Days 16 through 18

Day 16 – Tuesday February 23, 2010

Mmm, what a lovely 4 ½ hours of sleep I had last night. Absolutely delectable.

I woke up at 5 this morning to get dressed and have breakfast before we headed to PT. We headed to the vans at 5:40 and began our workout in 9H at 6. Today’s exercises were the ‘side straddle hop’ (also known as jumping jacks beyond the AmeriBubble), push-ups, sit-ups (with a partner for feet-holding purposes), flutter kicks (feet six inches off the floor), and the AmeriCorps squat (like a real-world squat but not as deep and with enthusiastic arm motions). We did three sets of each with a varying number of repetitions within each set. We usually did 12 to 15 push-ups (actually 24 to 30 because the count is down-up-down-one and so on) and 20 to 30 (40 to 60) AmeriCorps squats with one minute each of push-ups and sit-ups per round. I made it through all of them, with some modification on the sit-ups as time went by, which was fun times. I do much prefer crunches.

Jordanna and I jogged back to the Village together after PT, which was quite enjoyable. She had a very similar nice leisurely pace to my own so we matched up well. She had decided to join when she heard I was jogging back and it fortuitously worked out very nicely. We then showered and prepared our lunches before heading back to our vans at 8:40 for a full day of training.

Morning training today was Corps Life with our Atlantic Region counselor Laura and Leanne, a recent counselor for the Southern Region. They led the three teams in attendance in some great activities to get us thinking about communication and effective group dynamic-shaping. We did one exercise in which we ‘threw away’ our fears, writing down questions or apprehensions we have about the year ahead on a piece of paper, crumpling up the paper, and tossing it into a pile with the others. After everyone had tossed in their fears and questions, a few of us CMs each drew one and read it aloud. We discussed each one and talked about the common themes which surfaced such as desire for good intra-team communication and fear of letting down teammates, talking about the need to be aware of each other’s processing styles and to support one another when each feels some manifestation of failure in the course of our service year. It was a great exercise.

Once we had processed thrown-in fears for over half an hour, Laura and Leanne read the ones that remained aloud to the group (we had gotten through perhaps five or six of over thirty), then we did another productive exercise. For this one, large pieces of blank paper were posted on the walls around the room. Each sheet had a picture of an animal on it – lion, dolphin, weasel, owl, chameleon, fox, lamb, and ant – and each of us had to choose the animal with which we would associate ourselves most closely. Once we had formed animal subgroups, each subgroup brainstormed characteristic traits of that animal then presented the trait list to the whole group. We dolphins had traits such as intelligent, fun-loving, and community-oriented on our list.

As each subgroup presented, we discussed how their traits listed might affect those people’s interactions with their teammates from other subgroups. The animal traits matched surprisingly well with individuals’ expressed personalities and leadership/communication skills across the board. I found many of the dolphin traits fit me quite well, though Jordanna said she might put me in owl as well. I learned a lot about fellow team members in other animal subgroups (we had lions, owls, chameleons, a fox, and me, a dolphin just among the members of Wolf One) and found the entire exercise extremely productive.

We headed back to the Village after the morning session for a 20-minute lunch break before hopping back into the van at ten to noon. We caravanned to tool training with the other two teams with which we’re training this week, heading about an hour off campus to an area tool workspace. There, we spent over three hours learning construction site safety and the basics of various power tools, then taking the opportunity to try out some of the tools ourselves (supervised, of course). I got to keep a small cylinder of wood which I carved out with a drill which takes out all the wood around the drill bit hole. It’s fun to have a small CTI souvenir from yet another packed day of training.

Melissa agreed to a brief stop at RiteAid on the return trip to campus; I had no dire needs but was able to pick up my favorite blue nail polish color for my toes so considered it a productive stop. Since all I’ve spent money on in the past two weeks is aviators, that nail polish, and a couple of small food items, I think it’s going well. My government stipend is going to good use thus far.

We got back to campus shortly after 5:30 and I walked home to find a(n expectedly) packed house. I’d heard from Marissa and Rachel (via text) that there would be a joint team meeting between Rachel’s team and Casey’s team at our house since Casey isn’t mobile beyond the walls of the Vault so wasn’t too surprised to see twenty people crammed into our living room as I approached. Rather than brave the madness to reach the kitchen or such, I chatted with Daniel, who Rachel has as her TL, outside for a couple of minutes then headed straight upstairs when I went inside, taking a few minutes in the interim to watch Sean fish out his soccer ball from under one of the govie (government) vans parked on our street by lying flat on his stomach and squirming halfway under the van. I’ll admit, it was an amusing sight to see.

Melissa decided to postpone our next team meeting to another evening, a choice I wholeheartedly supported. I was quite ready for an evening free of programming and I was looking forward to the house dinner Marissa was planning at home. Everyone had vacated our house from the joint team meeting by six and we had a bit of (relative) peace and quiet for the next hour and a half before dinner. I mostly selected songs from my iPod for a compilation and chatted with housemates in the living room. We had dinner at 7:30, a delicious tuna noodle casserole prepared by Marissa. She had invited TL Jamie over to thank him for driving us to Baltimore for our ISP both days last weekend and once this upcoming weekend. He joined for the meal and we all sat in the living room and had nice chill family time. Jamie had brought cookies for dessert, which he had made especially for the occasion. It was super-nice.

After dinner, we continued to chill in the living room for another hour or so before breaking into our various evening activities. Rachel had invited Daniel to dinner and he came over around 8 after taking some members of his team on an evening health-and-wellness run. It was fun to have all of us together (minus Casey, who was upstairs continuing her bedrest for her ankle) sitting around relaxing with visitors and a warm family meal.

The rest of the evening was very relaxed. I used my new nail polish on my toes, talked to mom on my new phone, and sat down to write for a bit. We have a full three days of training ahead, so it was nice to have some chill time. It’s also nice that we don’t start training until 9 tomorrow so don’t have to be at the vans until 8:40. Seven AM never seemed so late.

As usual, I absolutely adore life in the AmeriBubble and look forward to each day I spend in this amazing place. It’s an awesome opportunity.


Day 17 – Wednesday February 24, 2010

I got a new vest today, which helped make it a pretty good day. It was also a rather tired day, but that’s mostly because I sat in training from 9 AM to 4 PM. On the upside, I got to sleep in until 7 AM then have a full ten minutes to do nothing before starting to actually be productive for the day; it was pretty awesome.

The morning routine was a languorous version of the usual: wake up, brush teeth, have breakfast (frozen fruit with oatmeal and honey, a common combination for me), pull on sweet NTrip uniform, make lunch and fill my Nalgene for the first time for the day, and head out the door to the van pick-up point a few minutes before the 8:40 meeting time.

Melissa drove us to 9H, where she dropped off Lindsay, Traci, Amanda, Sabrina, and I for van training. The rest of the team headed back to the village from 9H to empty out houses on Second Street because our scheduled training was Perry Point Work Day, also known as do whatever STL (Support Team Leader) Drew Larson wants for hours. Brandon found a mug someone had bought at the Vous, the local drinking establishment, in one of the houses, a reminder of the sheer amount of stuff that can accumulate in the course of a year or five in the Village.

Driver training spanned seven hours, but we did get lots of breaks throughout. Our instructor was Dernard, the campus Support Services Specialist. Basically, he’s in charge of making sure all maintenance issues in both the Village and 9H are resolved as well as getting us awesome things like a foosball table for the Badgers and XBox 360s for the Wolf Den and 9H . Dernard is Drew Larson’s boss, so was the one responsible for having Drew take a team to our house yesterday during their Perry Point Work Day to replace our broken dryer. Now I can have my clean clothes dried in one hour instead of many. Oh, the excitement.

