Hello again. It’s been a while since I posted last. Since then I've ended up in New Jersey, but I'll get to that later.

Monday October 22^nd was our first day of work at the regional office for FEMA Region 7, which includes Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. Since there hadn't been any national disasters in a pretty long time, there wasn't really much need for FEMA Corps to be doing relief and recovery work nationwide, so they put us to work in an office. My team, including myself, was not very happy about that development at all. There were a lot of negative emotions and feelings of being mislead by the program, but there was also the acknowledgement that if there wasn't anything for us to do they had to send us somewhere to help with something, so we got over it. 

Like I mentioned in the previous post, we did some sight seeing in the city. My favorite thing that we did was go to Oklahoma Joe's BBQ. It's been on the travel channel, Anthony Bourdain has been there, yada yada. It was delicious.

Plaque on the wall at Oklahoma Joe's

Long line in front of the register

We stayed at a Candlewood Suites extended stay place northeast of KC a good ways. I don't have any pictures of the room that I was in, but it was essentially a glorified hotel room with a 2-burner range, sink, and refrigerator. And the 5 of us guys had to share it. There were 2 beds in the room and we brought 2 cots, which meant either someone had to share a bed or someone was going to have to sleep on the floor. Needless to say the room got pretty messy. The hotel also had a weight/exercise room which was nice, and a saltwater pool.

Saltwater pool and sunset

 Most of the work that we did the first couple of days was pretty menial for most of us, but I got one of the good jobs out of dumb luck and got to sit in on a lot of planning meetings, rubbing elbows with people that are pretty high up in the federal government. Our supervisors were really cool and embraced us immediately, and even asked our opinions on how to go about certain things, which now that I think about it, was pretty cool because I had some input in the decisions made by the federal government. Kind of a big deal.

They put me at a desk in the RRCC (Regional Response Command Center) which is a big room with cubicles and a bunch of screens with random weather and news on them and a bunch of TVs with different news stations on them. I felt like I was in a war room, and it was awesome. The best part of the short amount of time there came when Sandy came roaring up the coast. They let us sit in on a couple national video conference calls that had the White House and the Pentagon on the line and I got to see the conference rooms inside both of those places, as well as a bunch of other conference rooms from other FEMA regions. Because of my computer science background the people at the office set me up learning and working with GIS, which is where you make maps and such on the computer in order to analyze and visualize data. They pretty much gave me a computer and said “Go play,” for a couple days, and that was really interesting. I've decided that I like GIS. I really liked the GIS guys. I only got to work with them for a couple of days but I feel like it would have been a lot of fun if we had stayed...

My corner desk with some of my teammates

RRCC

So when Sandy started making her way past Florida everyone at Region 7 offices started getting really excited and things got pretty hectic. Our region historically aids one of the regions on the east coast, and on the Friday before the storm hit our supervisors were sent to New Jersey as part of a team that would aid in FEMA management during response and recovery. By Sunday the place was pretty dead, as most all of the staff had been sent east. But there was no word about what my team would be doing, so we just kept doing work on our current projects, although each day we were becoming more and more sure that we would get the call to go. I was in the command center on Tuesday morning and the rest of the day when Sandy was pounding New Jersey and New York, and it was really difficult for me to not watch all of the screens and news channels while I was supposed to be doing work. Finally at the end of the day, we met as a group with our TL, and she told us that we were headed east to finally do the work that we had been trained for. No word on where we were headed as a final destination, but Dayton, Ohio was where we were going to be staying for at least a night. That night was spent packing and talking about where we would be doing our work on the east coast.

The next day we got up and packed the van with all of our gear and hit the highway in an easterly direction with high spirits. The drive was pretty fine, not much to report. Sunny skies and boring states for hours on end. As we passed into Indiana it started to look cloudy ahead to the east, which was the western boundary of the storm system that had previously been hurricane Sandy. It was surreal to drive into a weather system in the Midwest that was also covering all of New England and was over the Atlantic.

