Thursday, November 12, 2009

Beginning of the End (of training)

This week has been super busy. That's my excuse for not writing in 4 days ; ) It's the last week of CTI (Corps Training Institute) before we are deployed on our first project!

Monday evening beginning at 5, we all had to move rooms. It was pretty awful and inconvenient, but they wanted all of the teams to live near each other. I went from room 102 in building 946 to room 321 in building 947. It was like a cattle drive, but I just stayed in my zone and ignored the 299 other people around me and moved successfully. The room has less furniture than my old one, and the prior tenants told me that there has been an ant problem, but other than that, I enjoy seeing sky out my window, and it's much more peaceful.

Tuesday, we had our last training which include a Save the Children: building child-safe areas in disaster shelters, and tool and safety orientation. The children one was decent. They provided these shelter kits with toys and games and arts and crafts, and we practiced setting up a child-safe area. I played with plastic rhinos and matchbox cars; not a bad day. Then, for tool orientation, each team had to build a wooden box, and the people who have never used a circular saw before cut the wood. I was a woodcutter, along with my teammate, Katherine. I must say, it was quite enjoyable. Our box is pretty awesome and is supposed to sit in between the two front seats of our van. Educational AND practical. Man, how do they come up with this stuff??

Wednesday, we had our last one-day service project. We worked with Weed Warriors of Sacramento and removed invasive species from this wilderness water overflow basin area. We saw a bunch of tall white birds and geese and ducks and crawfish and some sort of speedy furry animal running around. The invasive specie was this bush from Argentina that was taking over the edges of the creek and destroying the natural ecosystem. It was quite the muddy job, but I had rubber boots on, so I was a-okay. And that was our project.

This morning, we had our second PT baseline test (1.5 mile run, situps, pushups, and sit and reach). Somehow I improved on everything but the situps! Yeah! I ran the 1.5 mile in 13:00 (compared to 13:35 last time), I did 60 girl pushups (42 last time), I reached 23.5 inches (22 last time) and sadly I did 51 situps (56 last time). All in all, it was a success.

Later today, we had our project briefing. This is where our team meets with some big wigs here on campus to present and discuss certain aspects of our upcoming project in Mecca. We had to wear our AmeriTux (black cargo pants, white men's polo, and steel-toed boots), so yes, this was a formal event. To prepare for this, we all had to do research about the community and check out the portfolios from past teams. As the Service Learning Initiator, I had to fill out our Service Learning Development Plan and figure out what activities to do with the team during our project. Activities include: visiting the Coachella Valley Museum and Cultural Center, attempt to learn Spanish, and get to know the homeowners/migrant workers well by planning lunches with them. Our briefing was at 2:30 today, and our team rocked it. The people thought we were extremely thorough and professional. Yeah Blue 6!! Tonight we're going out to dinner to celebrate. YUM.

Tomorrow morning is our induction ceremony. I will finally become a trained, official AmeriCorps member. It'll be AmeriTux time again. Wahoo!

We leave for Mecca Monday morning at 6am. I won't have as much internet access as I do here, so I will try to write at least once a week! I can't wait. My team is all pumped!

I miss you all!
<3 anne

1 comment:

  1. Hi Annie,

    Don't quite understand the title...what exactly does it mean???

    Love and miss my fashion consultant,
    Mom

    ReplyDelete