Dernard is ex-military, having served for 23 years before retiring and coming to Perry Point two years ago before Class XIV. His favorite comment is “too doggone easy”; he says this at least once an hour. Dernard is also the one who brought “Who Rock” to campus, a wonderful distinction.

What, you ask, is Who Rock? Who Rock is one of the two cheers we do here at the Atlantic Region campus of NTrip. Both cheers are brought out to psych us up and raise energy levels whenever Team Green (the TLs) and the ULs find it necessary, whether during a break in a long training or at the end of an early-morning PT session. Each is led by a TL or other staffer, usually one of the guys with good voice projection.

Motivator #1:
TL: Who rock this place?
CMs: We rock this place.
TL: Who rock this place?
CMs: We rock this place.
TL: Who rock?
CMs: We rock.
TL: Who rock?
CMs: We rock. Atlantic Region rocks the house!

The last line is said in a bit of a rush. They made it very clear to us when teaching it that taking a breath during the final line is not allowed and the intake of all necessary air should be completed before it arrives.

Motivator #2:
TL: Class Sixteen (or Wolf Unit, etc. as desired), ARE YOU MOTIVATED?
CMs: Motivated, motivated, downright motivated! Huh!

The final sound in that one is the military-style ‘huh’ that sounds all tough and fired up when uttered by 210 young adults simultaneously. Being so camp myself, I love fun cheers.

Back to today, Dernard was our instructor for van driver training. Thirty-one of us went through every single bullet point on the NCCC van driving policy memorandum which applies to all staff, TL, and CM drivers of the govie vans. It’s a six-page memo so that took a significant amount of time. We then took a test on NTrip van driving policies which covered all that we’d learned from the memo. It was a fairly easy test and Dernard was great about reiterating the points which would end up on the test, so we all passed with room to spare. At 11:30, we breaked for lunch until one. The five Wolf One drivers walked together to the VA (Veteran’s Affairs, 9H being in one of the VA hospital buildings) canteen, where we enjoyed lunch together surrounded by veterans.

We headed outside at noon to meet up with the rest of our team for a few minutes of their noon-to-one lunch break. Chris Quaka has set out a scavenger hunt that each team must complete in order for him to reveal their first-round spike project to their TL. The earliest he’ll tell any TL a spike project is Friday, so we’re all trying to get the scavenger hunt done by then. For the scavenger hunt, we need to take team pictures at three of six possible locations and meet with LaQuine (our regional director, a.k.a. the boss), Sam (who works in the program office), and Chris himself. We finished our first team picture yesterday outside B-15 after our morning training. The location was in front of a big NCCC sign along the road. We took our second team picture at lunch today inside our tool shed in the basement of B-15. The basement rooms may have been the morgue for the hospital formerly and the only lights were heavy-duty temporary working lights; we had to walk along a darkened hallway to reach the lights and the shed but the return walk was well-lit heading back into the main basement.

After we all fit ourselves into the tool shed, we redivided into drivers and Village workers for the afternoon session. The five drivers-to-be headed back into 9H where we picked up training with a series of videos. We watched two hours of videos about blind spots, a cushion of safety, leaving four seconds of space in front of you, and other van-specific learnings. During the second video, I had an epiphany of sorts. Though I’d said multiple times that morning that I’d never driven a van or other big vehicle before, I realized during the video that I’d actually been trained as a van driver at camp two summers ago. I had not only driven a van during the certification test, but also driven a camper to the hospital one evening at dinnertime. (Admittedly, I actually just now remembered the latter part, having only remembered this afternoon that I had indeed been trained.) Apparently, parts of my driving history slipped my mind in my identity as a small-car person.

Once we’d finished the videos, we took a multiple-choice test with very simple questions about driving a van. Then we watched one final video about driving in snow, most of which was exactly what I already knew from growing up in New England. You should clear the snow from the roof of your car, for example, rather than letting it slide down onto your windshield as you drive. The things we learn.

After training ended at four, Melissa picked us up and drove our whole team over to Havre de Grace, right across the Susquehanna River. We took our final team picture at the Havre de Grace lighthouse then went above and beyond by taking an extra picture at the promenade just up the road, also on the scavenger hunt photo location list. The promenade had been wiped out by a hurricane a few years back and NCCC had helped rebuild it. Then-President Clinton had come to the dedication ceremony, having been the one who launched the NTrip program in the first place.

We had the evening free (tomorrow will be more team-time-filled) and I went for a run then spent the rest at home relaxing. I hung out with my housemates and we ate cake which Rene had made, allegedly for Zach’s birthday which is next week. It’s nice to just relax for a couple of hours.

Now I’m off to sleep because we have another early PT day tomorrow. It’ll be a long training day, but we should learn lots of interesting things so that’ll be good.

Day 18 – Thursday February 25, 2010

After all that thought about it in the introduction last time, I forgot to mention my new vest.  I’ll do so now.  I’ve been without a vest for three days now, ever since I left it on the back of my seat at the end of training on Monday.  I realized that I’d forgotten it about an hour later while still down the hall from the theater behind 9H at the Specialty Roles Fair.  The theater doors, however, were already locked and UL Sean didn’t have his key and no team has had training in there in the past couple of days.  Thus it has remained locked in the theater, presumably still draped over the back of the third seat in the fourth row (one seat over from where I’d sat the previous training day) all week. 

Now I don’t normally wear vests, but I had become quite attached to this one.  I can layer it with my sweatshirt instead of wearing a jacket and it’s a warm and fleecy AmeriCorps vest.  I was quite sad that I had been separated from it for so long with no reunion in site.  Thank goodness for the drift shed.  I’d heard about its existence a few days back but never been.  When Lindsay suggested we go together yesterday after training, I decided to take her up on it.  The shed is painted pink and has the word “Fire” in red cursive over the double doors.  Inside, it’s filled (shelves stocked, floor covered with piles) with masses of NTrip gear from CMs past.  There are paint-splattered shirts and stacks of various-sized khaki pants.  The shed is perfect for getting an extra pair of pants if yours are the wrong size or finding an extra t-shirt if you got one too few.  It’s also perfect for picking up an extra vest if you happen to misplace yours.  All the stuff is free to take and Melissa encouraged me to keep the vest even if mine turns up.  It’s there for us.  See, now I have a new warm and fleecy AmeriCorps vest.

Training today was in Peaceful Communication, but that was an afternoon-only session.  Our morning was spent doing project preparation for our mini-spike.  We sat down with Jessie, the STL in charge of project briefings, at 9H and she briefed us and two other teams working with Girl Scouts groups here in Maryland about our projects.  She told us the basics of how briefings work and went over some specifics on what we might be doing at each team’s project site.  Most of our information, however, will come when we arrive on-site next Tuesday and talk to the project and site supervisors.

After our project briefing, Melissa placed the pre-departure call to our site supervisor for mini-spike, a guy named Bob.  (She commented that there seem to be an abundance of Bobs working as site supervisors.)  While she called him, our team worked together to develop our grocery list for mini-spike.  We’ll need to cover three days of each meal, from dinner Tuesday to lunch Friday.  Sabrina and Lindsay coordinated the list-making and it went fairly smoothly.  We certainly have a significantly wider range of eating habits than there are in the Vault, but there’s a decent balance.  As Sabrina has commented on multiple occasions, it seems like about half the team is committed to healthy eating and half is not, with a few on either extreme of wanting it their way.  Fortunately, our good-sized food budget ($4.50 per person per day does end up going a long way) should allow us to cater to everyone’s preferences to a sufficient level.  It’ll also become easier as we get to know one another and learn about each other’s habits and selections.