Sandy approacheth

Sandy snow in the Pennsylvanian mountains

For the sake of skipping boring parts I’ll just paraphrase parts of the trip. We stayed a night in Dayton, Ohio, where the manager of a bar comped our pizza when he found out where we were headed, which was cool. Then we drove through Ohio and Pennsylvania and saw the snow that Sandy dumped on the mountains of PA. We stayed in Harrisburg, PA at some point. It was a very special night because Lesley drove up from Maryland to spend the night with me. It was so wonderful to see her again, it felt amazing. So it was a bummer when I had to be back at the hotel with the team at 5:30 AM so that we could get to Trenton, NJ by whatever time it was, I don’t remember at this point. When we got to Trenton we hung out at a location that I don’t think I’m supposed to disclose here for quite some time while people figured out what was going on/what to do with us and stuff. At this point we still didn't even know where we were going to be sleeping that night, everyone was tired, and there was a lot of uncertainty about everything. The only bright side to the story is that other FEMA Corps teams were there too and I got so see some friends that I hadn't seen in a couple weeks.

Finally after hanging around forever, we found out that we would be staying at Fort Dix, which is like 25 minutes eastish of Trenton. It’s an Army/Air Force joint military base, kind of chilling by itself in the middle of south-central New Jersey. When I found out where we were going I was picturing a gymnasium or rec hall filled with hundreds of cots and little to no personal space. But upon arrival it wasn't that bad.

Since getting here and up until I am writing this right now (November 27^th), I am on the lower bunk of one of 6 bunk beds in a room in a barracks at Fort Dix. There are 12 of us in here right now. I lucked out and got put in a room with a bunch of guys that I’m good friends with. We call our room “Man Land.” The showers are communal, which the first time was a little weird, but now it’s whatever. There are two rules in Showerville: face the wall, and mind your own business. I shower at 6:25 most every morning so I usually have it to myself anyways.

Right side of my room

My room. I'm in the back right bunk

My bunk (bottom)

I guess I’ll just finish out talking about my living situation for this post, and I’ll get into all the FEMA-related stuff in the next post, which I promise I will make a priority and publish it ASAP. They serve breakfast (if you can get up in time) and dinner at the chow hall right across the street from my barracks. The food is pretty decent. Lunch up until today has been either military or civilian MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). If you don’t know what MREs are, they’re essentially high-calorie rations vacuum packed in plastic that come with a bag to cook them in. To cook them you add water into this bag that has a packet of some sort of chemical in it (I’m guessing potassium-based, but I’m probably wrong) and it gets super hot and steams your food. MREs are pretty good the first couple times you eat them, but after a couple weeks I was starting to get sick of them. I still ate them willingly and even enjoyed them, but it was getting to be a little much. So today was the first day of a different approach to lunch, which was in a (non-vacuum) sealed plastic bag. It was a roast beef sandwich that came with chips, applesauce and a sparkling fruit drink. It was awful. Mostly because they have these lunches frozen until we get them in the morning and they’re supposed to thaw by lunch time. Well, mine wasn't thawed so I put it in the microwave. Pandemonium ensued. I ended up eating goopy roast beef sandwich soup with my bare hands and making the biggest mess I've ever made while eating. Thank god no one walked in on me during this moment of crisis, it would have been so embarrassing. Just melted cheese, mayo, mustard, and liquefied white bread ALL OVER my hands and face. It was great. I think I might actually go crawling back to MREs...

As for the base itself, there a bunch of Army and Navy guys all over the place. They leave us alone for the most part, but if you feel like talking they’re open to conversation. I talked to a couple guys that were gearing up to be deployed to Afghanistan. It’s kind of weird being at the place where our nation’s soldiers are sent out of to go to war. There are also a bunch of cops, mostly highway or state patrol, from all kinds of different states stationed here. At this point I’ve seen squad cars from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Illinois, Michigan and a few other states. From talking to one of them I found out that they’re mostly here as a response to the lawlessness that has been happening in a lot of the hardest hit areas. This includes a lot of looting I guess, so these cops have come from around the country to patrol the streets of these communities and keep things from getting too crazy. It makes me wonder what authority these out-of-state cops have to arrest people; are they granted special rights to exercise the law in a state that isn’t the one that they work for? Or are they here just to have a law enforcement presence and hopefully that will deter looters? I don’t know. I’ve also seen some Urban Search and Rescue teams as well as firefighters and such around this area of the base.

