Made it to the month mark!! Omg have I really only been here a month?! I feel like I've been here for so long! Good thing I love it... Especially since some days I'm working or in meetings for about 12 hours. Not cool AmeriCorps. What ever happened to a thing called sleep?
So.. Updates. What can I tell you. I officially finished CTI (corps training institute) meaning that training and meetings are OVER and induction is tomorrow!! Woo hoo!!
I am officially a driver since I did all my classes and training. So I can drive a 15p van. Scary! They are so big! My favorite car is the mini cooper which I have never driven before, but as you can imagine they are quite a bit smaller than a vomit comet (Widji peeps shout out).
I have gone through disaster relief training so if a large enough disaster hits and americorps gets called to it I could potentially get pulled from my permanent team (raven 4) and go help.
Search and rescue training.
I went on mini spike. It was our practice dry run to see if we could handle the real thing. Also to practice packing. Mini spike was 4 days. Spike 1, that we leave for this weekend is 6 weeks, and we get the same size bag... It might be a problem for some people ;)
My group went to Habitat for Humanity in New Castle County (Delaware) for mini spike. It was awesome!!! I loved it and have gone back for 2 ISPs (independent service projects) since. Meaning that it was my day off but I loved them so much that I went back to build more houses. My group all got split and were working on different projects.
There is also a national nccc blog that is used to update the country on what nccc is doing and is like. Only one team out of all nccc groups gets to be the blog team for the year and has to apply then be picked by the staff. My team applied... And today I found out that unfortunately we weren't chosen. I'm disappointed but the team that got it was who I wanted if it wasn't us. And on the bright side it does mean less work for us now. Oh well.
We did create a sample blog post for what we would say if we posted about mini spike. I'll try (once I get Internet since I'm using the 3G on my phone right now) to post that blog sample. It was about mini spike, so I won't explain it here.
I made fire team!!! I am soo excited! Only 33 of us got chosen to be on the phoenix team and I am one of them. So now I am a raven and a Phoenix. There will be 4 spikes so 4 Phoenix rotations. Each team gets announced before the spike. I was not chosen for round 1. None of the rounds are better than the other, the people in this one were chosen just because the staff thought that they probably would have good cohesion.
I'm kinda glad that I didn't get picked for round one fire team because that means I have this time to bond with my permanent team. I for sure get to go on a fire rotation, it's just a matter or round 2, 3, or 4. I also applied (aka wrote a letter of interest) to be a fire team leader. So there is a chance that I could become the leader of my team vs just being a corps member. I won't find this out until they announce the teams. And the chances of me actually getting it are very low... Only 3 people left can get it.
After induction everyone leaves campus for spike 1 aka our first projects. Mine are:
(I have a split spike so I have 3 projects within spike 1)
1. Fort Delaware state park (Delaware)
I will be cleaning and doing grunt work to get the state park ready for the opening. I also will be refurbishing the civil war artifacts. The fort looks like a castle and has a moat surrounding it... It is also on an island and we have to take a boat to and from work everyday!!!! We will work there for 2 weeks.
We were told that during the on season there are a lot of people who come as do civil war reenactments for visitors. Also a lot of migratory birds fly through the area. since we leave before the opening the sponsor is going to give us passes to come back and see the park later when it's open.
I'm sooo excited for this one!!!
http://www.destateparks.com/park/fort-delaware
2. City year (Washington dc)
For city year my team will be helping to plan and implement alternative spring breaks for high school kids in DC. I don't know much of the details yet. But we are actually staying in Virginia and commuting in everyday. If anyone knows the area, they'll know that's not far.
http://www.cityyear.org/default_ektid22283.aspx
3. Greater DC Cares Serve A (washington dc)
This is one of DC's largest volunteer events with over 8000 people. My group will leave split up and help run and organize the event and lead 300-500 volunteers ourselves. We will be working mostly with nonprofits and apparently there are usually some important people who come... Michelle Obama has come in the past. Our sponsor specifically told us to bring or formal uniforms, meaning that we might meet some higher ups! Crazy!!
http://servathon.org/
Okay that's all for now. More to come later. Since I still have a week of Orr training in north Carolina that's supposed to be a blast I'll try to write about that soon.
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