Melissa returned to tell us that our mini-spike may be changing a bit at the last minute, though we won’t know where we’ll end up for sure until this weekend.  On full spike projects, a major focus point in project selection is whether sponsors would have enough work for us to do in the event of inclement weather (e.g. rain).  Our mini-spike sponsors, it turns out, think they only have enough work for us if we’re able to be outdoors.  There’s rain predicted for this weekend and their camp is already water-logged from the snow melting, so working outdoors all week may be unrealistic.  The good news, though, is that they could switch us to working at another camp, also through Girl Scouts of Chesapeake Bay, with Raven 2 (we would be the only team at our original project site) if the weather seems unlikely to allow us to stay outside.  The other camp is a bit closer to Perry Point and we’d be working inside doing lots of painting instead of working outside doing challenge course repair work and trail maintenance.  Either way, I’m sure mini-spike will be an awesome time.

After our briefing and more project preparation (such as grocery list development and a reminder to pack our work gloves), we headed over to B15 for a series of scavenger-hunt-related meetings.  We met with Sam, the PR guru and our team’s staff liaison, LaQuine, regional director extraordinaire, and Laura, our friendly Atlantic Region counselor.  Even Dernard stopped in for a few minutes and he is always on the go.  (He loves to tell us that his favorite saying is, “Walk and talk, walk and talk.”)  We played an icebreaker with LaQuine, led by Sabrina, in which everyone stands on a tarp then all need to stay on the tarp while flipping it over so the other side is up.  This was one of the first games we’d played in Outward Bound just under two months ago (already!) and we had a great time.  LaQuine told us after that the challenge of such a game provides a good metaphor for facing challenges in our year ahead.  The meetings were great and I enjoyed getting to meet some of the amazing people who make this campus run and help create the phenomenal opportunity we have to be here in NCCC.

We headed back to 9H from B-15 for Peaceful Communication.  The three-hour workshop, led by outside facilitators Ekaterini and Sam, focused on techniques for non-violent communication, violence including anger and other emotional turmoil.  They spoke about differentiating between feelings and judgments, thoughts, and other perceptions as well as about using objective observations to form conclusions about others’ potential emotional states.

We headed back to the Village after the session for the final stop on our scavenger hunt, a meeting with Chris Quaka.  We met up with him in the Wolf Den and had a great time listening to a few of his stories about life in the Corps.  I chatted with him briefly after the meeting and was again struck by how well he balances accessible, super-nice, and very serious about being the best possible representatives of the NTrip.  He also has excellent stories.

I spent the evening at the Wolf Den, hanging out with a few housemates then catching up on extra-Vault happenings.  It was quite chill.  Now I’m off to bed before another early morning tomorrow.  We meet at the pick-up point at 7:20 AM to head to First Aid / CPR training.  Ahh, fifth time through that training.  At least UL Sean will be instructing us; that should be fun.

Days 12 through 15

Day 12 – Friday February 19, 2010

Jamie and I returned from the Wolf Den last night to find Maria preparing to lead Rene, Brandon, and Rachel in yoga, mats already laid out in the living and dining rooms.  We had been planning to talk a bit to catch up, a task which has become substantially more difficult with the beginning of training, so we headed upstairs and sat around and talked for awhile.  We made it back down late, but weren’t quite ready for bed in spite of having an early PT morning the next day.  This was fortunate because going to sleep would have meant missing fun time with Ethan.

Ethan was on rounds last night, meaning he was the on-duty TL responsible for walking through the unit and checking in on the houses.  While TLs on rounds sometimes walk the streets and consider the round done, they’ll often actually come knock on the house door and check in with us in person.  Last night, Ethan knocked on our door and we invited him to come in and say hi.  Marissa, Jamie, Maria, Rene, and I were all in the internet so we offered him the chair Maria had just vacated (Rene had been adding a dreadlock to Maria’s hair and they pulled in a chair from the living room for Maria to add one to Rene’s) and settled in to chat.  He stayed for about fifteen minutes and we all shared stories about the house, which he had actually lived in as a CM last year.  He made allusions to his crazy roommates, we talked about the ridiculous smoke detectors and the random brown smudge on the bathroom wall which the guys had left untouched all year and Rachel had cleaned off on day two, and Marissa welcomed him into ‘The Vault’.  She was joking when she said our house was a vault – her intended meaning was that what’s said inside stays inside – but we all decided the name was appropriate after Ethan had left.  That’s right, I think we finally have a name for our house.  Pull out your key and enter the Vault, where faces are painted and stories are told and lifelong friendships are formed on a strong foundation of trust.

After a fairly late night, today began bright (well, dark) and early.  I rolled out of bed at 5:10 AM to prepare for Wolf Unit’s first day of PT.  We have physical training two to three days a week with Sean Kuether, the Badger UL.  Since there are so many CMs, we’re split up by unit so we’ll sometimes have PT with another unit and sometimes have it just us wolves.  I got dressed – some TLs had recommended sleeping in your PT clothes to have an easier start to the day, but that’s just not my workout style – and had a bowl of oatmeal with honey before heading out the door to the pickup point and Wolf One’s sweet black van.  We drove to the gymnasium by 9H and were comforted immediately by the warmth and light of the big room; it’s still pretty dark and wintry out at 6 AM these days.

Sean walked us through the basics of PT, including how to form rows at the beginning, how to count out the cadence, and what the basic exercises and stretches are.  I’ve adjusted easily to wearing a uniform (so few choices to make in the morning!), but I think some aspects of PT will take a bit more time to gain normalcy.  Much of it has a very military structure, which makes sense considering that Sean was in the Army and he’s been the central figure in making our PT program the best in the NTrip.

The hardest part to get used to will be getting into formation.  Sean yells “Fall in!” as we all mill about the gym and we’re supposed to make encouraging noises (or yodeling Tarzan warbles, as they sometimes seemed) as we sprint to the front right corner of the gym and form tightly packed rows of ten.  Once we’re all in, he commands us to expand left, turn, and expand left again so we’re spread out to ‘double arm-width’ in both directions and have space to exercise.  We face front again at his call then count off our rows, turning our heads to shout our row number over our left shoulder at the row behind us.  Believe me, they could already hear the ten of us yelling.  I’ve never had the need or opportunity to gain comfort with this type of military structure in daily activities and it’ll definitely take some time to adjust.  After that first part, though, we transfer into your standard workout.  That I can do.

The workout session itself progresses through four phases: rotations, stretching, exercises, and more stretching.  We rotate our heads and necks, arms, hips (for which Sean made semi-non-joking jokes about not trying to impersonate MTV stars), and knees and ankles.  We do each rotation three times in each direction.  A pretty standard stretching routine follows: standing hamstring, butterfly stretch, arms out in front with interlocked fingers, and the like.  Sean chooses any number he wants (usually 10 or 15) at which to start the countdown and we hold the stretch for that many seconds.  We all count together.  Next, we continue to hold the stretch until Sean calls “Relax”.  The exercises were varied, but include push-ups (performed at a very high cadence), a minute of sit-ups (with a buddy to hold feet), jumping jacks, and a range of other core exercises.  The focus was definitely on a strong core throughout the exercise portion; I hope they become somewhat of a cardio workout as we add more repetitions, but PT is definitely not an apt replacement for actual cardio exercise.  We finished with some stretching before re-compressing into our initial tiny clump of CMs in the corner then breaking out to return the tables and chairs to their former locations.

We had close to 1 ½ hours at home to make lunches and change into uniform before we headed back to the van for the ride to our daily training.  We were all pretty tired and time flew by during this short break.  The morning training wasn’t super-energetic and I could tell that I had far more success than most at staying awake and staying focused.