There’s a bunch more stuff but it will take too long to write so I’m going to post this and follow up later.

My Time in Anniston, First Spike Trip, etc.

I'm sorry. I am a horrible blogger. I have kept everyone waiting for too long.

Alright get over it. I've been busy.

So I've got some pictures from Anniston and some thoughts on the training and stuff, as well as other tales of my great adventures and injuries.

I'll start right off with it. I ended up despising the food. I know in my last post I was all about the food, and don't get me wrong, it was delicious. But every Monday was the same. Every Tuesday was the same. Every Wednesday was the same. You get it. The second time I had lemon pepper chicken it was tasty but kind of meh, and the the third time I only ate it in order to not starve.

Now that that's over.

I mentioned in the last post that we were given name tags and badges. Although I don't need the name tag anymore, the badge is a necessity until the end of my service term. We were also issued Blackberries and laptops for official use. It feels weird using BBM again, but it's just as convenient as I remember. The idea is that we can use the 4G from our phones with our laptops and then have internet anywhere AT&T has service. Which is actually quite limited. AT&T sucks.

NO RETAKES

Name tag for campus

Training ended up being alright, got through FEMA 101 after about a week and really learned a lot about FEMA and how it operates. After 101, we had 3 I think? days of cross-training in IA, which is the Individual Assistance aspect of the operations division. The classes, while incredibly dull, were very informative. I am very confident that if I am ever in a disaster I will know exactly how to apply for federal assistance. We had the sequence of delivery pounded into our heads until we couldn't even bear to think about it anymore. But that and everything else was pretty necessary so that we will actually know what we're talking about when we're out in the field. When IA training was over we finally got to do training in the area that we were assigned, which is Community Relations (CR). We trained in that for 3 days and then training was all over. The long days in the classroom were finally over. Not really much else to say about training.

Classroom

My desk

On our only half day off I decided to sign up for a hiking trip to Cheaha State Park which is about a 45 minute drive from Fort McClellan. It is the site of the highest point in Alabama. It had been kind of overcast that week, and that morning the mountains were capped in fog, so most of the time we were up there we couldn't really see anything. The highest peak had a pretty cool building on it with a tower (again, couldn't see anything).

Inside the building at the highest point, doorway to the tower

After seeing lots of fog on the highest peak we decided to head to Bald Rock, which is a scenic outlook and hiking trail at the same park. The hike was pretty entertaining, mostly because Chris kept running off into the mist howling like an Indian, hiding along the trail, and ambushing us with acorns the entire journey through the woods. He's a child. When we got to the outlook it was still foggy so we couldn't see much, but there were other opportunities for entertainment. Mom, stop reading. Chris had been there on a previous hiking trip and he had discovered a bunch of good rock faces for rock climbing and bouldering. So we started exploring and climbing everything we could find. It was really exciting at one point because if I had fallen I most likely would have died, which wouldn't have been good. 35 foot fall onto boulders and a very steep slope into the mist blah blah blah. It was all very exciting.

I realize that I'm not bald. It still had to be done

View from Bald Rock

Of course I ended up bleeding. At one point after I had finished climbing an actual boulder I was just walking across some smaller rocks and I slipped on some moss. Fell on my butt and hands and slid about 5 feet down to the ground. Sounds innocent enough, but the rock was a wicked little bugger, and very sharp in places. I acquired a cut about an inch and a half long and decently deep on my left thumb. And bled. I had forgotten how much even a little cut can bleed. As I write this (since it's been so long since I've updated this blog) the very last scab is about to fall off, it's almost completely new skin/scar tissue. Thank you liquid bandage, even though you sting like a son of a and make me scream like a girl.

Crawled through this cave

Off the bottom of this picture, 35 feet and probable death are not pictured.
I followed him right after I took this.

No stitches required. Also didn't ask anyone if I needed stitches.

After fun times were had and injuries were sustained we headed back to the main lodge of that part of the park. After a small (1.75 hour) coordination snafu amongst the team leaders, the sun finally burned off all of the fog and we were able to get some pretty great views of the park and mountains.

