My Americorps journey has begun. On Monday, August 2nd, I arrived in Vicksburg, Mississippi at the Southern Region Campus of Americorps NCCC. One of the first things I saw upon arriving on campus was that there was a pool, complete with a water volleyball net. At that point, I knew things would be ok. Week one has consisted primarily of training, paperwork, and meetings to get get 140 new Corps members acclimated to the policies and procedures of the NCCC. We have been placed into temporary teams in order to get to know some folks and easily facilitate the training, but those will change on Wednesday, when we are placed into the permanent teams of about 10 people. My temporary team, River 1 (we are divided into 2 units, River and Delta) has been amazing. We have all bonded really well and are not looking forward to being broken up next week. The Temp River 1 team consists of Drew from Alabama, Joe from California, Reshia from Florida, Adam from Wisconsin, Brittany from Maine, Lauren from Indiana, Sam from Wisconsin, and team leader April from San Diego, California. Together, we have gone through trainings that include Southern culture, Vicksburg's Civil War history, van driver training (3 of us are now certified to drive a 15-passenger van), policies and rules, uniforms, and Americorps history. As someone who frequents blogs fairly regularly, I am aware that lengthy blogs are generally skipped over. As a result, I will now transition to bulletted thoughts and observations from week one to keep interest. This will be the blog's general format going forward.
- I celebrated my birthday on our first full day here, and my team and others were awesome about making sure that it was great, even after just meeting the day before.
- Night swims are awesome.
- Many of those who do not live in the South were absolutely astounded at the amount of pests that we have here- snakes, spiders, chiggers, fire ants, and tornadoes are just a few of the things that have really freaked people out during the first week.
- It was fascinating to learn about Southern culture from an expert, even as someone who lives in the South and has all my life. It was even more interesting to see the pre-conceptions that many people had about our region (though many of them are fairly accurate).
- NCCC is the domestic version of the PeaceCorps and the modern version of FDR's CCC.
- Our region director is a very wise man. He sees what I think is the very important fact that building communities is not only about solving immediate problems, but about developing education and awareness to help build and strengthen community infrastructures.
- It has been really awesome getting to meet so many people who are all in the same boat, coming to meet 140 new people and begin a year of service. I had originally pictured NCCC as a combination of summer camp and The Real World. So far, it isn't far from the truth.
- I think this year is going to be really awesome and can't look forward to what it brings.
My Americorps journey has begun. On Monday, August 2nd, I arrived in Vicksburg, Mississippi at the Southern Region Campus of Americorps NCCC. One of the first things I saw upon arriving on campus was that there was a pool, complete with a water volleyball net. At that point, I knew things would be ok. Week one has consisted primarily of training, paperwork, and meetings to get get 140 new Corps members acclimated to the policies and procedures of the NCCC. We have been placed into temporary teams in order to get to know some folks and easily facilitate the training, but those will change on Wednesday, when we are placed into the permanent teams of about 10 people. My temporary team, River 1 (we are divided into 2 units, River and Delta) has been amazing. We have all bonded really well and are not looking forward to being broken up next week. The Temp River 1 team consists of Drew from Alabama, Joe from California, Reshia from Florida, Adam from Wisconsin, Brittany from Maine, Lauren from Indiana, Sam from Wisconsin, and team leader April from San Diego, California. Together, we have gone through trainings that include Southern culture, Vicksburg's Civil War history, van driver training (3 of us are now certified to drive a 15-passenger van), policies and rules, uniforms, and Americorps history. As someone who frequents blogs fairly regularly, I am aware that lengthy blogs are generally skipped over. As a result, I will now transition to bulletted thoughts and observations from week one to keep interest. This will be the blog's general format going forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment