1st week of training is in the BAG!

Education Award for completing 1,700 hours of service: $4,725
Amount of food money TL’s get per day: $4.50
Getting bit several times by no-seeums, mosquitoes, and other bugs: PRICELESS!

Man…these biters really enjoy clinging onto you and leaving some heavy duty marks. Throughout this Americorps journey there has been several fruit flies, mosquitoes, spiders and other insects/bugs crawling and flying around nipping at our flesh. They are feasting on our kitchen area and especially the bananas and other fruit items. I can truly play the game connect the dots on my arms because of how many there are. I guess bugs travel with you down to the “dirty south” and I should have been more prepared. OR maybe it is the warm 99-102 degree temperature days mixed in with the sticky, mucky, hot humidity.

Ok ok enough with the negatives and onto the positives. These last couple days have been basically used for team building exercises, learning about specialty roles, and going through ideas to make the “In Processing” for the corps members flow easier. Plus on top of that…it was a way for all the team leaders to get to know one another better by going out and exploring the town of Vicksburg. One of the few weekends we will have free and no corps members to worry about. Some of us have great ideas on what to do with our time off including karokee at a local club/bar down the street. It seems the people who did bring cars are always willing to assist with the driving to these establishments. I kind of wished I brought my vehicle down to Mississippi, but realize that everyone is so friendly and sharing that it was better I didn’t. Thank you all my lovely Ameri-TL friends! Talks have been stirring about getting the group together (or whoever wants to go) to travel over to New Orleans and in mine and Geoff’s case to visit our Americorps Perry Point buddies either working for organizations down there or fellow team green TL’s that happen to have 3rd round projects there. Either way it will be such a blast and bring back great memories of working two rounds in the gulf coast around this same time last year. We even are going to stay in the NCCC Americorps Hotel off of Bourbon St. that gives a special discount to us for being in the program. Wouldn’t that be cool that a couple years down the line that Americorps is so nationally known that you can walk into a restaurant, hotel, or other establishment and be noticed for the hard-work you do and get your meal or something for free? Give it time…I have a hunch it will happen at some point!

Alrighty then…onto the last couple days of this 1st week trainings. As the days keep getting closer and closer to corps member arrival date, I am getting both stoked and worried. I can’t wait to take on the new challenge and leading for the next 10 months a group of young men and women, who are relatively the same age as me, and taking them on a service journey. I hope to get TONS out of this!

THURSDAY (Day 4 of being TL)
- woke up and had mock room inspections and what to expect when there are inspections every Thursday; received a checklist sheet
- from 8 AM- noon we had specialty roles training and learned about the various tasks and roles each member will have to have while on Spikes
- roles range from: assistant TL, service learning initiator, project outreach liaison, CAP’per, Media, and many others; basically each team member should have 2 specialty roles; the roles will change from round to round depending on how the team leader wants to do it.
- Each role has an importance in some way or another, a well-oiled machine works when everyone is doing their part!
- After lunch we learned about the several forms that go with the job description of a team leader; from injury report forms to quantifiable forms to budget forms, etc. So many, but thanks to our TL binder I am able to stay organized and follow through more efficiently. One of my goals for these 11 months was to keep organized.
- Once we all got the idea and gist of forms, we moved onto talking to Teresa Beck (training instructor) about feedback about registration and when we first came to the campus
- We took notes on how to improve the “in processing” and she was able to gather up much of our feedback; we are going to play huge roles in assisting her in the next 3 weeks to make it smoother
- Later the UL’s got us all together and we tied up any loose ends from our previous conversations about alcohol, fraternization with corps members, and other policies that people were confused about.
- Finished up the day by going grocery shopping at the local Kroger; over $800 dollars later we got one weeks worth of food to make meals; Geoff and I combined our money and got some healthy veggies, fruits, wheat bread, and many more because him and I are going to shed some unnecessary weight (myself hoping and praying to lose 15-20 pounds before my older sister’s wedding in October)
- Fell asleep watching my nightly Full House DVD episodes!

FRIDAY (Last day of week 1 of TL training)

- first thing in the morning we had Member Handbook training where headquarters employee Tom Bryant came to deliver the talk
- he went from cover to cover in the Handbook discussing and depicting the key issues (i.e. alcohol, ed award, spike housing, etc.)
- Tom was a very witty and tried to make the training entertaining the best of his ability; I got a lot of issues clarified and any policies that have changed within the past year in my stay in Perry Point; nothing too drastic had been altered
- Around 1 PM we gathered with Jen Prall, assistant program director, and she told us what our first service project as a group is going to be; we went over the task sheet and what we were suppose to accomplish
- Found out we are going camping Monday night and then working all day Tuesday; we were broken into work groups to cover different sections of the Boys and Girls Club location; not sure what one I am in.
- An overview of the service project seemed to be a lot of fun and now we are able to get our hands dirty and help; possibly an idea for a future ISP (independent service project) for my future River team.
- Following the project briefing, we went outside with our fellow unit leaders and performed some team building activities to end the stressful week; several games we picked up on to possibly use with our teams; we broke off into our units and worked within the 10 in our unit; then we were surprised with a tasty dessert.
- While the Team Leaders were still super hyped up from the team builders, we decided upon going to a local blues bar to hang out; about 18 of us drove in 5 cars to the location and got the chance to do more bonding
- A 5-member cover band played 3 sets of music throughout the night and we were dancing up a storm…can you say 3 hours of PT? ;)
- It was good to go and get away from the campus for the night and experience the city of Vicksburg; all of us were really cutting a rug; I am such a bad dancer, but it didn’t matter because it was a good time regardless!


SATURDAY (July 11th)

- felt good to sleep-in and regain some of that lost sleep during the week
- went out and ventured around Vicksburg
- couple of us went to the local swimming pool, hoping to get a free membership from it…still in the works
- at night it was a low-key type night from being so worn out the night before; some played some board games, others watched movies, and others went to Walmart.


So as you can see, we are all excited to be here and get started on serving. This up and coming service project will be a blast because it will be another way to bond with our fellow team green members. This is already a tight bunch of wonderful people gathering from several states and sharing the same common goal! I wonder what is to come in the following couple weeks as we prepare to be better team leaders as well as ready ourselves for the corps members. The 20 of us team green consists of 8 males and 12 females. One downfall from this week though that involves my stupidity…on Thursday night after getting back from shopping for food, I decided to boost morale of my fellow team green members and made a batch of cinnamon rolls to share. After they were done cooking I grabbed a moist towel and took them out of the blazing hot oven…BIG MISTAKE! Why Danny did you use a moist towel? Why didn’t you simply use the oven mitt that was in the drawer 10 feet from you? Well, I don’t know why I did what I did but I ended up 2nd degree burning 2 of my fingers on my left hand. After running them in cold water for an hour and taking an advil…I was good to go! I have gotten some bad sunburns, but this semi-injury hurt like the DICKENS! I had a lot of support from my team green that got me through the pain. I have officially learned my lesson!!

Until next post, stay classy people!! Hope you enjoyed what you read. More blogs to come in the near future!


PS. When we went to the Chinese buffet I received this fortune in my cookie, word for word it read “You are born with grace and beauty.”

PSS. More and more the wedding date gets closer and closer for my older sister and her fiancée Ben I get so excited….and I just can’t hide it!