Hello Everyone,
It has been a huge week for me, sorry for being completely out of touch. Before I forget, I want to thank Aunt Nancy and Dulcie for writing to me, it is so nice to receive mail!
I have been so busy that there’s no way I can remember everything. On Friday we ran shuttles to and from the airport picking up the majority of the corps members. Most of them were delayed at some point or had major turbulence, so we had some unhappy arrivals. Some members were delayed over night. Friday was a loooong day (the first of many) and I wasn’t done with work until well into the night.
Saturday we did in-processing with our teams all day, which was pretty chaotic. The arrival of 144 corps members turned this quiet little campus upside-down. Everyone had questions and problems and confusions and we are the first in the chain of command to fix and answer them. By Saturday night, I was already horribly exhausted and feeling like I was being pulled in a million directions.
Sunday we had a day of planned activities for the members, so I worked all day again. I got to sleep in until 9 which was AMAZING! We did things like run church shuttles, play ultimate Frisbee, football, ice breaker games, board games, run shuttles to Walmart, and sing karaoke. It was fun to see all the CMs getting to know each other all over campus. Sunday night was intense. First we had a girl pass out on the soccer field and we went sprinting from our fourth floor dorms down the stairs outside and across about 400 yards to find out that, luckily, she was alright. She fainted from dehydration and heat. Jordan the EMT took her to her dorm and made sure everything was okay. Immediately after responding to that emergency, we found out that six of our corps members were mugged and assaulted on their way walking back from town. Everyone is fine now, but it was an extremely difficult situation. One of my temporary team members was involved and had his wallet with all his Ids and credit cards in it. We are still looking into how to get him a new state ID.
Monday was relatively calm. We did more in-processing with our temp teams and I got to know mine a lot better. I adore my temp team, everyone is really laid back and easy to please. They all like me and it is going to be hard to be assigned permanent teams at this point.
Tuesday we headed to the southern cultural heritage foundation for an all corps training. This is the same site as our last service project with the convent. Our meeting was held in the very beautiful and interesting auditorium used in Oh Brother Where Art Thou.
The team leaders were supposed to have an hour presentation to introduce ourselves to the corps members. We worked hard at putting together a cohesive presentation with songs and dances and interesting stories and icebreakers etc., but of course my favorite f-word was thrown around again. When we got to the auditorium we were informed that we would need to be FLEXIBLE and that they were breaking our presentation up. The communication between the staff and us was very poor and we weren’t told ahead of time when we were to be on stage. As TLs we were very frustrated with the entire day beyond our presentation. The times for lunch weren’t communicated to us, and when we came back from a unit TL meeting to pick up our teams, our CMs were asking us all kinds of questions we had no answers for. All in all we were very frustrated which lead to a long TL debriefing at the end of the day with our Unit Leaders and the Regional Director. Because of our meeting we missed dinner. I’d say Tuesday was a bit of a low point.
Tuesday night was a bonding time for TLs over our misery. Everyone was especially supportive of me because I was rather upset. Sophia even made me a card saying that she appreciates me which was so touching. I am so lucky to have such amazing coworkers around me. I am starting to get really sad about leaving them in a month to start our projects.
Wednesday we headed to Jackson in teams for our physicals. Physicals took forever. My team was at the clinic for close to five hours. Luckily I have just about the most amazing temp team ever and they are always happy to roll with the punches. I made a big time team leader mistake and left our boxed lunches at home expecting that we would be back on campus much earlier than we were. I let myself get talked into leaving them against my better judgment and regretted my decision. My poor team didn’t finish physicals until 3pm. Leigh-Ann, the counselor, awesomely saved the day for me by buying my team a pizza to hold us over until we got back to campus. After we got home and recollected I brought my team to the library and downtown so they could get some idea of where they are living. The whole day ended up being some great team building and Amerilovin’ leaving us all depressed that our teams go trough the great jumble this week and we have to break up. I love my team and they give me great confidence in my ability to do this job this year because they have all expressed to me that they do not want to leave my team. I feel so lucky to have such a positive group that meshes so well and has so much excitement about their year with Americorps. I finally feel completely comfortable with my role as a Team Leader here.
