Did someone say warm, sunny skies in November?

Happy belated Veterans Day to all the war vets that served or are serving for our freedoms in our country! But most importantly Happy 1 month plus to my lovely older sister Michelle and my newly founded older brother Ben Larkin on such a glorious marriage! I love you both!

I just wanted to start off with something super positive after my long and forever hiatus from writing blogs and keeping y’all informed on my 2nd year Americorps experience. I don’t even know where I left off…actually I have just remembered that blog #9 was written over 2 months ago! OUCH! I am so sorry it has taken this long. But where were we…

River 3 and their fearless Team Leader (muwuah!) finished up the last week of Fire Department with Chief Mark Hales and the rest of the fire privates. We were relieved that the Code Red calling was over, so what he were told to do the last week with the Vicksburg FD was to go around and do quality control check on all the curbs we had painted. We spent Monday and Tuesday of that week driving in the van all day correcting any rushed or blurry addresses. Lots of driving around the city of Vicksburg (by now the team knows every street in the city and how to get there). We reported back to the sponsor at the end of the day Tuesday and he told us that tomorrow (Wednesday) we were going to paint the curbs of the businesses on Washington St. downtown Vicksburg. Roughly 80 or so businesses later we called it a day and went back to campus.

WAIT! HOLD THE PHONE! I TOTALLY FORGOT!!! I got brought into my unit leader’s office that Tuesday as he had to tell me some important news. That important news was that our River 3 was called for disaster in Louisville, KY and would have to pack up our belongings and red bags and be ready to drive 12 hours to KY Friday morning. What a shocker to be told 3 days before we had to leave!! I guess that is the "real" definition of being flexible in Americorps (right Mitchy, Ben, and whomever ex-NCCC people read this?) So, I sat down and had a team meeting with the crew that Tuesday night to tell them the news. Lots of blank stares and silence for the first 20 minutes. I was actually excited to travel up to Kentucky, let alone a big city as in Louisville, to work with the flood disaster. I have been with the Katrina reconstruction last year in Americorps down in New Orleans. This was a little different because our task was to go into these houses that had been affected by the water and muck, gut, and sanitize them. Our main sponsor was the Metro United Way of Louisville. We got briefed about the main things we would be doing from Assistant Program Director, Jen Prall, and then began packing.

Back to Fire Department…we had now 2 days left of the Fire Department project since we had to leave early morning Friday. After a half-day Wednesday from painting the businesses downtown, Thursday was the big service learning day with the fire guys. The sponsor invited our team to go watch a "control burn" that was located at an abandoned house right down the road from fire station 8. That was very interesting because the fire departments do these burns to keep "fresh" since not many house fires occur in Vicksburg. Practice makes perfect…right? Anyways, it was so blazing hot standing near the fire burn, but so awesome at the same time. We got to see some of our Fire Privates we had met in action!

This leads us into our day off on Thursday to get everything situated and the van completely packed for the excursion. We took off for Kentucky that morning and 12 hours later we were at our housing at an old middle school building in Louisville, KY. We met with our United Way sponsors and got acquainted with our surroundings. They took us out to dinner and told us to be prepared to work the next day. We had every kind of outfit, protective equipment, respirators, gloves, etc. you could think. Steel-toed boots were a MUST to wear every house we went into. We were going to be working 20 days in Kentucky and then head back when the round ended on October 22nd. On Saturday morning River 3 met up with their site supervisors. The Christian Appalachian Project (CAP) group gave us the disaster orientation on how they operated on mucking and gutting and sanitizing. In the afternoon we got into the house and started working. WOW…it was all coming to a reality that we were actually helping with a disaster. Many of the members were not fully prepared to do such work, but as time went on they became more comfortable. 1st week consisted of working side-by-side the CAP group, but as the 2nd and 3rd weeks went on we were working with the Metro United Way volunteers. We mucked, gutted, and sanitized with 37 houses with the CAP team at the end of week 1. Bouncing over to the MUW, we ended up producing over 70 houses with them in 2 weeks to get a whopping total of 110 houses that River 3 assisted with during our tenure in Louisville. Pretty impressive! Fun things that we ended up doing while in Louisville were got to go to Churchill Downs and take pictures and take the tour, we walked around downtown Louisville, and received free YMCA passes to utilize the gym when we were there. Having faulty showers was not a plus while living in the Salvation Army building so we had to drive over to the YMCA to take warm showers. It was also pleasurable to not have to cook meals during those 3 weeks, instead a block down from our housing site we were served by the Center of Hope kitchen and got breakfast and dinner there.

Oh me oh my! I forgot to mention that during our stay in Louisville I took off 5 days (2 personal) and drove back up to Illinois for Rocktober Fest of Love. For all of you who weren't apart of it that was the name given to the Ben Larkin and Michelle Chianakas October 10th wedding! It was so awesome and a ton of fun. I got the opportunity to walk my grandmother down the aisle, my mother down the aisle, got to DJ the starting lineups for the wedding party, got a sweet Leatherman knife being in the wedding (which has definitely came in handy in Americorps)...but see these things were all just minorities...the most important part of the wedding weekend was seeing both my older sister and her husband smile the WHOLE weekend and not frown once! It was a near "perfect" wedding. Seeing them smile made me go back home one night tear up. I would like to have a nice wedding like that with a great girl who loves me as much as Michelle and Ben love each other :)

