Halloween Party

Yesterday, everyone was supposed to go to the Air Force Academy to do a ropes course, but sadly, because of the snow, that was made impossible. Instead, we went to a rock climbing gym which ended up being lots of fun. I only wish my hands were tougher and my arms were stronger because I didn't last for as long as I would have liked.

Last night was the halloween party for the University students here and the NCCC members. Luckily, my roomate happened to have tons of brightly colored stuff that I was able to pile together to make a costume:

The party was lots of fun. I was long overdue for some dancing.

We have today off, so I will probably be spending a couple hours in the laundry room. At least I will get some good reading time in.

Snow Day

So, we got new teams on Tuesday. Again. Then we ran the baseline for real this time. I ran it in 14:24, which is not bad. We also had to count how many push-ups and sit-ups we could do in a minute. After that, I honestly don't even remember what we did because the days here somehow manage to go on for about 37 hours and keeping track of things gets pretty difficult.

Yesterday we had to go to a safety training session. Which was basically 3 or 4 hours of a guy telling us not to stick our hand in front of a nail gun. I fell asleep towards the end =/

After lunch, we got calls from our TLs (Team Leaders) notifying us that we had the rest of the day off and the day after too because of the snow. I can't believe it! I actually experienced a snow day! We all went a little crazy with snowball fights, sledding, and fort building. It was definitely fun.

This morning I woke up to find a true Winter Wonderland. I never thought I would see so much snow:

Today I am going into Denver with Pat, Tim, and Avi to get something warm to drink and maybe visit a museum. Should be fun.

Tracks, Rakes, & Coffee Cakes

Well, quite a bit has happened since my last post. Where to start? Let's see...Thursday afternoon my unit had it's first PT. We did a couple of different warm-ups and then ran the baseline, which is a mile-and-a-half run around the campus. This is something we do in the beginning of the year, and then whenever we come back for transistion weeks to see if we are able to maintain the same time, or hopefully improve. This time is was really only a practice so we could see what the route was. It was difficult, especically because there are some hills on campus, but I managed to keep running the whole time, which was pretty much my only goal.

Friday, every CM (Corps Member) in NCCC went to a local middle school and built them a track around their field. It was fun, but also very hard on the body. It involved a lot of shoveling dirt and carrying buckets and pounding down the track. It felt really good to finally get out and do something though, and the middle schoolers (who came out to help us for a little while) were very enthusiastic and appreciative.

Saturday was really fun. We went around to the houses of 5 different senior citizens and raked up all the leaves in their front/back/side yards. It was fun working with just my team and doing something that produced significant results almost instantly. One of the old guys even had bags of candy prepared for when we finished. He stood on the porch and threw them to us. Steve took one to the head. I laughed.

After that I got some laundry done and hit the town with Pat and Tim. We found a really cute coffee shop and sat in there for some time just drinking tea and being hip. Later on we took the train back to the bus stop, but since the buses were no longer running that late (something we anticipated, don't worry) we walked the 2 or 3 miles back to campus. Which was fine, until on the last mile or so when it started raining. Not hard, but still. Even with the rain though, it was a very enjoyable night.

Today I am lounging around the dorm in my pjs. We have the day off and I am making every effort possible to do absolutely nothing. So far I have been rather successful.

Ta ta for now.

We're Off To See The Wizard...

This morning I woke up feeling a little extra sleepy. I quickly realized it was because there was no sunshine coming in my window. I sat up, peeked through the blinds and saw this really weird white stuff falling from the sky! What was it that they called it again? Oh yeah, SNOW! I experienced my first snowfall! Yay! Obviously I was a little over-excited, but it was very nice looking:

I even went out and made a couple snowballs. Without gloves. Bad idea.

Anyway, today was super fun...that is, if sitting in a room with 50 other people watching powerpoints for 3 hours is what tickles your fancy. My fancy however, was trying very hard to stay awake. It was definitely important stuff that we were learning, but that didn't really make it any less boring. We had a little fun before the powerpoints started during which time we played AmeriCorps NCCC Jeopardy (my team totally dominated!), but sadly it didn't last very long. The second part was Media Training which is basically just learning how to avoid saying something stupid during an interview. The next part was learning all about projects. How they are chosen, the presentation you make when you finish one, different scenarios you may encounter on a work site, and a whole bunch of stuff I can't remember because it was so tedious. I do, however, remember the acronym for the process of a project. P.A.R.C. which stands for Preparation, Action, Reflection, Celebration. I'm pretty sure we spent about an hour on this alone.