Training today took place in Aberdeen, about twenty minutes west of Perry Point and Perryville.  While the other units had Child-Friendly Spaces and Diversity Training, we rolled into a squat office building for six hours of logistics and shelter simulations to finish our Red Cross Mass Care certifications.  (These were the certifications all the units had begun together on our recent lengthy lecture day in the theater behind 9H.)  Wolf teams 1 & 2 were together in one room, so I got to watch Jordanna falling asleep in the back from my seat up front with my team.  We were fortunate to have excellent instructors, two guys from the Central Maryland chapter of the Red Cross who were very aware that many of the twenty CMs in the room were extremely tired and needed breaks throughout to keep focus.  Other than the stretch breaks, they kept on task well as they informed us of the logistical aspects of disaster operations.  We learned that the logistics unit oversees transportation, facilities, and supplies.  Its job is to support other staff and volunteers by providing the appropriate tools for them (us) to be able to best support those affected by the disaster (our clients, as the Red Cross calls them).

After lunch, we transitioned into a couple of hours of shelter simulations.  We broke into our teams and each team would distribute roles among the CMs in talking through how to open, run, and close a disaster shelter successfully.  At each stage of the process, the instructors would have us talk through the steps then give us a set of cards boldly labeled with ‘Disaster Happens!’, each of which threw in a twist which we’d need to take into account.  Once we’d tried to solve the new issues for a few minutes, the instructors would have all of us regroup and talk through our answers.

The simulations were incredibly valuable on numerous levels.  I feel like I learned a ton about being on a shelter-running team.  It would be incredibly chaotic, but I have a much better sense of what types of concerns might come up and some key elements of successful solutions.  I also began to learn how to work successfully with my team.  We figured out that we have a bunch of high-intensity leader personalities, a number of people who were willing to sit back quietly, and nobody solidly in the middle.  Currently, we have 4 strong leaders, 6 quieter friends, and Melissa.  We’ll get lots of great practice learning to listen to one another and to compromise with one another.  Those who are quieter now will get more outspoken and louder and those who are more outgoing will learn to let each other lead.  In incredibly good news, I was talking to Sabrina (another leader type) and we agreed that it seems like we’re all very aware of the dynamic and willing to compromise and work together.  Stubbornness will balance with patience to form one baller team.  Right now, it does seem like we could have a few rough patches, but we have the definite potential to become a total power team (as in working together amazingly in a super-motivated manner to get so much done).  I’m psyched.

Day 13 – Saturday February 20, 2010

AmeriCorps may boost my energy, but it also causes a drastic reduction in the amount of sleep I get each night.  My favored eight to nine hours has dropped to seven to eight being solid with six thrown in there on a couple of occasions.  Since I’m not quite healthy yet (though definitely closer than yesterday), this isn’t optimal for my energy levels.  Sometimes, though, it’s worth the loss of sleep.

This morning, for example, Jamie and I woke up at 6:30 AM – yes, on a Saturday – so we could walk over to B-15 in time to see Rachel take the firefighter pack test.  We didn’t know when she would go since almost 90 people were trying out and they were tested in waves of 20, but we knew the first wave would begin shortly after 7:30.  We had a nice walk over to B-15 and, as luck would have it, Rachel ended up in the second wave; Sean, the Badger UL who runs both PT and the firefighting program, had decided to set the waves in alphabetical order by last name.

That’s ahead of the point.  First, Jamie and I woke up at 6:30.  I walked downstairs in uniform (ready for our later ISP) and found Jamie and Rachel already at the breakfast table.  I asked Rachel about breakfast because I was planning to make scrambled eggs with fresh(!) and (un)frozen veggies.  When I said, “What have you had?”, she replied, “A banana chip.”  Needless to say, I ended up making her an egg with some veggies to take for the walk over.  Had she been in the last wave, she would have had to wait four hours from waking up to start her test.  Walking three miles in 45 minutes carrying an extra forty-five pounds of weight is best done well-fueled.

Rachel headed off with her scrambled egg (in a Tupperware) shortly after 7; Jamie and I walked over to B-15 about 20 minutes later.  We watched the first wave head off and I was happy to see all three of my Wolf 1 teammates in that wave back in solidly under 45 minutes.  We had just enough time to send off Rachel and the rest of the second wave (including Julian and Peyton, whom I also cheered on) before we had to return to the Village to make our lunches and head to the pick-up for the ride to our ISP.

Our ISP today, which 6 members of my house (Casey having recently had ankle issues) took part in along with Traci, Sabrina, and five other friends, was at an organization called Moveable Feast.  The organization’s primary program is a meal-delivery service, preparing meals and grocery bags and delivering them to homebound people in the Baltimore area and surrounding counties who are living with HIV/AIDS.  The 13 of us spent five hours helping out 1) sorting boxes of food from central pallets into groups of related foods (e.g. proteins such as chili, peanut butter, and beans) on pallets around the periphery of the room in which we worked, 2) taking food from the organized pallets to load into grocery bags to be delivered to clients (e.g. making sets of 40 or 50 ‘regular’ bags containing rice, cereal, canned fruit and vegetables, chili and tuna, canned spaghetti, and a few other item), and 3) cleaning (e.g. sweeping and mopping).  I mostly did (1) at the beginning and (2) after our lunch break.  The cleaning was already done by the time we headed to lunch.

A moment of awareness struck mid-afternoon when we were called upon to make 33 children’s bags.  The grocery bags designated for children replaced many of the standard items – rice, for example – with kid-friendly foods.  They contained microwaveable bowls of spaghetti with meatballs, individual fruit cups instead of canned fruit, and three juice boxes apiece.  While it’s nice to be able to help them in even this small way of assembling a weekly grocery bag, it was hard to think that those 33 bags are going to 33 children who are homebound living with HIV/AIDS somewhere in the Maryland area.  Each of the child-designated brown paper bags was decorated in crayon with a picture drawn by another child.  That was good.

We had the opportunity to wander Baltimore for an hour after the ISP, which was nice.  TL Jamie had driven us and dropped us off at Fell’s Point to check out the area.  A bunch of us spent much of the hour at a local coffee shop; it was cold and I had a hot chocolate.  We returned to Perry Point for a quiet (or loud, depending on the person) Saturday evening.  While most of our house ventured out, Casey stayed in with her injured ankle (she’s currently on crutches and stuck indoors for the next few days; it’s acting up in relation to a surgery she had on it four months ago) and Jamie and I chose to forego the weekend festivities to chill at the Wolf Den.  I have lots of fidgety energy in spite of being tired, so perhaps getting out and moving around would have been good, but it’s nice to have quiet time that’s not the sleepy lecture-induced sort. 

Tomorrow, I’ll get to sleep in until almost 7 AM.  It promises to be pretty awesome.

Day 14 – Sunday February 21, 2010

I did indeed get to sleep in until 7 this morning.  It was quite wonderful to wake up after the sun rose.  I look forward to enjoying similar mornings in the future (though by no means every day, thanks to PT).

I woke up at seven feeling more energetic than I have in recent days.  This is a good sign for my health, which seems to be steadily improving.  Jamie and I spent about two hours baking 2 batches of brownies for Moveable Feast.  It was a chill way to start the day, more relaxed than the frequent hectic rush to prepare lunches and get uniformed.  Rene and Rachel had decided to make breakfast.  They made a delicious combination of french toast and homefries.  Rachel’s french toast was topped with cornflakes, baking cocoa, and red pepper flakes, the last of which added a surprisingly fitting bite.  Rene’s baked homefries began, the way almost every single thing she makes does, with an onion sautéed in olive oil.  Yummy.