Finally a view

 The day before we were scheduled to leave Anniston, we found out where we were going and what we would be doing. We would be heading to Kansas City, Missouri. And we would be doing horrible office work, utilizing zero percent of all the training that we had just received. Needless to say we were all very upset. But what can you do

The night before we were scheduled to leave was crazy. I was assigned responsibility over our spike prep packet, which is a large piece of paperwork detailing everything about the project that we've been assigned. Usually teams do them together, but circumstances called for me to handle it since I'm the assistant team leader for my team. I delegated responsibilities to some of my teammates but in the end I still had to do a lot of it by myself. It probably took me about 3.5 hours. On top of that I was trying to spend a little time with my friends on other teams since we would all be split up the next day, as well as talk to loved ones on the phone and such. I finished all of these things by the 11:00 curfew, and was dead tired. That was when I started packing. Ugh. I packed until 1:30ish and finally got to sleep. Then I woke up at 5:00 or 5:30, I don't remember, in order to get the rest of my stuff together and eat breakfast. After packing up our van and finalizing everything, we were ready to depart on our journey west at 7:00 AM.

The drive was pretty uneventful, it was pretty much the same route we took down to Anniston from Vinton. I'd have to say the most eventful thing I saw was a school bus painted like the Batman batmobile. 

Bat Cave for life

We stayed at a nice hotel in Columbus, MO overnight, and then drove to KC on Friday. We weren't able to move into our lodging until Monday, so we stayed at the America's Best Value Inn in Independence, MO until our first day at the FEMA region 7 headquarters. During our weekend of no responsibilities we were able to explore the city a bit. The downtown area is pretty cool, lots of nice looking buildings and such. Not really much else to report about that. BUT. We wandered down to the City Market district and it was awesome. There was a really cool coffee shop type place that we stopped in to chill for a while, and I have to say it was probably the coolest coffee shop I've ever been to. The farmer's market was also going on, and you all know I love Madison's farmer's market, it's the greatest thing on Earth, but there were some vendors at the KC one that were awesome. This one guy had 5 tables set up end to end with just bags of different spices packing them. Couple bucks per huge scoop. Amazing. And fruit stands and a whole bunch of other stuff, I almost felt like I was in some market in another country.

Grassy plaza downtown

Statue at above plaza. I forget who it's of

Fall festival in downtown KC

Part of the awesome coffee shop

More coffee shop

Spice on spice

That's all I can handle for writing right now, I can fill in on all the other stuff having to do with our assignment and such in another post. Hopefully I will have it up within a couple days. Thanks for reading.

Bamalama, FEMA training, and moar

I'm in Bamalama! And I've completely dropped the ball this week when it comes to posting on this here blog. I shall make up for that here.

I guess I have to start by going all the way back to last week, and reveal the results of the basketball tournament. We lost. Both games. They were a very good team. The first game was very close (lost by 2), but they flew out ahead of us in the second game and we never recovered, losing 15-8. But it was a fun night and everyone had a good time, so we're all winners. Aww.

So that was Thursday, two Thursdays ago at this point. The next day was Friday (duh) which was induction. It was held at the local high school, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I/we all thought it would be. The senator that helped make FEMA Corps possible was there, as well as the CEO of CNCS (runs Americorps), and the deputy director of FEMA. Our region director, Dan, spoke/emceed the whole gig. It was really interesting to hear how all of these people worked together and did their own part in order to make this program a reality. My favorite part of the story was when the deputy director of FEMA told us how he mentioned his idea for FEMA corps and the President of the United States of America (Barack Obama) said, "I like that." True poetry. After all the speeches, we had to do all of our stupid team/unit/corps chants (in that order). For our team chant we ended up adapting the inscription on the ring of power from The Lord of the Rings like so:

One team to help them all,
One team to find them,
One team to bring them all,
And in the darkness guide them.

Preettttty cool if I do say so myself. Besides the speeches and the chants, it was pretty much a run-of-the-mill assembly type thing, and only lasted like an hour. After that there was punch and cake and shmoozing time in the common area/cafeteria. There was a long line of people that wanted to shake hands with a real live American senator, but my team bounced right away so that we could get back to campus and change/pack/be free.



