Round 2 half way through

It has been a while once again since I've written. It's very hard to find time and when I do have time all I want to do sleep. It has been a crazy ride so far through this crazy journey in Americorps NCCC. Our second round project is a split project so the last three weeks we have been work once again in Pennsylvania with the Valley Forge National Historic Park. We work a Tuesday through Saturday schedule doing mostly invasive plant and animal removal. The invasive plant removal is very slow moving and often very boring but my team manages by talking about our favorite foods or usually singing some songs. The invasive animal removal is actually cray fishing and that is a lot of fun. My team has caught many rusty crayfish and hoping to catch more. I have about a week left here then the last three weeks are going to be spent working with Habitat for Humanity in Wilmington,DE and we are all extremely excited to go there. A lot of us are ready to be working with Habitat and be out of the country setting. Many of us have experienced poison ivy and stinging nettle. Not fun. 
      While being here in Valley Forge we have been able to do lots of touring of Philadelphia. Since it is only a 20min. van ride we go there pretty much every weekend. The other cool thing about this area is that there is a giant mall only 5mins away from the park. We also have had very many mall trips. The history here is really amazing and very interesting. We have been lucky to get free passes to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Summer break is to just around the corner and I'm all booked to fly home to visit my now Fiance! and of course family and friends. I'm super excited to spend time being home and not doing anything Americorps related. It's much needed time away from my team. Even though i do enjoy most of them I really really can't wait to get away. :) my posts should be longer but I'm always rushing to write and forget usually what I'm going to say so this is all for now until then.........


"GETTING THINGS DONE"
 

Moose1 R1 Youtube Clip

Round 1 coming to a close....

There is only about 2 days left until we return to Perry Point for our short spring break and then a week of transition. Unfortunately we will not be attending the Flight 93 9/11 memorial, there was a lot of confusion in all of the details so they scrapped the idea. Which I think sucks because I was most excited about having the opportunity to do that.  The last couple of weeks have been filled with traveling to new locations every couple of days and doing more of the same trash clean up and invasive species removal. We are finishing our round up in Brownsville, PA. Its a very small "city" if that's what you would like to call it. We are working with BARC, Brownsville Area Revitalization Corporation doing clean up all through the city. This was a very popular city back in the day and is now pretty much abandoned. Before this we were in East Liverpool Ohio for about four days and took part in a large tree planting event. I would say that was the most fulfilling work we have done so far. I don't remember saying this in earlier posts but early in the round I ended up injuring myself pretty badly playing football. I sprained my ankle very bad and chipped a tiny tiny piece of bone off. It had been pretty difficult to work at full pace but I am managing. 

Also round 2 is right around the corner and I'm super excited about where we are going....... Moose 1 is headed back to PA!!!!! lol We are going to be about 20miles outside of Philadelphia in King of Prussia, PA working with Valley Forge National Historic Park. We will be there for the first 5 weeks and the last 3 weeks of the round will be spent back at Perry Point working the VA. I am excited to be doing different types of work other than cleaning up towns. There will be a lot of invasive crayfish removal and tree planting. It will be a nice change to actually be stationary for a while and really get to know the area we will be living. I am all over the place with these blogs and I'm sorry for that I try to remember everything as I'm writing. 

Well that is all for now I will be posting the youtube video that my team has made and some more pictures...... 

"GETTING THINGS DONE" 

from small town to even smaller town........

 Picture: My team(minus two teammates) at the Warrior Trail in Skickshinny, PA

CTI is over and i'm officially an Americorps member. My induction was last Friday and we left for first spike the next day. It only took about four hours to get to our housing location which is in Benton,PA. We started work on Sunday, working in a town called ShickShinny, PA. It's an old coal mining town along the Susquehanna river. They have major damage from the flood that happened last September after Hurricane Lea came through.Shickshinny is a very small town with a total pop. around 750 people, so they really need our help with clean-up. Our sponsors are great... they have been providing us lunch and lots of fun facts and information about the towns we will be working in. This first round is jammed pack with six day work weeks and lots of team bonding since there isn't much else to do in these woods.The work that we have been and will be doing is a lot of cleaning up towns and picking up trash, also we have been doing some trail construction. My body is pretty sore from working on the warrior trail in Shickshinny yesterday. I am getting stronger and losing some weight so i'm pretty excited about that. I have some pictures on Facebook and there will be more to come. I just gets tiring after work trying to get internet and post them all.This is going to be a short and sweet post... I'm getting tired and we are about to leave Panera Bread now so I won't have internet til we come back in a few days.