After brownies and breakfast, we all headed to the van for the ride down to Baltimore and Moveable Feast.  Today we cleaned the kitchen and front room… extensively.  We scrubbed steel tables and white walls, mopped floors, and cleaned windows, sinks, and many other surfaces.  Other than a break for lunch, we worked straight through our four-hour shift with lots of old-fashioned elbow grease.

This evening was fairly uneventful.  I had breakfast for dinner (oatmeal and yogurt) because I was sleepy; most of our house took a nap after Baltimore but I wanted to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.  I also tried grilled cheese with mustard later when Rene made that combo and encouraged all of us to give it a go.  The big activity for the early evening was reading a book.  Only a couple of us were awake and downstairs and I hadn’t read in awhile due to all the craziness, so I actually read in the house during the day.  I was reading Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.  TL Daniel had been reading it for the sixth time while on duty at the Wolf Den a week ago.  He recommended it as his all-time favorite book so I wrote it down to read someday.  When he finished while on duty yesterday, he loaned it to me and I began reading it almost immediately.  It’s excellent so far.  I like books that make me think; I especially like well-written fiction that makes me think.

After reading and dinner, I headed over to the Wolf Den with Jamie (again, I know) to pick up a trash bag and some paper towels for the Vault.  I had lots of energy and minimal cardio this evening so ran a few laps of the Village in the cool night air (with a headlamp on the vehicle-less streets).  When I returned to the Den, TL Jamie was there.  He was on duty and remembered that I’d asked him about law school last week, as someone who attended law school would remember, so brought up the conversation again.  We ended up talking for almost an hour about why I’d considered law school, why he chose NCCC, his favorite law school classes and experiences, and how he found the NTrip.  The last question is one of my favorites because I want to inform as many people as possible about this amazing program in a positive way and I’m incredibly interested in what gets people here now.  In Jamie’s case, he wanted to do service, had heard about AmeriCorps, and found NCCC on the AmeriCorps website.  Ah, power of the internet.  Jamie was great to talk to because he was very positive about law school – whether one, two, or thirteen years out of undergrad – even having entered not intending to become a lawyer.  He now plans to begin a law job in a big firm about six days after he finishes AmeriCorps, a rather intense transition but he seems excited for both careers.  One thing Jamie offered was a great analogy of how first-semester law courses are like high-school classes.  Civil law with its many puzzle-piece parts is like math and science, Constitutional law like history, Contracts and its lengthy narrative dialogues like English, and Torts like gym class, with someone inevitably ending up injured.  He said this analogy helped him make sense of his first year as it happened.  I certainly liked the comparison.  Jamie also offered the advice that it’s best to go into law school knowing what you want to get out of it – even if that’s not becoming a lawyer – because then you can focus on what matters to you and stay more focused and grounded amidst the intensity.

Upon return to 1103, which had started filling with people well before we headed to the Den and now has at least five non-Vault friends chilling downstairs, we worked on completing the grocery list for tomorrow’s run to the store as Marissa made brownies and offered advice on quantities to purchase.  Jamie and I are on this week for groceries – Jordanna wants to go with Casey if she’s up for walking by next week.  Wish us luck as we seek to procure enough fruit and peanut butter to last the week on our government budget.  Assuming three meals on our five dollars per day for each of the eight of us, we’re shopping for 168 meals for 240 dollars.  All things considered, we eat extremely well.

Day 15 – Monday February 22, 2010

I did indeed survive grocery shopping.  Yay!  It turned out that we got $280 since we were shopping for seven days, so there should be plenty of peanut butter.  There were a few stressful moments when we couldn’t find the tofu and our current total was erased from Jamie’s calculator, but we did find it eventually and my math-induced number-recall helped us bring our total up to speed in a matter of seconds.

The day was overall busy.  I woke up at 7 AM, had breakfast, and went for a run.  Next, I made lunch and put on the A (i.e. my uniform) before heading out the door at 8:30 with my roomies.  I ended up walking to 9H with Sean, talking about effective leadership along the way, and we made it (along with the rest of the Village) just before the assigned arrival time of 8:50.  Training started shortly after nine; it was another full day of all three units together in the theater.  Our morning was spent learning from Mike and Amanda, the assistant program directors in the program office, how our spike projects are selected and assigned and the various stages of project implementation.  They reinforced multiple times the point that the Unit Leaders divide up the chosen projects then assign them to the TLs within the unit so the ULs, not the program office, are the ones to be badgered with questions about projects… or the ones for whom good-project-vibe cakes should be baked.

We had a long lunch, during which I walked around outside for awhile with Marissa.  We talked to her mom on speakerphone for a few minutes about a variety of subjects ranging from puppies to tuna noodle casserole.  It was fun.

After lunch, we returned to the theater for two hours of “Corps Life” training which focused on the detrimental effects of alcohol and other substances on the body and encouraged us to avoid them.  Though the training was well-thought-out, it felt like a replay of eighth or ninth grade health class for many, so focus levels dwindled.  I spent a fair amount of time standing at the back of the room staying vaguely focused on the lecture at hand.  Standing up for a bit is a nice option to have during these lectures.  I certainly enjoyed getting to stretch out a bit as I listened to the talk.

I did eventually sit down for a movie we watched called Strong at the Broken Places.  It was a 40-minute film which shared the stories of four people who rose out of life situations which might be described as ‘extremely difficult’ or ‘deeply tragic’ to help make a positive impact on the world around them.  The film was used as a motivator to encourage us to think about emotional intelligence and what mental tools we have to help us succeed in the upcoming year.

After the film, we headed across the hall to the gymnasium for the Specialty Roles Fair.  CMs are each assigned a specialty role by their TL, but we get to express preferences for certain roles (generally via a worksheet and/or a brief statement of interest).  One role I particularly like the idea of is CAP representative, that being someone who goes to colleges, job fairs, and the like to spread the word about the NTrip.

We returned home for a brief break after training and the 4:15 announcement of the firefighting selections (two people from my team were chosen and they were selected such that no one would have to switch teams) then Jamie and I headed to the grocery store at 6.  By the time we got back, it was past 8 and I had just enough time to help unload and put away groceries before I had to head to the Wolf Den for a team meeting with Melissa.  We had a good meeting and she and I had a nice one-on-one chat afterwards; each of us needs to meet with her individually before first round and it seemed like a convenient time to do so since she was stuck there on duty. 

An exciting piece of news from the meeting was that we learned about our mini-spike project!  Each team goes out on a miniature spike next week from Tuesday to Friday.  Instead of heading out for two months, we’ll go for four days to get a better sense of the project process and begin to enjoy some good old-fashioned work and team bonding time.  Wolf One will be heading about three hours down the Chesapeake Bay to Fruitland, Maryland, where we’ll be helping the Girl Scouts of Chesapeake Bay through work on trail restoration and fixing up the challenge course on the property.  We’ll be living in a lodge at the site and it should be a ton of fun.  It’ll be my first AmeriCorps experience actually living outside of the house with my team, so that should be a great learning experience.

I have to wake up in 5 hours to get ready for PT, so that’s all for now.  Hope all is well!

Days 9 through 11

Day 9 – Tuesday February 16, 2010

My first thought when I woke up this morning was, “Yup, my throat still hurts.” My second was, “I am so happy to be here right now.”

It’s true, I am a bit sick. Marissa’s throat hurt last week and she had a very mild fever by the time we went for physicals. Now Casey and I are both a bit sick. It’s okay; it’s a house thing. Fortunately, I just have a bit of a sore throat for now. I’m not too concerned.