From our tri-fold poster



President, Vice President, and Secretary (left to right) of Americorps NCCC
FEMA Corps Class XIX Governance Council

My view at induction

Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa

Queue going-away party at a local bar that evening.

On Saturday I participated in an Independent Service Project (from now on referred to as an ISP), through which 10 of us volunteered to help clean up/maintain the local running/walking/biking/nature trail. The trail is an important part of the Vinton area's culture, as many people enjoy exercising and relaxing by traversing the trail, which cuts across the countryside through woods and corn fields. From 8:00 AM until noon we went out with hand saws and loppers and cut back the vegetation that had started encroaching on the path over the summer. We also helped remove some trees that had been blown over by the derecho event last summer. Our goal was to make our section of the trail safer for the people that use it by removing dangerous overgrowth. It was pretty fun, and we learned a lot about the area from the locals that were in charge of the effort. I came out of it with some cuts, some blisters, and very tired, but it was a rewarding experience, and I know that the people in the area really appreciated what we did. And I finally got my boots dirty.



My crew working on our ISP




We did the trail maintenence in Garrison, IA



The rest of Saturday was spent packing. So in an earlier post I outlined the green duffel back and everything that I was able to shove in it. Well when we left Vinton to come to Alabama, they gave us an even smaller bag/backpack to shove even less crap in. The rest we stored on campus in the previously mentioned green duffel. Obviously, it was very difficult to know what to pack because we still have no idea where we're going after our training in Alabama, and we won't be going back to campus in Iowa until December. Pretty stressful and frustrating. And of course I didn't finish packing until a half hour before we had to leave on Sunday, because I'm a horrible procrastinator.



My life in a red backpack

 Sunday. Got up at 5:30 in order to finish packing and clean our room. Had room inspection at 6:00ish, after which we had to leave our room and couldn't go back in. I dumped my crap in the lounge and then helped clean up campus. I emptied and carried an unknown number of garbage bins, and then it was time to load up our stuff in the van. It fit, but not comfortably. We made a quick jog to McDonalds for breakfast and coffee, and then headed out for Alabama in a convoy of three vans, all Spruce unit (Spruces 4, 5, and 6). I had first shift for driving, which I realized was stupid because I had the most boring part of the drive, which was basically to the border of Iowa and Missouri. After two stops for bathrooms/food/gas, we quickly realized that convoys are the worst things ever. They take forever for bathrooms and then they take longer to get everyone back in their vans and get the vans all ready to go. I hope we never convoy again. We got to our motel in Clarksville, TN around I don't even know what time, 10 maybe, a good 2 hours afer all the vans that didn't drive in a convoy. Pretty much just went to bed without doing anything, and then got up after a quick overnight nap to hop back on the road again. At least the second day of driving had good scenery, as we entered the mountains of southern Tennessee and northern Georgia.



My view of the St. Louis arch



We got to the base in Anniston, AL around 2:30 PM I think, and were promptly ushered into an orientation meeting that was already in progress. Lots of obvious stuff, blah blah blah. Then we finally got to go to our campus and unload all of our stuff.

Let me tell you about the campus.

It's completely surrounded by iron fence-walls and barbed wire, and has security guards at the only entrance. We can leave as long as we have a buddy and you have to have your ID nametag clipped on your shirt at all times. It's very strict and official everywhere here, but I guess it is the Department of Homeland Security, so it makes sense. The gates and fences and barbed wire are really just to keep unwanted people out, and since there's really nothing to do in the area I don't even mind being closed in.



My dorm (middle building) and a part of campus. Note
steel fence on left.



The rooms are kind of like a hybrid between a small hotel room and a dorm room. There is one double bed and a cot, a desk, a bedside table, a dresser, a refrigerator, and a TV. We have our own sink and two closets, and we share a bathroom that connects us to the room next door. Our bathroom has a toilet and shower. It's a pretty awesome setup in my opinion, a lot better than my 5-person room that didn't have a TV and its own bathroom in Vinton. My roommate is a guy from my team, so it's not like I'm stuck with a rando.



Looking in from hallway. Bathroom is door on left.