Thursday was even more team bonding while we did van driver training and just aimlessly drove around Vicksburg and the vicinity. I almost wish I hadn’t gotten the time to bond with this team because it is making me really anxious about who I am going to end up with on my permanent team. Will they like me as much as this team? Will they have as much group cohesion and harmony?
Thursday night River TLs met and had a long meeting where we went through all of our CMs and discussed their strengths and weaknesses. Neal will use the list to create our teams- something we are anxiously awaiting hearing about. We also were given our project assignments for the first spike, but I can’t share that with you until I reveal it to my new team this weekend. I can say I am SUPER EXCITED!!!!! I can’t wait to tell y’all about my team and soon to be project.
So it’s Friday and I am sitting in another training session for our CMs (one that we already had during TLT). I figured I would grab some time to get caught up with you and get some business done. We are having some serious internet issues on campus so I haven’t been able to check my email, post pictures or blog since the CMs got here. We have now opened the wireless router (that was already shotty) to the whole corps which means I pretty much never get an option to use it. When too many people get online the router disconnects and needs to be rebooted, but it is locked in an office so we can’t reboot it. So please be patient with me, I am thinking of y’all and I do enjoy hearing from you even if I don’t get back to you on time or even at all sometimes. I just figured out my hours and the conservative figure I calculated was 70 hours in 6 days, just to give you an idea of how long I am on for a day (and that’s not including breakfast lunch and dinner when CMs ask questions and need help.)
This morning we had our first all corps PT session lead by Neal. I ran around with a couple other TLs at 5:15 with an airhorn and a whistle waking everyone up- it was fun. Starting at 5:30am, about half of our PT session was dark and I couldn’t even recognize people’s faces. It was crazy to think back on how much of a day I had already had when we left for the Heritage Foundation at 7:30 am! For lunch I am taking my Temp team out for a big “goodbye,” and tonight after work we have our big REVEAL of or permanent teams. I am on pins and needles.
Well that’s about it for now. I miss you all and hope to hear from you all soon. Keep me up to date with the real world please!
LOVE YOU,
Casey
It has been a huge week for me, sorry for being completely out of touch. Before I forget, I want to thank Aunt Nancy and Dulcie for writing to me, it is so nice to receive mail!
I have been so busy that there’s no way I can remember everything. On Friday we ran shuttles to and from the airport picking up the majority of the corps members. Most of them were delayed at some point or had major turbulence, so we had some unhappy arrivals. Some members were delayed over night. Friday was a loooong day (the first of many) and I wasn’t done with work until well into the night.
Saturday we did in-processing with our teams all day, which was pretty chaotic. The arrival of 144 corps members turned this quiet little campus upside-down. Everyone had questions and problems and confusions and we are the first in the chain of command to fix and answer them. By Saturday night, I was already horribly exhausted and feeling like I was being pulled in a million directions.
Sunday we had a day of planned activities for the members, so I worked all day again. I got to sleep in until 9 which was AMAZING! We did things like run church shuttles, play ultimate Frisbee, football, ice breaker games, board games, run shuttles to Walmart, and sing karaoke. It was fun to see all the CMs getting to know each other all over campus. Sunday night was intense. First we had a girl pass out on the soccer field and we went sprinting from our fourth floor dorms down the stairs outside and across about 400 yards to find out that, luckily, she was alright. She fainted from dehydration and heat. Jordan the EMT took her to her dorm and made sure everything was okay. Immediately after responding to that emergency, we found out that six of our corps members were mugged and assaulted on their way walking back from town. Everyone is fine now, but it was an extremely difficult situation. One of my temporary team members was involved and had his wallet with all his Ids and credit cards in it. We are still looking into how to get him a new state ID.
Monday was relatively calm. We did more in-processing with our temp teams and I got to know mine a lot better. I adore my temp team, everyone is really laid back and easy to please. They all like me and it is going to be hard to be assigned permanent teams at this point.
Tuesday we headed to the southern cultural heritage foundation for an all corps training. This is the same site as our last service project with the convent. Our meeting was held in the very beautiful and interesting auditorium used in Oh Brother Where Art Thou.
