Cleaning Up the Lake

 Last week, my co-workers and I had a volunteer outing in Oakland. We cleaned up Lake Merritt! We partnered with the Lake Merritt Institute, were educated on how the lake water is cleaned/used ,and then got to work! The lake is in the middle of apartment and business buildings. There were a ton of people out running, walking, and having lunch.

I also saw "Fairy Land" while we were working. This is apparently the inspiration for Disney Land! It was opened in the 40's and Walt Disney visited it before he created DisneyLand. Isn't that crazy. Check out some photos on the site because you can definitely see there are some similarities.

It's definitely a low key "amusement park" for toddlers.

How funny is this? We had to wear these yellow vests that said Volunteer on the back. We were convinced that peole thought we were from a Detention Center or something. I look weird in this photo because I had a hooded sweatshirt on under this vest and it was all bulky so that is why I look so big! haha

After cleaning, we had lunch at Lake Chalet. It's a great restaurant right on Lake Merritt. There is Beach Chalet and Park Chalet in SF, owned by the same people. This restaurant had an awesome deck where we had lunch. I would totally make the drive to Oakland on a foggy SF day to sit on this deck and have drinks and lunch!

Here's our team after lunch!

It was a great afternoon together cleaning up and having lunch together. Our office does something fun together once a month. It might be volunteering or happy hour but we try to do something together.

I have to say, I really love where I work now. Everyone is so awesome, flexible, understanding of your time and your personal life, and my clients are local, which means no travel. Yippee!