michael and I spent the night in Portland and then headed to Kauai for a week long honeymoon in his parent's time share on the island. I so wish I had pictures of this beautiful week to share with you all, but alas our camera was caught by a sneaker wave and killed and we haven't been able to acess the pictures from it yet.

Next came a week long stay at my parents house where my sister, adorable nephew, brother, and brother-in-law were all present. It was again, a terrific week, beautiful to spend this time with my nearest and dearest. I treasured every moment with my nephew and sister. It was sad to leave.

But leave we did, our little green echo packed to the gills, ready to start our new Californian life. Despite a certain aversion to California that I think all Oregonians might be genetically endowed with, I knew the Lord was calling us to San Diego, and it was exciting to see what this new chapter held. We drove through the incredible Redwoods, along the coast, and finally though the desolate Central Valley before landing in Temecula, at Michael's parent's house.

We arrived in So Cal just 2 days before Michael's new job began. This time held a bit of anxiety as it involved: frantically looking for a job, Michael commuting into San Diego most days (though it's only an hour, not too bad) and us spending the night at our friend's Chaz and Rebeccas 1 or 2 nights a week. We never knew from one week to the next where we would be living or what I would be doing. It was like someone pressed the pause button right at the most suspenseful part of the movie...

...And then they hit play and everything whirred back into lightning speed. The commuting lasted about three weeks before we had an opportunity to house sit just South of the city. On the same day that the house sitting option became available I was called in for an interview. The next day I was hired. The job is not exactly what I had in mind, but I hear that finding exactly what one had in mind is quite rare. The funny part is that this job is the exact same job that Michael has - volunteer coordinating for a refugee resettlement organization through Americorps funding. (Only I'm a Vista and he's a State and National VIP, which means nothing to anyone unless they've done americorps).
My job has not started yet. I was origionally told it would start mid August, but due to annoying funding issues I won't start until the end of August.

The day I was hired for this job I switched my Craigslist search from job postings to appartment postings. There sitting in the ads was our ideal home at our ideal rental price. We went out to look at it the next day and signed the contract on the spot.
It is the most adorable little one bedroom duplex with a real life yard all to ourselves! I was hoping to post pictures here today, but I grabbed the wrong cord on the way out the door, so they are trapped inside my camera. The yard and cuteness of our home are only icing on the cake, however, in comparison to the incredible neighborhood we are in and the proximity of the house to both of our jobs (well, one of Michael's anyway, as he splits his time between two).
The nieghborhood is called City Heights, it is the neighborhood where most refugees who come into the city resettle and also has a very high Latino population. We have heard that it is supposed to be one of the more run down and "dangerous" neighborhoods in the city, however, so far I've found nothing but love for this incredibly diverse and beautiful community. I have so much more to say about it, that will have to be a post of it's own.

So that's where we are now, and life is rolling by. I suppose it feels a little like someone hit pause again as I wait for my job to start, but it's more of an intermission. Time to refocus and come back to earth before launching off again. Michael is enjoying his job. I'm getting the house all in order. We're involved with a great little Christian "intentional community" a couple neighborhoods away, and slowly but surely we're getting to know our neighbors.

And that is enough detail for one library session.
love,
Pamela