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.