First Day
I got in to Baltimore, and did my "in processing"... a bunch of paperwork, basically. Then I got moved into my house, which I share with 5 other girls. I share a bedroom, we all share a bathroom, but we have a kitchen, dining room, living room, and even our own washer and dryer, which is pretty sweet. Unfortunately, the house SUCKS. A LOT.
It is much, much, much better now that we spent a hefty chunk of the weekend cleaning it top to bottom. The guy who came in and repaired the hole in the dining room ceiling and the holes in the kitchen walls helped a lot in that regard. Soon we should be getting the leaks in our plumbing fixed... which were what caused those holes in the first place... and life will be better than ever.
In fact, our cleaning was so superb, that we won the "best cleaned house" for our unit in today's house inspections. Our prize, so rumor has it, is homemade fudge by Chris, the unit leader. I'm pretty stoked.
Last week was pretty laid back in a lot of ways. We were placed into temporary teams called "pods,” and mainly we did preliminary tedious-but-necessary stuff. A scavenger hunt (which my pod rocked, by the way), history of Americorps, getting our uniforms, doing our physicals, etc.
Wildland Firefighting Unit
There are three units- Wolf, Badger, and Raven in NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps). Each unit is broken down into teams, and each team (with 8-10 people per team) is led by a team leader.
The fire fighting unit, however, is slightly different. There are about 2 fire fighters per regular team, so it's spread out evenly through teams and units. They can be called up at any time to do wildland fire fighting, at which point they leave their teams temporarily, and come back after 10-20 days, depending on the project.
SO being the adventurous and masochistic lady that I am, I did the pack test, which consists of wearing a 45 lb vest and power walking 3 miles (no running or jogging allowed!) in 45 minutes or less. I clocked in at almost exactly 45 minutes, which means I passed! SO HOORAY FOR THAT! I am still super sore, but not NEARLY as sore as I was yesterday. I also have some enormous bruises on my legs, because I managed to get one of the men's vests, which hit me mid-thigh. And 45 minutes of power-walking with a 45 pound vest bouncing on one's thighs is bound to leave bruises.
Even though I passed, I didn't get picked for the fire fighting unit... I'm disappointed, but not overly disappointed. They had more people pass than they had spots open, and they needed to keep it even across the units... so I got shafted. There are some pluses to this, however. For example, I only need to do PT (physical training) three times a week instead of five. Which means I only have to get up at 5 am three times a week instead of five. Yay!
Permanent Teams
Today was really cool in that we found out our PERMANENT teams. There are eight of us, nine if you include Pete, our Team Leader. My roommate is one of my team members... hopefully we won't kill each other. We're both pretty easy going, though, so I'm not too worried. The rest of my team seems pretty cool. I'm in the Wolf unit- we're Wolf 2! Get pumped, y’all.
Now that we have our teams, our training will begin in earnest, and will last for 4 weeks. I'm not entirely sure what that will entail... I've heard some vague mumblings about things like "first aid" and "CPR" and "diversity training" and so forth. You will all be posted, of course.