We spent our day sitting in trainings. We walked over to 9H just past 8 because we needed to be there by 8:25 to start at 8:30. AmeriCorps is super into being on time (making your team late for a day of work is a moderate infraction), so there’s a chance I’ll be off rugby time and back on responsible real-world time by the end of these ten months. Training today was run by two American Red Cross disaster services instructors, Casey and Lloyd. They went over Red Cross principles and values in the morning and began mass care. After a nice long lunch break, they covered the more about mass care (providing food and shelter and the basics of bulk distribution). They then talked for a couple of hours about how to set up and run a disaster shelter. On Friday, the wolves will have a day of shelter simulations during which each of us will practice the role of shelter manager, learning to set up, run, and close down a disaster shelter. As for today, training lasted about 7 hours and people were quite tired by the end. All 210 of us were together in the theater behind 9H; we were encouraged to stand up rather than falling asleep if we felt ourselves fading and about 20 people were standing in the back at any given time during the afternoon session.

One of the most amusing moments occurred directly following one of our breaks. I got back to my seat and Jamie said, “Hey, did you notice we’re all sitting in pairs?” It turned out that our entire house had gravitated towards one another when we chose our seats that morning. Jamie and I were sitting together at one end of the fourth row with Maria and Rene directly in front of us. Rachel and Marissa were at the other end of the row in front of them and Casey and Jordanna were a few rows behind us. Even when we split up, we all managed to end up sitting together anyway. We’re mildly ridiculous.

After training, our pods met briefly and Melissa confirmed that we will be getting our teams tomorrow. Teams were originally going to be announced this evening, but the snow pushed back much of the schedule by a day, team reveal included. It’ll be exciting to learn who I’ll be spending the next 9 ½ months of my life with as my new family, but many of us are also a bit nervous because we’ll be learning who we’ll be spending almost every moment with for the next 9 ½ months. According to Melissa, even the TLs don’t find out teams until tomorrow night. Our UL Chris has chosen teams and now LaQuine (“luh-QWOHN”, the regional director) needs to look through and approve them before they become official. I don’t think many of us Wolf CMs have ever even met Chris; he just talked to each of our pod leaders about us for a few minutes while we got our physicals. We’ve heard that he mostly works to balance age, gender, and the like with secondary attention to personalities. It’ll be great to learn my new family. Things could change when firefighters are announced, but it’ll be nice to start to get to settle.

I walked back to the Village with Rene, Jamie, and Rachel after the pod meeting. We got back just before 5, so we made our assorted dinners shortly thereafter and settled in for a few hours. I’ve been writing for awhile and Jamie has requested a visit at the Wolf Den when it opens at 7 (her and Rachel’s pod needed to help clean it since TL Debra, their pod leader, is on duty tonight) so I’ll be going over there for a couple of hours now. After that, it’s early to bed before another big day of training tomorrow. Even though it was seven hours of sitting and taking notes, I’ve always found school energizing so I didn’t mind this training. I sometimes felt the objectives of the trainings weren’t expressed clearly, which made it a bit more difficult to feel motivated, but I did learn some new things. I also enjoyed the use of the term ‘client’ rather than ‘victim’ in referring to those directly affected by a disaster whom the Red Cross helps. As I learned during Outward Bound, survival rates increase when you stop thinking of yourself as a victim and instead focus on helping others and working towards recovery. Mental attitude can make a huge difference.

As usual, all’s wonderful here at the Point. I’m even more in love with my house and this program, but it does confirm that NCCC is the place for me.


Day 10 – Wednesday February 17, 2010

Today was Diversity Training Day. It was also me being sick day, though fortunately I didn’t have any trouble making it through the whole training. I did, however, spend most of the training standing on the side of the room rather than sitting because I was cold even with my long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, and vest on in the not-that-cold room. I’m guessing I have a fever, since Marissa did for a couple of days and I seem to have a slightly sped-up version of whatever she had.

Diversity Training went very well, other than the physical toll of being cold the entire time (and probably having a mild fever). Our coordinators, Jeff Birdsall and Ginlin Woo, were very engaging speakers. They did lots of interactive activities, including having us make pipe-cleaner sculptures to share important aspects of our culture with our table and leading us in a privilege walk. The privilege walk, one of the longest activities we did because it included a full hour of debrief, entailed listening to a statement read by the leaders then stepping forward or back as directed if you identified with the statement. I stepped forward, for example, for the statement, “Take a step forward if your parents have told you that you’re beautiful or strong or can do anything you want.” (That’s a paraphrase of one of many things they read us hours ago, of course.) At the end of the exercise, we were spread all through Minker Hall. I like that such a diversity of backgrounds have brought us all to this same class and campus of NCCC. Jeff and Gin did a great job helping us think about using that diversity positively as we head into the rest of this busy year.

After nearly nine hours of Diversity Training (well, the first half hour had been our UL Chris talking about the significance of disaster and the agencies through which NCCC responds (American Red Cross, Wildland Firefighting, and FEMA)), we were all tired but also full of nervous energy: it was Team Reveal time. The other units came to join us in Minker Hall, which was soon filled with grey-shirted CMs and green-shirted TLs, along with the three Unit Leaders. Every one of us CMs drew a slip of paper with another CMs name and a song name on it from a box. Our job was to find that CM and give him or her the piece of paper while also being found and getting ours. When I got my paper (well after distributing two, mine and one for Casey since she was back in the Village due to illness), the song on it was “Don’t Stop Believing”. I took this as a good sign since it’s a BWRFC favorite. I soon found a couple other wolves with the same song, which was a huge relief. Melissa had told us that morning that a couple of people would switch between the Village and 9H and I’d been nervous that someone in my house (possibly even me) would be moving out. Fortunately, 1103 remained intact, though we are now welcoming four new wolves into other parts of the Village from 9H. I was super-relieved that my family here is staying together. A few minutes later, I got my new family.

Team Reveal progressed quickly once we all had our slips of paper. They played a song over the speaker system and put the song name and associated team/TL up on the projector screen. When your song played, you ran up, posed for a quick picture with your new team, and headed off to the back for a few minutes of team bonding. My group was probably in the eight-to-ten range of the 21 pods, so I didn’t have to wait too long. A few people from my team had already found each other (I’d found Traci first, whom I’d talked to for a couple of hours the other day in the Wolf Den library, then we found a couple of other people with the same song), but we still didn’t know our TL. We were happy to end up with Melissa, my recent pod leader and longtime House Mom. She’s super warm and friendly, so I think we’re in for a great year with her as our leader.

I didn’t know anyone in my pod well at all other than Traci, so it’ll be good to spend lots of time together tomorrow and in the upcoming weeks as we begin to get to know each other. My team is: Melissa (our lovely TL), me, Traci, Sabrina (who’s vegetarian, loves Tibetan food, and has already promised to make me dal), Lindsey, Amanda, Kathy (who switched from 9H just tonight), Brandon (who was in my pod), Jeff, Chris, and Roy (or ‘Silent Roy’, as Chris calls him). We’ll have a full morning of team time tomorrow morning and I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone in my newest NTrip family.


Day 11 – February 18, 2010

Today was great.

We began with unit time with Chris Quaka, our Wolf Unit Leader, at the Havre de Grace Community Center. (Havre de Grace is a small town across the Susquehanna from Perryville.) Chris had spoken to us a few times before, but never presented a full CTI segment to us. This morning, he spoke for over an hour about his expectations and standards for the Wolf Unit, his goals for us as a unit, and the excitement of the upcoming year. He was an engaging speaker and injected lots of humor into the subject matter. Chris’ core slideshow used a series of pictures of his baby Logan (born last summer) to walk us through the craziness of the months to come – the energy now, the tired look on the morning after a big night out, the closeness of graduation in November. As he reiterated multiple times, these next ten months will absolutely fly. Chris also interjected some good stories into his speech to reinforce the importance of abiding by the rules about alcohol and such. He finished with a screening of the midyear slideshow from Wolf Class XV, which was an excellent tool for getting us psyched up for the amazing times to come.

