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!
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