When we finished learning about reflection, we were told that we were going to reflect upon why we joined NCCC. Each team was given a diferent type of presentation to come up with. One team got a song, another got to use playdough, and my team was assigned a skit. You can imagine the groaning that ensued when this was announced, but it ended up being quite enjoyable to come up with (in 10 minutes!) and we totally dominated for the second time today. We did a Wizard of Oz parody in which Dorothy, the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion were all searching for different things. For example, Dorothy wanted to find somewhere she belonged and the lion wanted the courage to step out of his comfort zone. It was amazing. I was a munchkin.

We ended up skipping our first day of P.T. (Physical Training) because of the snow. Instead we "played a game" in which we all got an oddly shaped piece of paper with our name on it and something on the back. We then had to find all the people whose pieces fit with ours and when we got all of them together the "something on the back" read the name of our new team. I am now in Water 3. So I have a new team AGAIN! It's crazy, but I guess they really want to shuffle everyone around before settling on permant teams.

So today had a lot of boring parts, but some definite laughs too. A bunch of us are going to play some more games tonight. I can't wait!

Until next time!

New Teams!

It feels like a long time since I have written! Let's see, Saturday night I went out with a couple girls and explored downtown Denver a bit. I slept in on Sunday, then took the lightrail into Denver again with Danielle, on which we encountered a group of middle-aged women dressed in black and green with big witch hats on their way to see Wicked for the third time. They were pretty entertaining. They had the soundtrack playing over a set of portable speakers and were singing and laughing just about as loud as possible.

After running a couple errands, we came back, recruited some people and played board games for about 4 hours staight. It was probably the most fun I have had so far.

Yesterday morning we got new teams! While I was sad too see my old team go, I am quite happy with my new team and can't wait to get to know everyone better. We then piled into the vans and drove for nearly 3 hours to Rocky Mountain National Park for a hike with the whole Water Unit! (The drive was only supposed to take 2 hours, but there was some kind of fire and we had to take a detour. It's too bad our firefighters haven't been trained yet!) Here are a couple of pictures from the hike:

This morning we sat through a short lecture on Driver Safety. Then we piled into the van again only this time one of the team members hopped into the front seat. Those of us who wanted to be certified as drivers took turns driving for about a half hour each with our Unit Leader Allen in the passenger seat. Allen threatened that if we did something wrong he would hit us in the "A", meaning the AmeriCorps logo on the sleeve of our t-shirts. Driving the van was actually kind of fun, however Allen smacked me in the arm three times for talking to the passengers. Hehe. But when I was done he said I drove very well, so that's good.

I guess it's time for dinner again. Maybe tomorrow I will get a chance to practice my disaster relief skills on my room =/

Wish me luck!

Red Rock

My team got a new member today. Apparently he just found out that he was accepted on Wednesday. It must have been tough to have only a couple days to prepare! We all went on a short tour of the campus, which you would think we would have done on the first or second day, but oh well. After that, we drove down to what I guess could be considered the inner-city and practiced what is called "Community Mapping" which is basically identifying what could be improved in a certain area and what resources they currently have.

Since we didn't have to be back to campus for a couple hours, we decided to drive up to Red Rocks which was pretty cool:

After lunch and a little relaxing, we drove 45 minutes to go get our physicals, which was pretty painless.

All in all, another fairly uneventful day, but I suppose things will be like this for a little while until we actually start some community work. However, I am planning on going out tonight since we have a free day tomorrow and I can actually sleep in. I found a little group of under-agers that I can stick with when the old farts ditch us for the bars. So that should be fun.

Gotta go shower and get ready. Later!

Day 2

Well it's Day 2 of my AmeriCorps adventure. Yesterday was extremely long and tiring, but I made quite a few friends which was really nice. It feels like I have already been here for a week.

Today we are getting our uniforms, which is about the highlight of the day unfortunately. Things are starting out pretty slow, but I'm sure it will get better once training actually starts.

Anyway, I'm off to lunch. I just wanted to write a quick update.

Until next time!

5 Days Left!

Welcome to my blog! This is the first entry of the first blog I have ever written, it's 1:24 in the morning, and I am drinking decaf, so please bear with me.

Now that I have less than a week until I leave the anxiety is starting to kick in. While I am extremely excited to get off my over-sleeping, Netflix-abusing keister, I am also more nervous than I can explain. However I have one less thing to be nervous about...I got my itinerary! At last I know when and from what airport I am actually leaving for Denver. This news is good and bad. Good because I finally know what my plans are and I can tell my mother so she stops freaking out, bad because my flight is at 7:50 A.M. and I am not a morning person. Which is something I imagine will be changing very soon. I can't imagine AmeriCorps will ever let me sleep in til 10:00.

Well, I suppose that's it for now. All I will be doing in between now and my departure is trying to find a magic spell that I can use to make everything I want to bring with me actually fit into my suitcase. Wish me luck! I promise my future entries will be more exciting once I have actually arrived.