After Chris wrapped up, we continued our morning with a hearty round of “How Well Do You Know Your Team Leaders?” The team leaders had come up with a variety of trivia questions about themselves which we tried to answer in house pairs. We learned some fun facts along the way. Examples: Melissa’s dream vacation would be at the North Pole while Ethan’s would be four weeks backpacking in New Zealand followed by two weeks on a cruise in Antarctica; when he was little, Daniel wanted to be a Jedi when he grew up; Suzanne couldn’t live without ice cream and peanut butter. It was a good time.

We then broke into an hour of team time for lunch. Wolf One headed to a local coffee shop, where Melissa treated us to coffee and yummy hot chocolate. It was super-nice of her. She went over her expectations (e.g. be on time, ‘on time’ meaning five minutes early) before leading us through a couple of excellent team-building exercises. One of the TL trivia questions had asked who wanted to know ‘why people do what they do.’ She asked each of us to talk about why we do what we do in life, with service, or joining NCCC. Some good answers came out which began to help us figure out how our teammates think and function. Melissa then led us in a Starburst exercise. She began by having us each take a Starburst candy. Next, she explained that each candy wrapper color correlated with a statement to which we should respond. People talked about what we looked forward to the most, one challenge we knew we’d face, or a proud moment in life. Everyone gave honest answers which provided even more insight into who we are and how we operate. The exercises were good first steps to helping us form a solid unit.

After lunch, we returned to the community center for an information-packed afternoon about child-friendly spaces. We learned that Save the Children, a program which works to help and support children around the globe, has a partnership with NCCC. Specifically, we could work with Save the Children when we get called to disaster. The organization seeks to create child-friendly spaces in disaster shelters, areas where children could take time away from shelter life to just be kids – and parents could leave their kids (as long as they stay on shelter property) to take time away and shower or regroup – in a safe space filled with toys and games. We learned how to use the tools in the Save the Children ‘grey box’ – a big plastic bin filled with art supplies, books, board games, and the like – to set up and run a child-friendly space in a disaster shelter.

The speaker, Kate from Save the Children, was very enthusiastic and made apparent the deep thought and constant reevaluation for best practices that go into every aspect of the program. She talked about the effects disaster can have on children, ways to structure the space (e.g. separate active and quieter activities or give older and younger children different areas), and how we can give away favorite toys or make a fun pack for a child who wants to play but whose parent wants them to be elsewhere. I was most struck by the incredible generosity of the program. She encouraged us on multiple occasions to go ahead and let children take toys or supplies with them and said that when we closed the space we could help figure out whether to donate the remaining supplies to a local school or other organization or, if equitable, divide them among the children still in the shelter. I love the complete selflessness of the program and gained a thorough respect for Save the Children’s work.

Our thick new ‘US Child-Friendly Spaces’ manuals in hand, we headed back to the Village in our sweet black van (the only one in the fleet, as Melissa has told us on multiple occasions). I chilled with my housemates, ate some dinner, and came to the Wolf Den to sit and write. Tomorrow is our first day of PT (yay, 5:40 AM van time) so it’ll be a fairly early night for much of the Village. We’ll spend the rest of the day in shelter simulation, learning how to set everything up outside the child-friendly space. Ah, Red Cross classes.

Days 6 through 8 (The magic continues...)

Day 6 – Saturday February 13, 2010

The remainder of yesterday was great.  I hung out with my housemates for hours and we continued conversations about life (including a good one I had with Rene in the afternoon about different motivations for striving to be a good person).  Rene and I walked over to the post office in the afternoon with Red, a girl who had just moved in across the street an hour or two earlier because she’d had multiple train rides and flights cancelled due to weather.  She was surprised to arrive to find the Village empty and we explained that everyone else was at physicals then gave her a brief introduction to our end of campus as she joined us for our walk to mail a couple of letters. 

In the evening, the rest of the house (except Marissa, who had yet to return from the clinic) headed out for the night.  I stayed in to go to the Wolf Den and enjoy a restful evening before our first day of training.  I ended up having three Raven CMs over for half an hour to chat since the Den opened late.  We had a nice conversation before returning for some quality internet and people-bonding time.  I got to sleep at a reasonable hour and was up at seven today when the rest of the house began to stir.

Training today went very smoothly.  We headed over to the theater by the gymnasium (in the building attached to 9H) at 8:40 for a 9 AM start.  Our Atlantic Region program director, Robin Nixon, began by introducing us to the types of trainings we’d have during CTI and explaining the basics of where NCCC fits in under the Corporation for National and Community Service.  She told us that our target cities for the year are Baltimore, DC, and Camden (NJ); one or more teams will be on projects in each of those cities during each of our four spike rounds.  She also explained that 50% or more of our service will be in the area of natural or other disasters.  The rest of our projects will fall into the following four areas: environmental stewardship and conservation, urban and rural development, infrastructure improvement, and energy conservation.  Throughout the year, our class will complete at least 100 projects during over 425,000 hours of community service.  Pretty cool, huh?

Sean, the Badger UL, joined Robin in describing the specialty roles we could take on our teams once they’re selected.  These include roles such as the POL (Project Outreach Liaison), who acts as on-the-ground eyes and ears to help NTrip find potential project sponsors for future years, and the SLI (Service Learning Initiator), who creates opportunities for team members to think about the broader impact and implications of the project.  I thought the CAP (Corps Ambassador) sounded especially interesting.  The CAP finds opportunities to tell people, especially in our target audience of ages 18 to 24, about NTrip through job fairs, school visits, and the like.  I enjoy talking about my love of AmeriCorps and had tons of fun promoting Brown so would very likely quite enjoy this too.

Sean then talked about NCCC Standards and Expectations (don’t drink or do drugs; disciplinary structures are in place if there are issues), gave us a lunch break, and ended with information about PT and Wildland Firefighting.  We’ll have PT twice per week during CTI, always starting at 6 AM, then three times per week for 45 minutes per session while out on spike.  Each month, we’ll do a PT assessment, during which we do one minute of push-ups (as many as possible), one minute of sit-ups, and a one mile run (or 1.5 mile walk as necessary).  The assessment will be a good tool for helping us track our progress through the course of the year. 

I don’t have interest in being trained as a firefighter, but enjoyed learning about that opportunity too.  About 90 people usually take the pack test to try and become firefighters.  Around 2/3 of those people will pass, walking 3 miles in 45 or fewer minutes while carrying a 45-pound pack.  This year, there are 36 spots for CMs to become firefighters.  They’ll train during the first week the rest of us are on spike.  Most will then rejoin their teams while some go out to do fire-related projects for their first spike.  Each round, one-fourth of the firefighters will leave their teams to join together on a composite firefighting team.  Sean did an excellent job framing the program as a great opportunity to continue as a wildland firefighter for anyone potentially interested in that as a future career.

We finished training around 2 then hung out a bit longer for our steel-toed boot fittings.  My pod had had first physicals so had last fittings.  We finished up around 3:30 then Rene and I walked back to the Village (fitting in a bit of a leg stretch rather than returning to the van for the one-mile trip).  Our whole house sat around together all evening, variously making and eating food, talking, adding another dreadlock to Rene’s hair (that was Jordanna), sleeping on the couch (Jamie right now), and sorting pictures and journaling.  I love our house.

