The day started at 5:30am. Katie? Awake? Before 11?! I know Mom is in shock.
I have a feeling my days are going to be so productive and we haven’t even really started doing stuff yet! I had wonderful breakfast of assorted melons, an untoasted bagel, and a hardboiled egg (honk!), made 3 news friends, created and posted on this blog, went to the store, and met with my pod (aka “muster”) all by 10. I had to go on a little shopping trip to the Base Exchange to get some necessities. The BX, as it’s called by those in the know (there are a lot of acronyms to learn in Acorps!) is like a Target or Walmart for military personnel and conveniently located on the Air Force base right across a field from the dorms. And, best thing- there’s no tax!!
The biggest thing on the schedule yesterday was definitely the urinalysis and immunizations. Just for the record- my drug and pregnancy tests came up negative, tetanus shots hurt, and a TB test looks like a mosquito bite. On to lunch! The weather is so beautiful here that when we were given our sack lunches everyone just picked a spot in the grass. Cool at dawn, mid 70’s to low 80’s in the day and as soon as the sun goes down it’s about mid 50’s again. That’s what I call ideal weather (perfect for when we start our 5am physical training)!
There’s so much to learn here. We had two classes yesterday to help introduce us to everything. We started with an intro to Policy (AmeriCorps laws) and a discussion of the projects that we might be doing and the states that we can probably plan to visit while on project. For those projects we will be placed into work teams and those will be permanent throughout the service year. That’s who we will live with, work with, eat with, etc for the duration of projects. But for the next few weeks (until they designate the Fire Management Team) we have been grouped into “pods”. And I must say I love my pod, #7. We’re delightfully sarcastic.
After classes, we had a bit of free time. They’ve been telling us not to get too used to all this free time. But for right now it makes it easy to meet people. There are common rooms with a pool table and VERY out of tune piano. Across the hall from that is the computer lab- where the connections can be a little spotty. But hey, I’ll take some internet over none at all! How quickly you can develop friendships when everyone is so outgoing and dorky because we’re all far away from home and ready to get into this AmeriCorps routine.
The main thing they stress in AmeriCorps is flexibility. The plans can always change and most likely will and unexpected things will happen and you will have to deal with them. That being said, the corps members- all like 300 of us- are divided into 2 dorm buildings. Mine is the one that didn’t have water almost all of yesterday. Oh life in the Corps!
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