I've Been Pretty Bad at This

I'm not really going to bore you with all of the training that we did since the last time I posted. It was mainly diversity training, ethics and EEO, and a few other things that are important but I'm too tired right now to recall.

I'm currently sitting in a hotel in Clarksville, TN with two other girls in the Pine unit. All of us in FEMA Corps got inducted into the program officially on Friday, and then we all piled into our vans this morning to head down to Anniston, AL for FEMA training. So far it hasn't been too bad, up until the end when the hotel was in sight but there was a detour right in front of the first entrance we found, so we had to maneuver around to try and get into the parking lot. At that point everyone realized there were beds within reach and some of us were getting cranky. The highlight of the entire trip I think was when we went through St. Louis and I got to see my girlfriend for all of ten minutes, but when you're away for ten months learning to live with a bunch of strangers, I'll take whatever familiarity I can get.

Tomorrow we're going to be leaving sometime between six and seven in the morning to finish the last leg of the trip. Anniston is only about four or five hours if I remember right, so it won't be as bad. We'll begin in-processing as soon as we get there. The first week will be filled with general FEMA training, which I assume so far is mainly history and what FEMA actually does in detail. The second week will be filled with position-specific training. I mentioned earlier at some point that my team is Logistics, so we're going to be focusing on setting up and taking down the JFOs that FEMA runs during disasters, plus a few other things. It's been a really long day, can't you tell? I'm having a hard time remembering all of the things that I wanted to say right now. I should probably head to bed. We're hoping to spend a little bit of time in Nashville tomorrow and just  hang out some, since some members on the team haven't actually been in the South.

I know there wasn't much fascinating about this post, but CTI is very dry and tedious. Some parts are fun, but there's a lot of trainings that you really don't want to have to write about. Hopefully the FEMA training is far more interesting, and then we'll be heading off to our first project assignment! The Vicksburg campus has already received theirs, I believe last night, and they're spending the next day or two traveling to them. I can't wait for ours. It's going to be an awesome time, and then I'll actually have more to write about! Let's just hope I have internet.

Until next time.

Training, Training, Training

I didn't realize I hadn't posted for two weeks now. I've been so busy with everything going on around here in the Ameribubble that I lost track of time. Last I left, I had just gotten my temporary team. Well, last Wednesday I got my permanent team! I am now a member of Pine 5, with ten other members and our Team Leader. I won't bore you with the list of trainings we hard to do these past two weeks. Like I said, I've been really busy. This post is mainly to prove that I'm still alive. I will touch on just a couple things though.

First, NCCC has everyone in the group hold a role for the year. There are six, and mine is Service Learning Initiator (hereby known as SLI). I did SLI last year, and I was hoping to not get it again, but the only other one I wanted, Support Ranger, got taken, so I decided to give it another go. Basically we're the ones asking questions. Why are we doing this? What do we or the community get out of this project we do? We facilitate reflections for the rest of the team to think back on the project to try and take something positive out of something that might have gone so horribly wrong.

The other thing is that each team has one specific role given to us by FEMA. Pine 5 is technically a hybrid team. We have nine of us as Logistics Specialists, and two members are Logistics Systems Specialists. Basically we set up and take down FEMA offices during disasters, and assist with distributing items needed in the community. I'm really excited for it.

But now I have more training that I have to get to. I'm very tired because we had our first real PT at 5:30 this morning, but I've got to get over it because we have a ropes course in Iowa City this afternoon, and then we're going to stay up there for a couple of hours and just hang out and eat dinner. It's going to be awesome!

Until next time.