Hi everyone! I'm new to this blogging thing, but it seems like the best option to keep in touch with the most amount of people.
Last Monday I flew into Jackson
International Airport where I was met by Jen
Prall, an
NCCC staff member... six new friends and I cruised 45 minutes into Vicksburg in one of our 15ps vans. Since then my life has been a complete
whirlwind.
The campus is gorgeous- an old episcapal boarding school- called All Saints Acadamy (if you want to wiki it and look at pics,they also still have an up and running website which is kind of funny since it's been shut down for three years-you can still apply!) There is a ton of green space and fields, a gym, a pool and pool house, disc golf course, low ropes course, climbing wall, tennis courts, and soccer field, but most are not currently usable. They say they are going to get the gym and pool up and running, but I doubt it will happen this year...
We ran into a few obstacles our first week here since the campus wasn't quite ready for our arrival. Most difficult of which were 1. the AC was out for two days and 2. the plumbing was screwed up and our washing machines were backing up into our dishwasher and kitchen sink! this was especially a problem because the sinks were out of order when we had our 17 person pasta meal with a thousand dishes. Some of the TLs were very creative and washed the dishes in their bathtubs (speaking of- five of us have our own bathrooms, but I was not a lucky one and have to share the common bathroom with 10 other girls). The administration has been working diligently and have fixed all of our issues thus far. I am lucky to have such great people working to support us throughout this year!
My daily life has mainly consisted of trianing after training...lots and lots of powerpoints on policies and procedures. We start at 8am, which is much later tan I was expecting, and continue with meetings, training, and activities until about 5:30 everyday. The trainings this week have been what I call the "101s" in that we have a couple hour preview of a subject, and then hear a lot of "we'll go into that later" or "We'll have to check into that and get back to you" We have gone over everything from leadership styles to financial management to policies and procedures.
On Wednesday David Mallery executive director from the Mississippi Commision for Volunteer Service came in and talked to us for a bit and really lifted our spirits about our year of service. He really got us excited about the current political atmosphere and our place in the movement for national service. He told us that they are trying hard to get the President or First Lady to come visit our campus, but who knows if that could happen. We also met a committee from "the working group" of Vicksburg that have been working hard to bring this campus here for a long time... Reflecting on how much work has already been put in to make this new campus happen gave me an incredible amount of pride to be a Team Leader here. There was the sense that our being here was a realization of this long time dream of many.
Each night we have had some shopping planned. The first couple days they ran a "shuttle" (again, one of our 15
ps) to the
Walmart so we could pick up supplies we didn't bring. On Tuesday we went grocery shopping for the first time- which was super stressful. It was kind of thrown at us without us planning as much as I would have liked to have. We quickly threw together a dinner plan for 17 people. On Thursday we went again to the grocery store, but with more planning time. this time we shopped for the next week. A few other team leaders and I put together a little shopping "family" and combined our $4.50/day to make the task a lot more manageable. Somehow with the shopping and cooking and everything after our work day, I end up busy until well after 9pm.
I can't believe I haven't even been here for a week yet... It feels like a month.
There are 19 other team leaders in the program and we each have our own room on the top floor or the
administrative building. We have been bonding like crazy since we met- we will have to support
each other throughout the year and be
each other's best friends because
Americorps has very strict policies on corp member-team leader
relationships- including friendships. We have to be careful about our "
fraternization"- "green on grey" as we call it here. The other
TLs are from all over the country- from Cali to New Jersey. So far we are all in the Honeymoon stage playing games
every night and having total
lovefests over our excitement for the upcoming year. Last night we went out to one of the casinos for dinner and drinks. In the casino there is a Blues bar that had a live band that was very good. The drinks were 2 bucks (AWESOME) and we danced the night away. It was a blast. I tried my luck on the roulette table and trippled my money only to let it ride and end up down 20... which was fine for the hour and a half of entertainment I got out of it. I am going to have to be careful and watch myself this year with the 5 casinos in Vicksburg being the main night life here.
I am currently at the highway 61 Cafe in "downtown" Vicksburg... a cute little establishment with a cafe and free wireless on the first floor and a local artist galery on the second floor. There is art everywhere- covering the walls and stacked in piles on the floor... it kind of reminds me of the antique shops we visit in Donora. There is live classic guitar playing right now, which is lovely. Tonight my 'family" is grilling out and making a big fruit salad with some fruit we bought at the farmer's market here.
On Monday night we depart campus for our first service project. We are camping at the boys and girls club camp and doing renevations around the camp for them. It is a training project and we are going to do a little bit of everything so we can learn some things we will be doing this year. We will be building benches, clearing trails, roofing, rebuilding a dock and working on wildlife preservation habitat building for some fish or something...
I'll update you all as soon as I get a chance, internet here can be pretty shotty and they haven't wired our campus yet (although we are hoping for it soon).
I have loved hearing from everyone so keep on keeping me updated on your life back home!
We did team builders at each site and probably looked extremely silly jumping around and making dinosaur noises in our uniforms in public- great team bonding though. (Carrie you would have especially gotten a kick out of the whole scene). In the afternoon we had leadership training, where we examined our leadership style through the Myers-Briggs personality type inventory and the FIRO-B social interaction inventory. I wasn’t surprised by anything mine told me, and I felt a lot more comfortable with the idea that I will be leading a team soon. My Myers Briggs indicated I was an ENTJ. I was extreme on the extroversion scale- no surprise there. The thinker/feeler and judger/perceiver aspects were pretty moderate for me. No strong tendency either way. The FIRO-B basically showed that I am extremely social. Shocking! Then we made individual action plans for our year as Tls to check back with throughout the year.
