earlier post

i wrote this before the post i just posted

Thursday, February 25, 2010 – 12:18am

Hey everyone. I’m giving up minutes of sleep to write this, and then hopefully post it later. Here’s some information I want to give:

If I’m going to talk about what we’re doing here, I will end up using a lot of acronyms. Here they are, along with some other definitions, for reference:

NCCC – National Civilian Community Corps (I think) – this is the program I’m in. It’s under the umbrella of Americorps. We are made to be especially mobile for any disaster relief needed anywhere in the country. We travel a lot. Not many other programs operate like we do. There are 5 NCCC campuses in: Perry Point MD, Denver CO, Sacramento CA, Vinton IA and somewhere in Mississipi.

CM – Corps member (that’s me)

TL – Team Leader

Team – made up of ten CMs and one TL

Unit – made up of 7 teams for a total of 77 people. There are 3 units here at the Perry Point campus. They are the Badgers, the Ravens, and the Wolves. I am in the Badger unit (team 7), which is the most awesome, obviously.

UL – Unit Leader. Mine is Shawn, who is ex-military and also runs PT.

PT – Physical Training. Here on campus we do it 3 times a week at 5:45am, and I have been sore and almost unable to walk ever since we started. It’s intense and I hate it and hate getting up early, but I love that my body feels healthy and I’m glad I’m doing it.

RD – Region Director. Her name is Laquin and she runs the campus

There are some other roles here in the chain of command, but they’re not important.

The A – Our uniforms. They all have the Americorps logo on them which has a big “A”, so when we’re in uniform we say we’re “In the A”

ISP- Independent Service Project. We have to do 80 hours of independent projects over the course of our ten months. You will probably hear me talking about this a lot.

Specialty Roles

SLI – Service Learning Initiator

CAP – Corps Ambassador Program

ATL – Assistant Team Leader

Media Representative

I don’t feel like explaining these. They’re roles we have to fulfill on our team.

9-H – This is the building in which I currently live. It used to be a nursing home and it’s been turned into our dorms.

B-15 – It’s the administration building. Any time I have paperwork to do or have to do something official or talk to the Region Director, etc, I go there.

VA – Veterans Administration This is the medical complex. We are living on their campus using their old buildings. It is very kind of them to put up with us staying here. I think it makes the VA police happy, though, because they get bored.

The Village – this is a group of houses on campus, about half a mile away. It’s where the wolf unit lives, plus some veterans. There is one house there that has internet access, which is the only place on campus we can get online. It is always crowded, the network is often slow, and I rarely have time to walk over there anyway. I rarely ever see the Wolves.

PPDOP- Perryville Police Department Outreach Program. This is an ISP that I an about 30 other CMs are working on. We’re doing workshops with local juvenile offenders and hanging out with them at their rec center. I am teaching them Chinese.

OP – Outreach Program. This is what we call the rec center where the program is run

Project Sponsor – the organization we work for on a project, like Boys and Girls Club or the Girl Scouts of America.

Spike – this is what we call a round of projects. We go on our first spike March 13^th and will be gone about two months. We may be working for the same sponsor during that entire time, or several different ones. I think we have 3 or 4 rounds this year. So when we’re not on campus, we’re out on spike. And once training is done, we will rarely ever be on campus.

Also, in almost everything we do, we try to add Ameri- to the beginning of that word or action. So for example, I am currently living in an Ameribubble and I don’t know anything going on in the outside world. We also have Ameribabies (families started as a result of meeting your spouse during the program), Amerinaps, Amerishowers, etc.

We have also amended the Americorps motto “We get things done” to:

“We get things done. Eventually.” (That’s really just during training. I think that will change when we’re actually doing projects.)

There are a billion more that I’ve learned over the past couple weeks, but I will rarely use them and they’re not worth putting here, unless I feel like annoying you.

I have a request. I really do live in an Ameribubble and don’t know anything going on in the outside world. I’m very sad to have missed the Olympics, I don’t know anything about sports, politics, pop culture…it would be awesome if you could send me letters letting me know what you’re up to, maybe some photos, and anything interesting/important going on in the news. A random copy of the newspaper would be great, as I don’t get to do that daily ritual anymore.

I was trying to do this same thing for Emily, who is in the Peace Corps, before I came here. I will really try to keep sending you letters, Em, but the news might stop because I don’t know anything either! Also, if anyone sends me a letter, I will do my best to respond, but it is insanely busy here. Any spare moment I have free is either used to plan an ISP or to take an Amerinap. I actually might have a little more free time during spikes; training is supposed to be the hardest and most hectic time. We’ll see…it depends on how long it takes us to finish all our ISP hours…

Also please don’t forget that when I’m on spike I will not receive any packages you send me. I will only receive letters. More than anything I just want contact with you and to know you still exist!

You can also send me text messages (I have Verizon, so if you don’t have Verizon, please keep texts to a minimum. I’m already using up all my text allowances on team communication) and occasionally I’ll have a few minutes to chat on the phone. As of right now, email is the worst possible way to reach me, unless you don’t mind if I don’t respond for several weeks. DO, however, leave comments on the blog! And send emails and facebook notes anyway! It makes me feel loved when I finally get a chance to get online. J