One Week In

I have now been in Iowa for a whole week, and am settling into a bit of a routine. Last week consisted of various lectures and small meetings involving getting acquainted with the campus and policies. On Thursday we toured the small museum inside the main building that showcased various artifacts and equipment from the Braille and Sight Saving school that is on this campus. They had some cool stuff, like a braille typewriter and old gym equipment. It was only 8 rooms of stuff, but everyone found it a lot more interesting than anticipated.

Downtown Vinton

Train depot, the farmers' market is on the other side

Weird, trippy sculpture/basketball hoop

Looks a lot like the sunsets back home. My dorm is on the
 far right and the gym is in the background on the right

At the museum

Glasses that simulate poor vision

During the week I checked out a couple local bars with my roommates and other random people that became friends by the end of each evening. Nothing heavy, just one or two beers and back by 9 PM. Of the two local bars that I’ve been to, one (The Ron-Da-Voo)  is much nicer and more popular than the other, both because of the atmosphere and because of the fact that they have bar food.

On Saturday we went on a driving scavenger hunt/tour of Vinton and then we went to Cedar Rapids. We shopped for our team’s groceries at Wal-Mart and then headed over to the movie theater, where you could chose to either head back to campus or see a movie and then head back to campus around 10. My roommates and I saw Lawless starring Shia Lebouff and Tom Hardy, which was good not great. When we got back to campus we ended up heading out to Ron-Da-Voo where a bunch of other corps members were hanging out. It was a pretty fun night and I made a few new friends.

Over the past few days we’ve received a lot of information about what we’re going to be doing in FEMA corps. It turns out that we are not going to be filling sandbags, cutting up fallen trees and fighting wildfires like we all thought. Instead, we’re going to be training in specialized roles in order to participate in various FEMA operations including logistics, mass emergency aid, and meeting with locals to assess loss and give counsel.

At the end of the month we are all heading down to Alabama to train with FEMA for two weeks. No one really knows what that will entail or what our living accommodations will be, but everyone’s pretty excited about a road trip and a change of scenery. After training in Alabama we head out on spike with our teams and start working for real.

Inside my dorm there's this sign. This makes me feel better

View of my room from the door. My bed is the half hidden one on the right

My area

View from my bed

 Speaking of teams, we get broken out of our temporary teams and reformed into new teams according to our positions on Wednesday. The team leaders (TLs) have some sort of exciting reveal planned, they’re all hopped up about it. I’m excited to see who will be on my new team and what my position will be.

Iowa is such a horrible state. It’s like Wisconsin but it sucks. Not all of the people here are bad, but a few of my black and Asian friends have had people yell obscenities at them, and a latino guy said he got yelled at by a lady that yelled “white power” at him. Seriously, Iowa? I guess the famous hospitality of the Midwest stops at the Mississippi river. Anyway, maybe it’s just small town ignorance, but I don’t remember anywhere in Wisconsin being like that.

So.

Today we had vehicle training. It consisted of all of a driver’s education course crammed into a 3.5 hour lecture and two tests, and it was immensely boring. I was so happy to get out of there at lunch time, both because I was barely clinging to consciousness and because I was extremely hungry. But my team was all out of sandwich meat because we didn’t buy enough on Saturday. Once we get used to shopping for a large group it will be better at determining how much food to get, but today I settled for a PBJ and some grapes. We had baked potatoes for dinner, which were really good and filling, so I’m feeling full and content and sleepy as I type this.

Tomorrow we have TB tests, tetanus shots, and (there is some disagreement here) possibly drug tests. My team leader made it sound like we do have drug tests, but a lot of other people have said that it’s on Saturday, so I don’t know what to expect.

That’s all I got for a while, I suppose I’ll put another post up when I find out what my job is going to be this week.