Pretty much the whole room.



 

View from bed.



Let's get to the good stuff.

Food. Oh my god, food. The meals here are catered by Sodexo, and they are delicious. All you can eat buffets of mac n cheese, fried chicken, spanish rice, fruits, veggies, pork roast, fried and baked fish, etc. I'm in heaven. I end each meal hating myself, but it feels so good. People are starting to talk about the FEMA fifteen, but I'm not gaining any weight. Since starting NCCC I've actually seen a noticeable reduction in my body fat. I've gotten very lean, and I'm not sure if I like it, so I've been stuffing myself at every meal. Anyway.



Nomnomnomnomnomnom! food



Training. So far we've only had two days of class, which were, put nicely, Death by Powerpoint. I'll get back to that. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday getting processed, which included recieving my government laptop and Blackerry, receiving my FEMA corps clothing (3 t-shirts, 2 long sleeved shirts, 1 hoodie, 1 cold weather windbreaker, 2 polo shirts), and getting badged. The badges we get are pretty legit. We have to wear them whenever we are not on our residential campus, and if you don't have it, you're in big trouble or something. Since we did all the processing in the first two days, my team was one of the few teams that had Thursday off. I was so tired, so I slept in until lunch, ate myself into a coma, and then slept until 2:30 PM. It felt so good. I don't even remember what I did the rest of the day. Friday was our first day of class. It consisted of 2 educational units. One of which had the nickname of FEMA 101, the other was about persons with disabilities. Class goes from 8:30 AM until 4:30 PM each day, and we are not allowed to bring any electronics with us to meetings, so I had to leave my phone and Kindle in my room. The classes are pretty much just lectures with powerpoint slides, although the instructors do group activities that make things only slightly more bearable. The plus side is that they have those big industrial coffee machines that have regular, decaf, and hot water, and the coffee is delicious. I really was not expecting the coffee here to be so good. It almost tastes like french press coffee. They also have a refrigerator with water, Sprite, Coke, and, wait for it.... DR PEPPER OMG! So much Dr Pepper. The first day of class I had 4 Dr Peppers and 2 coffees, and I felt horrible. No self restraint that day. And snacks. They have two different times where they bring in this wonderful basket of snacks. I had a bag of Cheetos, a pack of Famous Amos cookies, 2 Rice Krispies Treats, and some crackers. This was all on top of lunch. It was a wonderfully bad day. Yesterday I challenged myself, and only had two cups of Earl Grey tea and a bag of Fritos. I felt significantly better, but didn't have as much fun.

 I don't even know what else to talk about anymore. We have PT three times a week still, got up at 5:00 AM yesterday in order to work out. Yada yada yada, long blog post. Send me messages with questions I guess if I missed something.

Recent News, A Day In the Life, etc.

Interesting stuff starting to happen around these parts. We’re getting information about what Alabama is going to be like, what we’ll be doing there, what our living situation will be and a lot more. Also induction is this coming Friday, the 28^th. I’ll get to all this stuff later. Right meow I want to talk about other stuff.

So about a week and a half ago my teammate asked me if I would go to the Governance Council meeting with him and be our team’s secondary, so I went. I had wanted to go to the previous meeting but we had been on our mini project and really hadn’t known about it, so I thought I had missed my chance. Anyway, we went. And my teammate is kind of an impatient person, and the meeting was kind of stagnating with different temp checks and votes so he up and left because he had other stuff to do. So suddenly there I am basically sitting as Spruce 4’s primary representative all of a sudden. And it was interesting. And we talked about electing officers which are president, VP, and secretary, and I decided that I would run, because, screw it. Fast forward to this past Sunday. I gave my little speech to the council, along with two other people running for president, and then we all voted. And I lost, by what I’m told was a very, very small margin (so I’m thinking like 2 votes). BUT! Then I decided to run for VP, and won that, so that’s pretty cool. And so now I am the vice president of the Americorps NCCC FEMA Corps Class XIX Governance Council, which sounds awesome. My duties include attending all meetings (duh), being the hammer, assisting the president with stuff, and delegating responsibilities to other council members and checking on their progress. How neat is that? That’s pretty neat.