We have the rest of the weekend free, including Monday as President’s Day.  The TLs offered us an ISP in town tomorrow helping shovel clear the sidewalks of Perryville.  I’ll get to do that for a few hours then just relax in and around the Village before training picks back up on Tuesday.  In the meantime, I’ve got some pretty sweet steel-toed boots.

Day 7 – Sunday February 14, 2010

Happy Valentine’s Day! 

Today was full of energy and noise.  My day began at 7:30 AM with the piercing shrill of the smoke detectors once again reminding us that they exist.  Yes, smoke detectors, we do remember that you’re there.  They had been going off repeatedly the previous night (and at various times since our first afternoon), so we’d removed the batteries from both of them.  (There’s one in the upstairs hallway and one over the front hall closet.)  This morning, they sounded off again in spite of their lack of batteries.  After about 10 minutes, I detached the downstairs detector from the wall.  It had gone off first by a few seconds each time and we’d been told there was probably an alpha detector.  Ten minutes later, it became clear that I had to remove the upstairs detector from the ceiling as well.  I had to use a pair of tweezers to pry the wire connector from the back, but then we could sleep in relative quiet.  By now, of course, most of us were awake for the day.  Thus is life.  I will comment that there was immense satisfaction in the weak final beep of the upstairs detector as I pried it from the ceiling.  It was an enjoyable sound.

I spent much of the morning sitting in the living room conversing with Casey, Maria, and Rene.  Eventually, Rene and I each went out for a jog, then I walked with Maria to the post office up the street so she could mail a couple of letters.  The weather was beautiful and starting to warm up, so it was great to be outside.

The entirety of my afternoon was also spent outside.  The TLs had set up an ISP opportunity for us shoveling snow from the sidewalks of Perryville.  The morning ISPers had made it into downtown and about 75 of us (from all units) walked on their beautifully cleared sidewalks into town.  We spent about three hours clearing and widening sidewalks far down one of the….

Day 8 – Monday February 15, 2010

Happy President’s Day!

To continue from last night…

We spent about three hours clearing and widening sidewalks far down one of the main streets (of Perryville).  It was wonderful to be out and active and making an impact, leaving a trace in a good way.  Wolf TL Jamie supervised my third of the shoveling crew.  He sent my four-person crew (Julian and Kelly from the Raven Unit, Leslie from the Badgers) into a retirement home to check the sidewalks and clear a path in the snow to and around a fire department in the complex.  While Julian and I put finishing touches on a sidewalk shoveling job, one of the women who lives in the community, probably in her seventies or eighties, came out to ask us for a favor.  She requested that we shovel out the still-snowy parking spot (most of the spaces were completely clear) of a man who had recently had a heart attack and was now out at the pharmacy picking up medications.  Another crew joined at the perfect moment to help us so 8 ACers cleared snow from a parking space for her.  She was super-nice, telling us she’d worked at the canteen at Perry Point for 25 years and thanking us multiple times for our help.  I knew we’d make a difference, but I didn’t realize we’d be directly helping a senior citizen (though not across the street) during our first week.

 Another cool moment of recognition in the A (‘in the A’ referring, of course, to wearing the AmeriCorps “A” logo) came towards the end of our shift.  Jamie announced that a woman driving by had stopped and said she would put three hundred dollars at the pizza place on the corner in town for us.  Jamie had ordered a bunch of pizzas for both morning and afternoon ISPers to enjoy after our shift.  Though a common response was “woo, pizza!”, my first thought was how cool it was that someone would recognize our work in the A in that way.  It reminded me of the high visibility of our uniforms – and of every move we make in our uniforms – and the awesome legacy of past ACers that we represent every time we put on that A.  I love being able to help continue that legacy and wearing that A with pride.

After pizza, I returned home for a few hours of quality house time.  It was the 19^th birthday of Mercedes, one of the girls in the house across the street, and her house had suggested a potluck and party in honor of the occasion.  We decided that we would host the potluck (our primary reasoning was amusingly that we love our house and a couple people stated that no other house was as good as ours so we might as well host at our place) and the girls across the street and the guys two houses down came at 6:30 for dinner (the guys further down the street joining later after their taco night).  The guys only have pasta in their house, so they brought pasta and tomato sauce, the girls brought couscous, and Maria made buckwheat noodles (delicious!) and tofu with vegetables for our contribution.  We all feasted on the wonderful food then sat and chilled for awhile. 

At 8:30, party time, we all headed across the street to the birthday girl’s house.  They had made a cake so we sang happy birthday and ate cake and a bunch of people danced the hora, raising her on a chair in the middle (it’s still unclear why, but it sure was fun and lively).  We danced in the basement in a combination middle-school-dance and high-school-house-party (substance-free, of course) before a bunch of people decided to head out into town.  Since it was already well after nine and I hadn’t slept tons the previous few nights, I decided to head to the Wolf Den to write a bit in the chill company of fellow ACers then return for an earlyish bedtime.  That didn’t happen. 

Instead, I ended up sitting in the front room downstairs for over two hours.  I began by chatting with Josie, Tori, and Victoria, all of whom I met in my four hours at the airport on day one, and Red, who lives across the street with Mercedes.  I eventually talked about marathon running for awhile with TL Ethan, whom I had noticed has a 26.2 sticker on his computer.  He had run the Atlanta marathon last fall and we talked training regimens, pre-race prep, and such.  I finished the night conversing with TL Daniel for about two hours about life, AmeriCorps, and everything.  Red and I walked back shortly before the Wolf Den’s midnight closing; she may come visit the house later today to mingle and meet new people.  It’s nice to be reminded of all the amazing people here in the NTrip.  I’m totally in love with my entire house, but everyone else is phenomenal too.

Day 8, part 2 (many hours later)

I awoke at 8:15 this morning to the chattering of housemates down in the living room.  I hadn’t gotten as much sleep as perhaps might be optimal, but I got up anyway because it seemed a good time to start my day for staying-on-schedule purposes and my wonderful housemates were already up and about.  After making breakfast and recording the events of last night, I walked into Perryville with Jamie and Rachel.  Jamie had suggested last night that we wander around and take some pictures of the town; Rachel joined us to find some coffee.  We walked close to an hour to the traffic light to which my group had shoveled yesterday.  We went into a small convenience-store-slash-deli called Lindy’s to get Rachel some coffee.  One of the women working there asked if we’d been shoveling the previous day.  We all had (Rachel and Jamie had gone for the morning session) and she thanked us and even took a picture of the three of us after showing us some on her camera of other ACers shoveling out the sidewalk in front of her house.  On the walk back to campus, I enjoyed a delicious apple which I’d gotten from Lindy’s for 75 cents.  We have one day until our next shopping trip and I’m definitely ready for some fresh fruit.  The apple was extra-wonderful in being my first in days.

We returned home for lunch then headed to the pick-up point (a pull-out at the top of Third Street) for the short ride over to 9H.  All the wolves lined up to have our TB tests read.  As long as the injection site hadn’t swollen, we were set.  Mine was all clear, which I had expected but was still good to hear.  We headed back to the Village within the hour and settled in to relax for a bit.  Afternoon entertainment options arranged by the TLs were going to the movies or going to the gym.  Rene and I chose the latter so hopped in Melissa’s van at 3 to head to the local YMCA with some of our fellow pod members, Rachel and Jamie, and other members of their pod.  There was an erg, so I was happy.

This evening has been wonderfully chill.  We came home, settled in, made our various dinners-of-choice, and just relaxed.  It’s been a wonderful holiday evening.  Now I’m off to the Wolf Den with Jamie (Maria and Rachel are already there) to send this post your way via the internet.  The amazing times continue here in the NTrip.