The team leaders were supposed to have an hour presentation to introduce ourselves to the corps members. We worked hard at putting together a cohesive presentation with songs and dances and interesting stories and icebreakers etc., but of course my favorite f-word was thrown around again. When we got to the auditorium we were informed that we would need to be FLEXIBLE and that they were breaking our presentation up. The communication between the staff and us was very poor and we weren’t told ahead of time when we were to be on stage. As TLs we were very frustrated with the entire day beyond our presentation. The times for lunch weren’t communicated to us, and when we came back from a unit TL meeting to pick up our teams, our CMs were asking us all kinds of questions we had no answers for. All in all we were very frustrated which lead to a long TL debriefing at the end of the day with our Unit Leaders and the Regional Director. Because of our meeting we missed dinner. I’d say Tuesday was a bit of a low point.Tuesday night was a bonding time for TLs over our misery. Everyone was especially supportive of me because I was rather upset. Sophia even made me a card saying that she appreciates me which was so touching. I am so lucky to have such amazing coworkers around me. I am starting to get really sad about leaving them in a month to start our projects.
Wednesday we headed to Jackson in teams for our physicals. Physicals took forever. My team was at the clinic for close to five hours. Luckily I have just about the most amazing temp team ever and they are always happy to roll with the punches. I made a big time team leader mistake and left our boxed lunches at home expecting that we would be back on campus much earlier than we were. I let myself get talked into leaving them against my better judgment and regretted my decision. My poor team didn’t finish physicals until 3pm. Leigh-Ann, the counselor, awesomely saved the day for me by buying my team a pizza to hold us over until we got back to campus. After we got home and recollected I brought my team to the library and downtown so they could get some idea of where they are living. The whole day ended up being some great team building and Amerilovin’ leaving us all depressed that our teams go trough the great jumble this week and we have to break up. I love my team and they give me great confidence in my ability to do this job this year because they have all expressed to me that they do not want to leave my team. I feel so lucky to have such a positive group that meshes so well and has so much excitement about their year with Americorps. I finally feel completely comfortable with my role as a Team Leader here.
Thursday was even more team bonding while we did van driver training and just aimlessly drove around Vicksburg and the vicinity. I almost wish I hadn’t gotten the time to bond with this team because it is making me really anxious about who I am going to end up with on my permanent team. Will they like me as much as this team? Will they have as much group cohesion and harmony?
Thursday night River TLs met and had a long meeting where we went through all of our CMs and discussed their strengths and weaknesses. Neal will use the list to create our teams- something we are anxiously awaiting hearing about. We also were given our project assignments for the first spike, but I can’t share that with you until I reveal it to my new team this weekend. I can say I am SUPER EXCITED!!!!! I can’t wait to tell y’all about my team and soon to be project.
So it’s Friday and I am sitting in another training session for our CMs (one that we already had during TLT). I figured I would grab some time to get caught up with you and get some business done. We are having some serious internet issues on campus so I haven’t been able to check my email, post pictures or blog since the CMs got here. We have now opened the wireless router (that was already shotty) to the whole corps which means I pretty much never get an option to use it. When too many people get online the router disconnects and needs to be rebooted, but it is locked in an office so we can’t reboot it. So please be patient with me, I am thinking of y’all and I do enjoy hearing from you even if I don’t get back to you on time or even at all sometimes. I just figured out my hours and the conservative figure I calculated was 70 hours in 6 days, just to give you an idea of how long I am on for a day (and that’s not including breakfast lunch and dinner when CMs ask questions and need help.)
This morning we had our first all corps PT session lead by Neal. I ran around with a couple other TLs at 5:15 with an airhorn and a whistle waking everyone up- it was fun. Starting at 5:30am, about half of our PT session was dark and I couldn’t even recognize people’s faces. It was crazy to think back on how much of a day I had already had when we left for the Heritage Foundation at 7:30 am! For lunch I am taking my Temp team out for a big “goodbye,” and tonight after work we have our big REVEAL of or permanent teams. I am on pins and needles.
Well that’s about it for now. I miss you all and hope to hear from you all soon. Keep me up to date with the real world please!
LOVE YOU,
Casey
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