“Neature Walk” is being quoted frequently here at the moment, I don’t even know why.

So then at the community meeting on Monday, which the entire 240 member corps attends, I had to get up on stage and talk to everybody about what the governance council does and why it’s important and why every team should be represented and blah blah blah. It was kind of nerve wracking because I don’t like being in front of large crowds, but I don’t think I made a fool of myself. I’ve decided that public speaking is going to be a thing that I work to improve while I’m here.

And now a lot of people address me as “Vice Prez” or “VP” when they see me on campus and it’s kind of embarrassing and kind of funny. Also, the staff and the rest of the corps has started holding me to a higher standard of conduct, so there’s a little more pressure to not mess up than there used to be. Some people have started coming to me with questions about stuff. I tell them to attend governance meetings. That should get attendance up.

One of the duties/privileges of being an officer of the council is that the three of us get to meet with the regional director of Americorps in person to talk about corps morale and get questions answered about various things. An example of this is that some people were concerned that we wouldn’t be getting rain gear because there wasn’t enough room in the budget. So we brought that up at the meeting with the director and he told us what was going on, and then we informed the council so that they can disseminate that information to their respective teams. Turns out we’re getting rain gear here in Vinton, and they’ll ship us the boots if we end up needing them. In case you were wondering or worried. Thanks, by the way.

SWAG SUIT

ANYWAY

Some people back home have been texting/emailing me asking me to lay down what a typical day at Americorps is like. This is where I’ll do that.

I woke up at 5:00 yesterday morning to get ready for physical training. Ate an energy bar (thanks Mom), drank some water, brushed los dientes, got dressed and headed to the gym. As a unit (Spruce Unit) we did the new workout routine that the Army recently adopted, which included a lot of lunges and leg raises and such. We finished at about 6:20 and were out of the gym by 6:30. We then had an hour and 20 minutes to eat breakfast/nap/shower before our unit meeting at 8:00. The unit meeting went until 8:45, then we had a professional accountability training at 9:00 led by the regional director. That was scheduled to go until 10:00 but I feel like he has been pretty busy this week with induction coming up and the meeting only went until 9:30. I went and made brunch in our kitchen, and then was able to type some of this after that before I had to be at a meeting for corps ambassador programming (recruiting) at 11:30. I don’t know if I mentioned this in an earlier post, but if you’re not early for your meetings here, you’re late. So really you have 10 minutes less time during each break than is on the schedule, because you have to make sure you have your uniform all perfect and then you have to walk there, and then you have to be 5 minutes early. Anyway, after that we had a Member Opportunities seminar from 12:30 until 1:45 in which we were able to sign up for online classes for certification or college credit in different areas of study, such as service learning or non-profit management. Following that at 2:00 was a meeting where shit got very real. It was called Psychological First Aid, and the speaker was a funeral director from Cedar Rapids who has been volunteering with the Red Cross since 1989. He worked at Ground Zero after the September 11^th attacks, he has done hurricane recovery volunteering, he’s been around the world volunteering. For three hours he was so brutally blunt about the loss and sadness and occasional horror that goes along with working in disaster recovery that a lot of people at the seminar were in tears. It was a lot for many people to handle, but when it was over everyone agreed that those 3 hours of training did more to prepare us for what we’ll be doing than all the other training we’ve done. That meeting ended at 5:00, but we met as a team after that until about 5:40 to talk about the meeting and go over how certain people felt about it. From there it was dinner prep, and I had to eat at 6:30 before the rest of the team because I had to be 15 minutes early for the Governance Council meeting that was at 7:00 because as VP I had to meet with the President and Secretary to create an agenda for the meeting and talk about some of the issues we would be going over. I am now the POC and supervisor of the event planning committee for activities this Saturday, which means I basically just make sure they’re getting stuff ready, but I don’t actually have to do any planning. It’s a pretty neat gig. That’s pretty neat! Sorry. So the council meeting went until 7:55, and I had to run to my room to get changed into basketball attire because the 5-on-5 corps-wide basketball tournament started at 8:00. I was on a team with 2 of my tall friends and 2 of my athletic friends. We played and won 2 games, which, with the lopsided bracket due to an uneven number of teams, put us into the championship game, which is tonight. It’s double elimination so the team we play will have to beat us twice in order to win. So it’s looking pretty good for us. I’ve never really been a baller, but I pulled my own weight, scoring 2 baskets in each game to 11 points, where each basket counts as 1 point. Throw in a few blocks and steals and it turned out to be a really satisfying night. The tournament went until around 10:00, and by the time I showered and got ready for bed it was almost 11:00. Then I went to bed, because on Thursday mornings I get to “sleep in,” which means I get up at 6:15.

