Holy, mountains!

Look at that! That's what I get to see everyday when I eat my meals!

Yup. So, today officially marks my first full day as an AmeriCorps NCCC Class 16 Member. It's still hard to believe it's only been a day and a half, it feels like I've been here for a week!

Yesterday I left NY at 10:30am (EST) and arrived in Denver at 1:00pm (MT). The day basically consisted of handing in paper work, meeting as many new faces as possible, and dinner.

Today consisted of breakfast, our first community meeting as a corps (where we got introduced to all the AmeriCorps staff and team leaders, and got more of an idea of what we all got ourselves into). Then we split up into our units to do more logistical stuff, lunch, some free time, and we got our uniforms, and dinner.

This first month will be spent at our home base in Denver on the campus of Colorado Heights University. During the month we will get trained in CPR, first aid, disaster relief, and other safety issues along with our physical training (PT) sessions so we can all get in shape and prepared for our first project. After the first month we will be off to our first project before our break in December. On our return from break we will have 3 more projects to complete before we complete the program at the end of July. In addition to our projects, in order to successfully complete the program, we have to complete 80 hours of individual service. Not too bad.

What else? Hmmm... Wondering how many people are part of the Southwest Region Campus, Class 16, of AmeriCorps NCCC? Well, there are about 200 or so of us. That 200 or so is divided into 4 units (Earth, Fire, Sun, Water). Then the units are broken down into teams (4-5 smaller groups of 10-12 people). Those teams are the people in which we will be working with during our projects. During training we'll be switching around so I won't know the people in my work group until we embark on our first project. All I know for sure is that I'm part of the Sun unit.

Stay tuned for more updates!