1. 2 years ago 

   Prescribed burn with the US Fish & Wildlife Service in Spotsylvania, Virginia. I went down at 6:30 in the morning and joined up with the AmeriCorps NCCC fire composite team who were doing forestry work in Maryland, and we met outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, linked up with the rest of the crew working on the burn that day. Our objective was to preserve a Civil War battlefield and its earthworks by burning about 70 acres of field. I got to burn with drip-torches, work an engine (truck with water tank and hose), and fought some unexpectedly intense flair ups on the fireline. It was an incredible experience to see everything we had learned put into action, and I’m looking forward to more involvement as a federal wildland firefighter. 

So I, Sean Kesluk, left Los Angeles for a 6 month adventure abroad in Europe and South America. After a few weeks studying the Deutsch in Freiburg, Germany, it's two months up north in Hamburg working for the city's Jewish community center. After a brief foray into Sweden, I'll head South to Buenos Aires for some Spanish classes and volunteer work in a La Boca soup kitchen. After that it's back home to the States and national service with AmeriCorps NCCC. With a month of training at the VA medical campus in Perry Point, MD, it 's off to Baltimore for my first project, two months working for The Samaritan Women, a non-profit renovating a hundred-year-old mansion to use as a transitional home for women in recovery from heroin addiction and human trafficking, in addition to expanding a farm/urban garden to distribute produce to soup kitchens, shelters, and those in nutritional poverty. The second project will see us down in New Orleans, LA doing post-Katrina work with The Phoenix of New Orleans, a non-profit which renovates homes for Lower Mid-City homeowners who can't afford to do so.

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