63 days

sitting at our miniature table all on our laptops finishing up personal statements, city year and college applications, attempting to plan for our futures after FEMA corps. needless to say, it's been an overwhelming process that's led to a lot of facebook and a lot of chocolate.

I've already become reminiscent of my time in this program. looking through facebook photos, re-reading blog posts, thinking about the first few months living out of my duffel...it's all been a very strange process. in the best way possible. 

our time with the deployment unit at mt weather has been incredible. things have been getting busy with the flooding in colorado and now in new mexico. it's been pretty exciting seeing where all of the FEMA personnel will be sent and to actually be the people who send them there. I feel like I'm directly helping the agency carry out its mission of getting to disaster sites and helping the survivors as quickly as possible. 

I've been trying to soak in the small town country life as much as possible. I can't help but ogle out the windows every time we drive anywhere, like a child who hasn't seen a thunderstorm or falling leaves or deer on the side of the road before (which I guess I am...since I am from a place where weather rarely happens and wildlife are scarcely seen). 

I have 63 days left of my time in americorps nccc-FEMA corps, and am really trying to make the most of every possible moment. 

white house

sitting in a starbucks down the street from the white house, trying to write and complete personal statements for two graduate programs I hope to apply to by the end of today. not the easiest task after the morning I've had. 

this morning, I was honored to speak at the white house in front of the national task force about my experience with FEMA corps. I greeted mr. serino, the deputy administrator of FEMA, to begin the morning and it just went from there. halfway through the morning, I followed rich serino's talk and was introduced by wendy spencer, the ceo of the corporation for national and communitiy service. I basically went over everything I have written about in this blog. in two minutes. and left out the fact that I'm keeping a blog (to sound maybe a bit more professional than just a duffel-living, van-traveling, blog-writing, boot-wearing corps member). I think it went well. 

I was approached by several members of the task force later on and thanked for both my time to speak this morning and for my service to disaster survivors. which I responded by profusely thanking them for letting me be there to speak in front of them. 

after talking with asim mishra, the deputy chief of staff at cncs, about our common experiences during our years of service and the impact it had on both our lives, I think his comment about sums it up: at 24, did you ever think you'd be casually walking by the white house after speaking in front of members from obama's administration? 

no, no I did not. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. 

needless to say, this morning was an incredible start to my 24th year (as I officially became another year older this past monday) and I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to represent national service members across the country.

virginia updates

working as a deployment specialist at mt. weather has been quite the enjoyable experience. today was my first real day "out on the floor" (FEMA deployment lingo) with my headset all on my lonesome. and might I say, it didn't go half bad. I've been making calls to FEMA reservists with deployment requests as well as answering phone calls from FEMA personnel who need to either check in or out of their assigned disasters, change their lodging addresses, etc. "the floor" has proved to be a pretty exciting place to be. 

this past weekend, I went with a few teammates to a tailgate festival in old town winchester where I'm pretty sure every winchester resident was in attendance. I can't begin to describe my newfound love for small towns. they are my favorite type of town. the food, the lingo, the people, the corn hole tournaments (west coast friends-google it. yes, people really play corn hole as a social activity). everything was wonderful. there were beer and wine tastings and everyone knew everybody else. at one point, the sheriff was leaning over a fence to catch up with another local and was there for a good half hour. it was a perfect day for a tailgate event (especially since my strange 24-hour strep throat episode was petering out by that point and I was more delusional and tired than achy and dying, like I had been the previous afternoon). things are really looking up over here in virginia. 

also, this past weekend, my team and I volunteered at a puppy adoption charity fundraiser at barrel oak winery in the  virginia countryside. we assisted with the silent auction, monitoring the food table so dogs didn't slobber all over the human food, grilled some veggie burgers and hotdogs, sold doggie halloween costumes (I've really missed out on a huge part of life by never having a dog...). the winery is purposefully puppy friendly and located on the most gorgeous little section of rolling hills I've ever seen. it got real hot and humid in that lovely ameriuniform as the afternoon went on, but the location was too beautiful to care about the sweat trickling down my back (let's not kid ourselves...it was water-falling down my back. wow, this whole living-out-of-a-duffel thing has really lowered my standards hasn't it....) anyhow, I got to pretend for an entire afternoon that I owned a pet for the first time in my life, as well as encourage others in attendance to adopt the dogs that need a home. it was a well spent afternoon indeed.

oh and I turned 24. so there's that.

also in other news.....

I've recently learned that I will be speaking at a national task force meeting at the white house this friday to emphasize the importance of national service. it will be just me, my khakis, and a room of representatives from seventeen federal agencies. tomorrow I will be prepping for my two minute FEMA corps schpeel. details to come later. 

in the meantime....photos.