So there you go, a day in the life.

So induction is on Friday, and I guess it’s a big deal. There’s going to be a bunch of big wigs attending and speaking, including the senator that basically created FEMA Corps, the CEO of CNCS (Corporation for National Community Service) which runs Americorps, the president of Americorps (I think), and so on. So it’s pretty exciting. I am one of 3 corps members in my unit to be hand picked by the unit leader to be interviewed for induction. I’m not really sure what that means, I think I might be getting put in the induction video? I’ll report back on that after it’s done I guess.

I’ve rambled on too much for one post, so I’ll include details about Alabama (Bamalama) in my next post, which I guess will be after I’m settled into the campus there.

9/11 Remembrance Project, PT, etc.

Since 9/11 was last week, the higher-ups at NCCC decided that this week each team would conduct a mini-project in remembrance of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Teams all received different projects, ranging from servicing roller skates at the local roller rink to working trail maintenance overnight at a state park somewhere in Iowa. My team was given the task of organizing, cleaning, and doing some painting work at a science center in Cedar Rapids, as well as helping to build a rain forest exhibit for children ages 2-12. We had PT at 5:30 (I'll get to that later), then I had just enough time to shower, put air in the tires of our team van (since I was driving) and park it in our designated meeting spot so that we could leave by 8:00 AM. It is about a 40 minute drive to the mall in Cedar Rapids that the science center is located in, so it wasn't too bad.

The place itself is pretty cool. They used to have a big building elsewhere in Cedar Rapids but it was pretty much destroyed by the flooding that they had in the area in 2008, so they salvaged what they could and set up in the mall. Since they lost a lot of resources and money from that disaster, they have been working with Americorps teams on a regular basis over the last few years, so they knew what we are all about and were ready to put us to work. Some of us cleaned the exhibits, others painted some of the activity rooms, my job was to help brainstorm ideas for the rain forest exhibit, research facts about rain forests, and create some hands-on materials for children to check out. I ended up making two fact-card things about deforestation after a lot of note-taking, as well as putting some paint hand-prints on some walls and other related activities. It took a lot longer to photoshop the images for the cards than I thought, so I may not be working as much on that kind of stuff tomorrow. I forgot to mention that this is a 2-day project, so we're done tomorrow, and our portfolio report is due Thursday. So that was pretty interesting.

Each year an area the size of Delaware is cleared in the Amazon in order to make room for farmland.

2.5 acres of forest will absorb around 400,000 pounds of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. That's the same weight as 40 elephants.

PT is at 5:30 AM every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Last Wednesday we did push up/sit up pyramids, where you do 1 push up, then 1 sit up, then 2 push ups, then 2 sits ups, and so on up to 10. Then you do it back down to 1, for a grand total of 100 of each. There was also stretching involved. Friday we ran for 20 minutes in the pre-dawn dark on the walking/biking trail that runs past campus. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that at 5:30 AM the sun isn't up yet. Which was pretty cool when the crescent moon and Venus were next to each other in the sky on Wednesday. Pics below for everyone that wasn't up before the sun on that day.

There are also pics below of some pretty awesome sunsets that I masterfully captured on my cell phone, and of me looking ridiculous in my uniform and PPE. You're welcome Arick.

Best sunset picture I've ever taken.

Second-best sunset picture I've ever taken.

Found this at Alco. Almost bought it. I'm sure it's still there if I decide I want it.

Pre-dawn moon and Venus.

Hard hat, safety glasses, ear plugs, coveralls.

Standard uniform while on-duty. I've been wearing shorts but it was only 63 F today.

That's pretty much all for now, I'll update again later this week if I can.