1st round spike! Parks & People Baltimore

Yesterday we arrived in Gwynns Falls and found our SAWEET! housing which I will be posting pictures of later and telling you about all the history- it's a blog itself. Anyways...

Today we had training from our sponsor Abby. She manages our spike project with Parks and people. She took us on a walk through Druid Park where we saw this waterfall.

You know those pictures of bare feet on the pier? I think this is much better.

My feet are in the middle,

Kathy's left and Jeff's right

There was some graffiti on the point.

We're wolves so i thought this was pretty sweet.

(Look at the pink)

Then we had some time left to clean up a community garden in the middle of Baltimore City.It's not the greatest neighborhood in Baltimore. We found 6 syringes. I almost got poked with the 2 i found. I also found 2 knife handles. And there were a few confrontations between some folks in the area. Why did we risk all this? Because families with children planted and maintain this garden and by cleaning the surrounding area we made it safer for the kids to get down and dirty and grow healthy foods while getting involved in the community. (the garden is on the right side of the fence)

Before AmeriCorps...

After AmeriCorps!


And here's an extra, this is the street we parked the van aka The Vanimal on. Instead of boarding up the doors they decorated them with recycled materials and it really changed the mood of the street. I felt safer here than I did one street over. As Becca put it, I'm experiencing True City Culture... now to try some fried chicken from the stores that are on every corner hahaha