First Days

Hello Everyone!

It has been five days since I have arrived in Sacramento and I can honestly say this is the first real opportunity I have had to take a moment and write to you all to tell you the goings on in Americorps NCCC. The last few days have been a fantastic mixture of constant activity, meeting people, hanging out, and sitting through unbelievably boring training sessions. From now on, I am going to try to keep updates coming fairly regularly, but can’t make any promises because I don’t really know if I will always have internet over the course of the year.

I suppose it would be best to start at the beginning….

Thursday October 7^th- Day 1 (One of the longest days of my life so far): Knowing that my flight was leaving Laguardia at 6:05am I knew I would have an extremely early morning. The night before I was set to leave (Wednesday Night) I stressfully fussed over every aspect of my preparation, repacking my bags and even changing which duffel bags I was using to properly utilize the space available. I had originally intended on one checked back, a carry on, and a back pack, but when I realized that my one checked bag was frightfully close to being overweight, I was forced to reconsider. Two checked bags it was, and it turns out this was certainly the right decision, as American Airlines does not charge any checked baggage fees to people flying on government purchased tickets (thank you americorps!). Knowing that I had to get up, I slept very little the night before I had to leave and was up and out of bed at 2am. We were on the road to the airport by 3 and easily made it the airport by the deserted highways. Once on the flight I discovered that there were a few other people seated around me on the plane, who were also headed out to Americorps and it was nice to have introductions and travel buddies for the rest of the journey. After a layover in Dallas, just quick enough to grab a sandwich, we took our second flight and landed in Sacramento where Americorps Staff greeted us at baggage claim and we met several other corps members. Then we headed off in vans to the Sacramento Campus. The rest of the day involved all sorts of introductions and check in procedures. This of course included moving into our dorms and meeting roommates. I am in a double, a pretty spacious room which, along with the basic furniture, includes a sink and refrigerator, and is connected to another double with a shared bathroom. My roommate is a recent high school grad from rural Oregon. She is a very nice girl and we definitely work well together as roommates, each very considerate of the other and neat and tidy in our room. For now, for the first few weeks of training, we are all broken up into temporary teams, called pods. Brytnie (my roommate) is not in my pod and as a result we have not spent a huge amount of time getting to know each other, but I am happy to have her as a roommate. After settling into rooms we had several different meetings and we were all walking zombies by the time we were done and could finally head to bed after a slightly overwhelming day. I fell asleep almost immediately once my head hit the pillow at 9pm, a solid 22 hours since I woke up in my bed in Norwalk.

The next day we got to meet our pods and team leaders and I feel this is when our time really started. I love my pod and we are constantly talking about how much we wish we could stay together for the year and not be broken up to be put into other, more permanent teams. My Pod, Pod 29, consists of eight people (five girls and three boys) and our team leader Will. Our first activity together was uniform fitting! We had quite a bit of down time while waiting in lines and were able to talk and start getting to know each other before we explored the wonderful world of coveralls, parkas, fleece vest, khaki cargo pants, cargo shorts, hard hats and other fantastic gear. (I promise I will put up a picture as soon as possible.) The uniform also includes steal toe boots which we got yesterday and what is jokingly referred to as the Ameri-tux which consists of a white Americorps polo shirt and the fancy-shmancy black cargo pants.

But back to Pod 29. That night after dinner we ended up talking at the table until everyone had left and we moved on to a pod member’s room to play apples to apples and later catch phrase. It was a wonderful bonding evening and we have been somewhat inseparable ever since, rather reminiscent to how new friends act at the beginning of college. I would say that this first portion of Americorps is very much like a combination of Freshman fall mixed with summer camp.

Ways CTI (Corps Training Institute) Is like Freshman Orientation:

1) We are all new here and pretty much no one knew each other before arriving, so we are all in the same boat and fully prepared to answer the staple questions of: what is your name? where are you from?

2) We were issued id cards and lanyards and told to always wear them.

3) We travel in packs. At Trinity, each fall you can pick out the new freshman because they travel around campus at all times with at least 4 other Trinity freshman (all wearing their lanyards of course).

Ways CTI is like Summer Camp:

1) Constantly scheduled activities, including evening activities such as capture the flag, movies accompanying themed dinners (we had a baseball themed dinner followed by screening of the Sandlot), and kickball.

2) The Pod functions in a very similar way as the cabin grouping at camp. Our schedule is by Pod and each time we go to a workshop or training, attendance is taken by calling out Pod numbers and having the pod members cheer.

3) Similar to number 2: Pod pride is like cabin pride.

4) Room inspection: Our rooms are checked for cleanliness every Monday and it really brings me back to the days of cabin inspections.

Now, that all being said, I loved both Freshman year and Summer camp, so it makes sense that I am very much enjoying myself here too.

Other possible topics of interest: Yesterday we were trained and certified in CPR, AED, and First Aid. I had unfortunately just taken this all day course this summer, so it was a little frustrating to sit through it again, but of course it is a very worthwhile certification. Today we had Red Cross disaster training. Sounds cool, but this is terribly terribly wrong. It was probably the most boring lecture experience ever. We learned nothing that wasn’t already common sense and it lasted far too long.

Last thing that I will mention now is PT (Physical Training): Today was our first day of PT. We had our baseline test to measure our current personal best. This test places us in our workout groups for PT throughout CTI and will be use as reference for us to be able to track our progress with physical fitness throughout the year. The started with a group warm-up at 5:30am, followed by push-ups, sit-ups, a mile and a half run, and then sit and reach test. I was pretty happy with my performance and felt happily energized at the end of the test. Hopefully this means I will be in a good workout group that will push me in a healthy way.

Alrighty: That is all for now. I hope you are all doing well and that you enjoyed the update. Keep checking back for more!