Now moving onto Vicksburg, MS southern region campuses 1st ever transition period. All the teams that were in Mississippi came back to Vicksburg to do 1st round closeouts, debriefs, and briefs for 2nd round. With about a week and a half left of round 1, I received an e-mail of 2nd round projects. Team Leaders get to select in numerical order of what projects they want their teams to go on. I selected to go to Biloxi, MS to work with the Hope Community Development Agency (CDA) and doing reconstruction work for hurricane Katrina. I ended up getting my number 1 selection and our team began preparing for Biloxi. GULF COAST! Anyways, River arrived back to campus on October 23rd to later be told that the corps members had to move their belongings into the new dorm. River 3, River 6, and River 7 will all be living in the Mary dorm. Once everyone was moved into their new rooms…it was time for the 2-day off weekend. Boy…was it great seeing team green members again. We all embraced on our 4th floor living location and caught up with each other’s rounds. Some even took part in a loud, primal scream!
Transition week consisted of: corps member baseline test on Monday (1-minute of sit ups, 1-minute of pushups, and a 1.5 mile run…each test there should be improvement), we had our team debrief and brief on Monday, nothing really big on Tuesday, and then Wednesday we had a clearance meeting be able to leave for our 2nd round. I was so stoked about 2nd round getting back into the construction mood, but also getting my mind out of the destruction mentality with disaster. Also my great Americorps friends from last year, Molly Burr, worked with Hope CDA with ‘Hands On’ Biloxi, MS as an Americorps State worker. SWEETNESS!! Once the hoopla with transition ended and catching up with various buddies, we re-packed our red bags and headed on our 3.5 hour drive to Biloxi, MS.

Round 2 travel day was Thursday October 29th and the end of round 2 will be December 17th. We arrived in Biloxi early evening on that Thursday and got situated into our dorm-like housing along the Gulf Coast. We are basically living by the beach that oversees the Gulf of Mexico. Not too bad AND the weather has been very nice and comfortable. Actually according to a local Biloxian, he said it is 10 degrees warmer than usual. But, boy being involved wtih a tropical storm in November was very interesting! (more on this later...TO BE CONTINUED!)


That is all I have for updates until next time, I will be trying to do this regurally to keep y'all informed on what has been going on! Keep in touch. Feel free to send me mail...I always love getting it (Thanks Mom!). Happy weekend!


PS. Congratulations Michelle and Ben on getting through the first month of marriage, several more to go!

PSS. Congrats Karah and Matt on 3.5 months of marriage, many more in your future as well :)

PSSS. COME ON CHICAGO BEARS! What is your problem?

Almost half-way through Round 1!

So as the title says it, Americorps Team Leader year is almost half-way finished with Round 1! WOW!…talk about these days going rapid fast. It is hard to catch up! Anyways, we ended up having Labor Day off from working, giving us a nice 3-day weekend to relax and prepare ourselves to the work weeks to come. A 4-day work week was what was on River 3’s plate. It turned our team of 11 into a nice even number 12. Having a new member made it easier for us to divide into our groups of 2 when three groups were painting the curbs with white, water-based paint and then following behind them were three black spray painting groups with stencils. Man…we got this project and know it like the back of our hands!

Fasten your seatbelts for the next 2 week update on how the team had its first grocery shopping outing to more River 3 birthday celebrations to Round 1 and working with the Fire Department…

September 7th (Monday)
a nice, relaxing day off of work…thank you Labor Day! Haha…the funny thing is we were not applauding about taking off that day from working only 3 days with the Fire Department, but because trainings for me had been going on for the last 2 straight months…a nice get-away from Americorps to re-group

got the chance to climb out of the Ameri-bubble and find out what my sports teams were doing, what kind of presidential things have been going on, and especially got the chance to catch up with my friends and family

had made some time for our PT coordinator to come up with a workout routine for the whole squad.

overall, I also had the opportunity to begin updating my team’s hours and my own hours into the Americorps portal

September 8th (Tuesday)
woke up and touched basis with the sponsor the night before to find out what the game plan was going to be for the rest of the week

arrived at the Fire Central Station and received our neighborhood task for the day, talked to the Chief, and then got assigned our Fire Private who would be out driving around in a pickup with H20 and Gatorade keeping us hydrated

we were trying to obviously find residencies that had curbs and ALSO trying to stay away from the "shady" and "traffic-like" subdivisions

worked and pumped out about over 200 houses
finished the workday at 4:30 PM and checked in with the Chief to receive our next neighborhood map

September 9th (Wednesday) thru September 11th (Friday)

these days were similar to Tuesday with working on curbs and painting them in those groups but making sure that each group of 2 was different daily.

Once we got accustomed to doing the curbs, we began mass producing on an average of 250 hours per day


September 14th-18th (Monday-Friday)
Friday was Lan’s birthday and she got the chance to ride in a fire truck; got free pizza from the project sponsor who applied for the grant

Brittany’s last day was Wednesday

September 21st-25th (Monday-Friday)
Code Red calling all week; we made phone calls to businesses in the city of Vicksburg; in a room in City Hall for 7 hours of the day

Began working with the Child Abuse Program in Vicksburg as an ISP which means work days started earlier (8AM)

ISPs for the weekend: Jacob’s Ladder painting, Salvation Army sorting clothes and pricing, and doing Trail Clearing at the local cemetery and Vicksburg Military Park
O’Keefe Project might not happen because there is no working internet on campus
1 more full week with the Fire Department

(incomplete...more to come!)