And So It Begins...

Regrettably, I have started this blog a lot later into my Americorps experience than I had intended. This is partly due to my tendency to procrastinate, but also a result of having very limited free time. Though I have only been here for a month, I feel as though it has been much longer. I have been living in a dorm in McClellan Park, a retired air force base. There are just under 300 corps members living on base, divided into about 30 different teams. These teams were revealed to us halfway through CTI (Corps Training Institute), the month of training that we go through prior to project deployment.

Training itself has been pretty boring. Since corps members range in age from 18-24, some of the training that might be relevant for someone just out of high school has seemed a bit redundant to me. These trainings have ranged from CPR/First Aid, Red Cross disaster training, van driver training, policy training, diversity, team building, healthy lifestyles and nutrition, healthy team dynamics, sexual education, anger management, alcohol awareness, project briefings and debriefings, tool orientation, and many more. Probably the most challenging part of the program for me has been waking up early. For someone who thought that 10am classes were early, waking up for PT (Physical Training) every morning at 5:15am as been a struggle. I have already done an hour of exercise, showered and eaten breakfast by the time the sun comes up in the morning. My typical day is as follows:

5:15am: Wake up

5:30am: Physical training

6:45am: Eat breakfast and pack lunch

7:15am: Shower and put on uniform

7:45am: Morning muster

8:00am-12:00pm: Morning training(s)

12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch

1:00pm-5:00pm: Afternoon training(s)

5:00pm-6:30pm: Free time or cooking duty

6:30pm-7:30pm: Dinner

7:30pm-10:00pm: Free time or evening meetings

10:00pm: Bedtime

For physical training, we are broken into running groups based on our performance in our baseline fitness test. I was placed in Rivercats 3, the third highest fitness group out of nine. On my initial fitness test I did 91 pushups in two minutes, 89 situps, and ran 1.5 miles in 13 minutes and 43 seconds (or a 9m 9s mile). We have been running approximately 2.5 miles every other morning with our running groups, except for the day that my running group got lost and ran over 5 miles, definitely the farthest I’ve ever run in my life. This morning we had our second baseline test to measure our improvement over the course of training. While my pushups stayed the same and my situps actually decreased by about 10, I shaved off a minute of my running time, getting me down to an 8m 28s mile. Hopefully this will only improve over the course of the year.

When we were assigned our teams, I was a little disappointed at first. None of my ‘closer’ friends (it sounds a bit ridiculous to say close friends considering how short of a time I have actually been here, but I have definitely made some strong connections with several people. Considering how much time we have spent together, albeit over a short time period, I would definitely say that I have had the chance to become pretty close with some.) are on my team – I have spent a lot of time with both of my roommates as well as my suite-mate, and some people from down the hall. I have even developed several nicknames.

My old roommate (before we moved in with our teams) calls me Mego Mego. My friend Scotty (who so reminds me of my brother Michael) calls me Sharky because the first night we went out to this dive bar and I beat everyone in pool, including this local pool enthusiast named Hamster. I then proceeded to dominate in ultimate frisbee and boggle, causing the kids in my hall to think that I am a shark in all activities. Since I have gotten the nickname, to my embarrassment, my skills have all deteriorated. Many of my teammates also call me Gaia, because I have taken up the responsibility of recycling and composting police. I am actually also part of a group of corps members trying to advocate a change in NCCC policy to create an environmental ambassador as a permanent team position. For a corporation that is doing as much good as we are, and one that has so many projects that focus on the environment, I am personally appalled by the lack of care and education devoted to environmental stewardship and the amount of waste our campus produces. I recently put up flyers detailing how to recycle around campus kitchens and dorms, and we are creating a campus-wide challenge to see which team can produce the most lbs of recycling and compost and the least number of lbs of garbage.

As time has progressed, I have grown to really like my team, and I am sure that this will only improve as time goes on. We are all fairly different from one another and there isn’t anyone on the team that strikes me as someone that I would seek out to be friends with, however we work really well together as a unit and we have a great balance of skills and personalities. We definitely have several people that can help keep energy and spirits up, and others who are calm and collected. We have both leaders and followers, and are not at a loss for good ideas. My team leader, Christina, is a bit quiet, and fairly hands off, and maintains a relaxed attitude while still making it clear that she will enforce the rules and is not a pushover. Our team really started to come together during our 4 days at Camp Mendecino, a boys and girls club located in the southern part of the redwood forest in northern California. At camp, we did a lot of team building activities such as a high and low ropes course, a rock wall and a zipline. We also did a day of service for the camp, sanding off the paint from one of the buildings to prep it for repainting. I learned that sanding is hard and tiresome and monotonous. Other camp activities included some hikes, campfires, skits, volleyball, and a game called Beastball that my friend Iman and I co-invented. Beastball is similar to volleyball with a few alterations.

1. Players must always make a loud noise (preferably masculine, but all noises are acceptable) when hitting the ball or else the point does not count.
2. Players must bounce the ball once before serving
3. Players may let the ball bounce once between hits but no more.
4. Players may hit the ball several times in a row.
5. When a player hits the ball to an opponent and that opponent hits the ball directly back to them, a duel has been formed. The player must yell 'duel' and the other players must scatter from the court. The volley is a 1-0n-1 until the end of the point.

In addition to our sanding work and training sessions, we have had several day projects called ‘days of service’. Our first service day involved weeding and planting an edible garden at the Sacramento Department of Health and Agriculture. The garden will be used for community education and the produce gleaned will be donated to local homeless shelters and food banks. One of our project sponsors spoke about the issue of farming and food distribution in the U.S. which was very interesting and informative, but I wasn’t necessarily sure I agreed with all of his goals. After reading the book “Ishmael”, which I would recommend to anyone, I am very uncertain about how I feel about human responsibilities concerning food and our relationships with other animals and the environment. We are in quite a unique position in the US and more specifically California as one of the few places that produce far more than we consume (and this is not to say that we are not high consumers).

Our second project was working with a homeless shelter called Loaves and Fishes. This shelter provides a variety of services for the Sacramento homeless, including free meals every day, a park, job and psychological counselors, help locating housing, a school to help reintegrate homeless children into public school systems, and even a kennel for homeless individuals’ pets. We cleaned and sanitized Sister Nora’s House, a residential program that provides long-term housing for 13 homeless women with mental and psychological disabilities. My third day project was with a program called Weed Warriors, a group that helps remove invasive non-native species that are overtaking natural Californian ecosystems. We spent all day hacking and hauling 10-foot-tall grasses that looked and felt like bamboo. Similarly, a few days ago we weeded, pruned, and restored trails in a local community park. While our day service projects are over. I am very excited to start my first long project with my team.

For our first project, we will be living on base here in Sacramento and working in two different high schools, tutoring fist years and sophomores that are at high risk for drop out. We will have individual students which we will tutor recurrently, as well as tutoring groups for SAT and college prep. While I am very nervous for my project to start on Monday, I am excited for the experience and to be able to write a bit more about what I am doing. I will be working at the school until late January (minus two weeks for winter break) at which point our team will transfer to our next project. That’s all for now – I apologize for the length, but a lot has happened in a month. I will try and update more often and shorter posts in the future.