No Phone

Our team leaders are not kidding when they call our little world out here the "AmeriBubble". It feels like I was in Clinton months ago but as of a week ago I hadn't even landed in Sacramento yet.

The flight out was gross. Somone (I do not know who) canceled my flight and never told me about it! So when I showed up to check in, the flight I had been switched to was just leaving. LAME PLANE. So my trip turned out to be: Syracuse to O'Hare (where I experienced a wicked long layover (which had me flashing back to when friends and I were stuck there after Midwest Conference 2008)), O'Hare to Phoenix and finally from Phoenix to Sacramento. I rolled up to McClellan Air Force Base a little after 1am local time (4am EST, for those of you keeping score at home). I wasn't too tired the next day because we got to "sleep in" til about 6:30am but it still felt like sleeping til 9:30am for me.

We've accomplished quite a bit in less than a week. We were separated into temporary, alphabetically assigned teams ("pods") and I loved both my pod (Pod 4!) and my pod leader, Vaya. Most introductory activities are done in pods so we sat through many long training sessions together: Red Cross courses like CPR, First Aid and Disaster Relief along with NCCC courses about our policies, projects, and expectations. We ate and cooked meals together, lived together, and got our uniforms together. And there was a wonderful display of pod 4 love last Saturday during the pack test.

The pack test is taken by anyone who wishes to be a part of a Fire Management Team (FMT). FMTs are AmeriCorps members who will be trained as full-fledged wildland firefighters: their main duties are responding to fires, enacting perscribed burns to clear fuel (brush, etc.) for potential fires, and burning away invasive species of plants that damage the natural forest environment. To pass the pack test you must walk (not run) 3 miles in 45 minutes while wearing a 45lb vest. All 5 people from pod 4 who took the pack test passed (myself included!) in part because of the love that Vaya, Laura, Cassie, and Danny showed us from all the cheer and sign-making/waving they did for us.

We have since broken up into our permanent teams and now I'm a member of Silver 5, one of the 4 FMTs on the Sacramento campus! There are 28 teams total (four units: Silver, Gold, Blue, and Green with 7 teams each) and pod 4 was broken up among them, which was harder on me than I anticipated. For some reason our pod just clicked really well and I'll actively miss all of them when we move into our permanent rooms near our new teams. Silver 5 is awesome though, and we'll all get a chance to get to know each other this coming week when all of the Silver unit goes to Camp Mendocino, about 4 hours north of us, to do service work. I'm really excited to get going and do something other than sit in training sessions. Not that they haven't been informative, but I'm pumped to just get moving!

I'm not sure where most of my projects will be yet, but I'm positive that my second round project (4 rounds = 4 projects this year = 1 project every 2 months-ish) will be in Sacramento. This is because the training that the FMTs will receive is given right on our campus. I'll be glad to get to know Sacramento and have a home away from home versus a place I go back to between projects. My first order of business is to secure a bicycle (obviously).

Hopefully there will be project related things to post in the near future! And look out for pictures (particularly of our work at Camp Mendocino) sometime after next Friday. Also, I will have no phone service while at Mendocino so if you text me, please know that I'm not responding because I don't feel the love; it's just that the love doesn't reach my phone.

Much love to 'Cusians and Clintonians alike! Question or comment as you like, but know that questions and comments kind of make my day =)

Cheers!