"welcome to our little corner of the world"

I woke up from my luxurious ten minute van nap after work yesterday to my van-driving teammate yelling because a bear was crossing the road in front of us. 

I guess the perks of working in the woods.

I've seen more wildlife in the past few days (whether on our commute to/from work or driving through the virginia/maryland/dc countrysides) than I have probably since childhood. I have tried countless times to capture the beauty of this area (mainly through blurry/low definition/last minute iphone camera snapshots) and can't find a way to do it. so in the meantime, I'm trying to figure out a way to convince myself it's ok not to store anything and everything on my overflowing iphone photo gallery and to just live in the moment and appreciate my beautiful surroundings for what they are. 

this first week of work has been full of information, trainings, run-throughs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (because I'm an adult), phone call trials, powerpoints, new passwords, coffee on coffee on coffee, welcoming words, (somewhat risky) van mountain driving, and the most encouragement I could have ever asked for. the people in the unit we work in at mt. weather are incredibly kind, warm, supportive, generous, and open. I am looking forward to moving out of training and into our job of (if I leave out all of the technical details and spare you from three days worth of training notes) essentially deploying FEMA personnel to various disasters. due to the high volume of information my brain has been taking in and probably the  lack of nutrients my body has been receiving (likely the result of an excessive amount of pb&j...) I am writing this blog from my bed in our housing while attempting to justify a 6pm sleep time to my to-be-24yr old self. 

I must say that I am incredibly content living in a small country town in northern virginia where my coworkers own farms and race their racehorses and the leaves are promised to show signs of fall soon. I couldn't imagine being anywhere else on a newly-humidity-free brisk september evening. 

however, I am now off to thoroughly examine the inside of my eyelids...

back in virginia

we've officially settled in winchester, virginia (which isn't exactly saying much since we never really "settle" anywhere...but let's just roll with it, shall we?).

we begin our first day of work tomorrow, assisting with the deployment unit at mt. weather. we will be in training all week, so details on job specifics are to come (unless job specifics being announced publicly via my blog post are against the rules, in which case I will most definitely not be posting specifics and risking breaking department of homeland security rules. I don't know if I have enough brainpower or emotional energy to deal with getting in trouble with the federal government right now...flashback to being in a van going across the country for six days...). 

we'll be dressing up in our lovely FEMA tuxes tomorrow (consisting of black cargo pants, blue FEMA polo, and steel-toeds...what else?). and I should probably get to sleep because I'm not sure how appropriate it is to fall asleep in the middle of training on your first day at a high security federal government command center...

more on our third round deployment duties to come later (or not, depending on what the department of homeland security will allow). 

des moines coffee chat

sitting in a starbucks off the road in west des moines, iowa, listening to the acoustic starbucksy music they play, waiting for our team leader to take a conference call with our unit leader and point of contact at our next deployment location.

a man in his early thirties approached me because he recognized our grey shirts and khakis, the eternally identifying symbols of americorps nccc corps members. he mentioned that he was originally from illinois but that he had done americorps nccc at the sacramento campus as well. after his year in his own 15-passenger, he went on to serve with an americorps state program in iowa and now lives here in iowa. his main emphasis was on how much he misses his nccc experience. his advice: really appreciate every moment of the program right now "because then you get out and real life is hard". 

another family, consisting of an older gentleman and three daughters, approached me as well. the gentleman was adorned with a white beard, a dark tan indiana jones hat, yellow suspenders decorated like rulers, and long green cargo shorts. he recognized our uniforms because americorps nccc members had helped rebuild rooftops at a boy scout camp he worked at several years ago. he went on to tell me about the family roadtrip they're taking across the country to end up in los angeles, where they're originally from, though his children have spread out across the country over the years (hence the family road trip across the country). departing words: thank you for all of your service. 

thank you, people of america. 

colorado driving

driving through colorado and all I can do is admire the beauty around me. photos wouldn't do the rivers, farmhouses, hills, and rocky mountains justice. nevermind being able to capture the vastness of the bonneville salt flats or the deep richly red beauty of arches national park in utah yesterday. 

we're on day three of our journey back to virginia. 

being in the car so many days on end while being serenaded by fleet foxes, the head and the heart, and other folky mood music which inspire life reflection, tends to make a person think a lot. I'm finding I'm much more comfortable living wildly outside of my comfort zone (for now anyway. I guess that comes with the FEMA corps territory...traveling from place to place at a moment's notice). I've become strangely accustomed to owning two shirts, a pair of pants, shorts, and my uniform and packing up my life in fifteen minutes.

some days I wake up and forget I'm sleeping five people to a motel room or in the middle of nebraska or that I have a ten hour journey ahead of me that day in attempts to slowly crawl across the country. it's a strange existence. but it's a good one.