Green 2

Wednesday was an interesting night! We met up for catered dinner, not common around here. For the last few days campus has been buzzing with AmeriRumors that we’d be in our permanent teams by the end of this week. Suspicions grew when we had to stay in full uniform to report for dinner and attend a Community Meeting afterward (which are usually on Thursdays). When everyone had eaten the announcement came to get into Pod groups. AmeriMurph handed each of us an envelope, told us not to open it, and all 320 of us Corps members trekked to the PT field. When we got the order to open the envelopes, all we found was a piece of string- pink, white, purple, or black. Mine was white. I reported to my designated spot and we were told these were our units!

There are 7 teams on a unit and 4 units (Gold, Silver, Green, or Blue) in the Corps. We were told to circle up and the Unit Leaders handed everyone something with their name on it. I was given a small gift bag with a bottle of bubbles with the word “Head” written on the cap. There were 10 other people with bubbles and each had a different word on top- Scavenger hunt!!! We put the words together to figure out we needed to go to the kitchen on the 3^rd floor of dorm 947. In the kitchen was a clue telling us to find all the hidden toy mice.

On the bottom of each mouse was a word. All the words in order told us to go outside to the light pole in front of building 922.

There we found a puzzle of a map of the US. We put it together, flipped it over and there was a clue telling us to go BACK to dorm 947 but this time to the laundry room. On sheets of paper taped to the front of each washer and dryer were numbers that apparently called Sharon. Sharon read us hints to solve the next clue which turned out to be an AmeriVan license plate. We found the van, which was blaring music and had cards in each seat with our names on them. We all piled into our designated seats and out of nowhere popped our TL (team leader) Abby! After we were all buckled in (because safety chicken says “buk-buk-buckle up!”) we went for frozen yogurt and had our first official team meeting in the parking lot of the froyo shop. I really like my team. Somehow we’re all very musically inclined and very much looking forward to camping SPIKES (live-in project sites) where we can have fire-side sing-alongs!

Today was the first day in our official teams. How did we start the day? By waking up at 4:30 to meet for PT at 5:30, of course! For it being our first real PT it wasn’t all that bad. We did circuit training. So we started off at one station doing squats, moved to arm lifts (pushing non-existent weight above your head), leg thrusts, stretching, jazzercise, crunches, push-ups, then back to the first station. But the second time around each station was a little different- lunges, push-ups, glute-flex, stretching, jazzercise, cycles, skipping, jumping jacks and ended with more stretching. Fun, right?

Classes today were about Service Learning, Sexual Health and Wellbeing (it’s all about location, location, location- not on government property!), History of Service, and a Community Meeting. It was so hard to be apart from the Pod today. We kept texting or calling each other during breaks to meet up. As it turns out my team is not so delightfully sarcastic… yet. But I think we’ll get there.

The days sound like they go by so quickly in blog form but they seem to be so long. Because we’re up so early and finish so late one day really feels like 3. I still can’t really believe I’ve only been here for a week! Feels like it's been a month and CTI should be over.

We’re all off duty this weekend. So Ashley, Shea, Tucker, Josh, and I were thinking of going to San Francisco on Saturday or Sunday morning (we’d have to leave late Sat because Tucker has to be in the AmeriVan driving certification class).  Hopefully we can get there. I know cramming all 5 of us into Shea's 5-seat car for 2 hours will be a blasty blast! We still can't believe how quickly we've all bonded with each other!

Tomorrow we start running PT in the groups we were placed in according to our baseline time. Like I said- I left room for improvement… I think I’m the top of the bottom. We’ll see. Maybe it was strategery on my part- the top running group has to run 4 miles every 2 days!!

Oh! We were also told about Camp Mendocino today! It's a team building camp that's owned by the Boys and Girls club and they sponsor us to go there in return for us to beautify their camp. It's in the middle of Mendocino County which is in the middle of the Red Woods!!! I'm so excited to see a really fraggin huge tree! There are ropes courses and all sorts of trails and projects for us to work on. And because it's so far away from the city the stars are so bright! I don't get to go until almost the end of CTI. So I have plenty of time to get to know my team.