Goin' To California

So, I wanted to start things out by telling you what is going to be happening with this blog. First of all, if you're unaware, I have been accepted to be a FEMAcorps team leader with AmeriCorps these upcoming 11 months. Basically, I am moving to Sacramento for a while for training and in the near future will be deployed to various sites around the country to assist those in need via FEMA. This blog will help you get an inside look at what I am doing while also giving you the opportunity to listen to some music that I deem amazing. I am hoping that each post I do will have a theme song, which will tie into what I am doing or the feeling that has come from what I am doing, etc, etc. And I will highlight the lyrics I feel go along best. (I'm hoping you get the gist thus far....? It's probably confusing, but by the end of this post will not be) Let us begin:

Goin' to California
Suit case in my hand
Never run away a boy,
When you can walk away a man

Because life is always unexpected, I spent 85% of my first day as a FEMAcorps member stuck in various airports around the country. I flew from Boston to Denver starting an hour later than expected due to the lovely snow New England decided to throw at me on my last day there. From Denver, I waited an hour, made four phone calls to Sacramento, waited more and finally boarded my plane headed for..... Phoenix. Yes, so the third stop on my adventure was still not California, I was certainly getting closer. This was exciting nonetheless considering I had never been to Phoenix in my life, but all I saw was one small airport terminal for approximately 30 minutes. Even through all of these struggles, I still managed to stay positive and just kept thinking about my reason for leaving and embarking on what I am officially calling "Lisa's Excellent Adventure." (patent pending: Glenna Mugavero. She better be happy with that shout out.)

After arriving in Sacramento at 8pm, I met two other girls who had apparently been following me since take off in Boston. We all piled into the truck and drove about 25 minutes to campus. I was so tired I really only remember the intense details such as one girl telling me to: "FILL OUT THESE FORMS. ARE YOU HUNGRY? HERE IS SOME COLD CHICKEN AND POTATOES, SERIOUSLY PLEASE EAT IT. I ALSO HAVE SANDWICHES YOU GUYS MUST BE STARVING!! OH RIGHT A PILLOW OK HERE NOW I'LL SHOW YOU TO YOUR ROOM" Just kidding, she didn't show us to our room just the door that leads to our dorm building where I walked up three flights of stairs carrying my massive green bag and smashed directly into a dozen other team leaders who all said "OMG finallly you're here! ok great put your stuff down we are going exploring. You must have had a long day! I'm [insert long stream of names I still don't know]." So we all walked out of our dorm room walked ten minutes across the street and wouldn't you know it, found a bar. After hanging out there for an hour I finally admitted that I was going to fall asleep at the table if I didn't leave soon, so we all headed back to campus for a good nights sleep.

Day 2 was mostly filled with presentations of policies and things I should remember, but am having trouble with at the moment. We also got our uniforms issued so we are all looking beautiful and handsome in our khaki cargo pants that go higher on our bodies than any pants ever should and dark green t-shirts or hoodies. (As my roommate pointed out, these pants wouldn't be so bad if cargo pants had ever in all the years of mankind been form fitted for a woman's body, but I digress). Today (Day 3, for those of you keeping score at home) started bright- scratch that, very dark- at 6am where we had our first day of PT (physical training) Side note: AmeriCorps has about a billion accronyms so I will most likely be throwing them in every once in a while.... That is if I can remember... Ok, so PT which was made of up 2 minutes of push ups, 2 minutes of sit ups, and a 1.5 mile run which I did in 14:28, not too bad at all! Then we had our first day of van training and now I am in a computer lab waiting to go to lunch and then do some activity called "I am From..." poems. I am very excited about these because they sound like some silly orientation-MORE-getting-to-know-yourself-and-others activity which I am fully confident I WAS BORN TO DO.

Now back to the music for a minute:
If you don't know by now, I have a sick obsession with Needtobreathe. Not quite as much as Taylor, but it is potentially getting there. I genuinely feel like this song describes my trip to California and FEMAcorps pretty well. In the bridge of the song, Bear (the dreamy lead singer) croons about the 'spirit of the chosen' and how they 'stand alone.' I feel like this is how we are in FEMAcorps. We are the chosen, not just because we were selected to be on this team, but because we were chosen by a higher power and called out here to serve the greater good. We are literally standing alone because we are the first FEMAcorps team in Sacramento and only the second FEMAcorps with all of AmeriCorps. But, we are also standing alone in the sense that we are a few of the organizations helping these victims of disaster.

Well, that's going to be it for now. Sorry for the lack of cool multimedia effects and stuff, but I'm just getting used to this government computer WHICH IS A PC!??!???! WHYYYYYY???? Sorry, mild break down because I miss my MacBook! Hopefully once I get my own laptop I will be able to figure this machine out. Hopefully. For now, I am off to answer a personality test, eat lunch, sit through more presentations, and make more friends.