"GETTING THINGS DONE"

Moose 1 will be the traveling circus!!!!!

Lots has happened since the last time I blogged. We had another fun filled week full of trainings to include: volunteer management, disaster shelters, our specialty roles and much more that I cant remember right now. As for my specialty roles I am the Project Outreach Liaison and the Team Trainer. Should be interesting.... We also found out our first round SPIKE!!!!! drum roll please......................................... We are working with the Appalachian Coal Country Team... We will be traveling all over Pennsylvania going to small towns and doing flood debris clean up. Also for about three days we will be traveling outside of our region to Lisbon, OH to learn about planting trees.... Then after the first round is over and all the teams deploy out to second round spike we go to.......drum roll....... Shanksville,PA.... and if anyone knows their news they will know what happened in this town but if you don't I will fill you in. This is the site of the Flight 93 National Memorial.... We get the amazing opportunity to take part in planting trees and educating volunteers about the trees. This is a huge memorial dedicated to those lives that were tragically lost on September 11 2001. I'm really excited about this project. We are moving to different locations every couple days.. Its going to be crazy... but I know I'll make it through. There is also the chance that people could be deployed on disaster during this first round for the tornadoes that have been taking place in the south and mid west. If anyone is interested in getting to know more about my project sponsor and what they do here is the website www.coalcountryteam.org.   this is going to be a short and sweet blog... running out of time and internet is very limited. We leave this Saturday March 10th. This Friday is our induction and lots of "big wigs" are coming in this week. Well that's all for now don't know when the next blog will be... hopefully I'll get internet while on spike... but for now who knows..

  "GETTING THINGS DONE"

Mini spike and team love

Currently I am on a mini spike(aka project). It is a three day project that happens away from the campus and I am in North Bay, MD at North Bay Adventure. It is a camp/retreat where middle school kids come for a week and learn environmental studies and well as character building. It is amazing here and I would love to work here. They have a high ropes course,zip lines, this awesome swing thing, a gym, rock climbing walls and so much more for these kids to do that normally back at home they wouldn't be able to do. So basically for them its a vacation but they learn so much through character building and really learning that their actions do have consequences.
  My team Moose 1 is here with Moose 4 and we are going to be doing clean up work and lots of painting. I signed myself up for painting because they wanted experienced painters and I do believe I am one lol. One of the good things is that they have wifi but the phone service is pretty crappy because we are in a secluded area. It will be interesting with my team on our first little project together and to see how things go. I will not mention names but there are some people on my team that I'm a little worried about. Other than that all is going well in the program and the more and more I get into it the more I'm considering to be a team leader for next year. I really believe that I could do it.
But for now our dinner is done.... cheeseburgers and baked beans oh yea I'm going to eat... "Getting Things Done"

Its been a while but I'm MOOSE 1

There has been so much going on since I have gotten to Perry Point and its just crazy hard to try and first of all have an internet connection and find time to be on it... So I'm sorry in advance if i can't write all the time. The first few days here were mostly about the rules and regulations of the program and what we can and can't do. In-processing was day 1 and went by really fast. I have three other roommates which all are awesome. Are room is pretty lucky in that we only have four people to a room and we have are own bathroom with a shower. There are some rooms with six to eight people per room and a lot of the rooms don't have a shower so they have to use the communal shower. Not a lot to do here in Perry Point and trying to find transportation to anywhere is really hard unless you want to pay for a cab, but they can be very expensive. 
The campus is the VA medical center and federally operated. So there is a lot we can't do. It is very pretty here though, the campus sits on about 400 acres of land and is on the Susquehanna river that runs into the Chesapeake Bay. I don't have pics but hopefully soon they will be up. There are geese and deer EVERYWHERE!!!! 

 What else.... okay so I am in the MOOSE unit and my permanent team is Moose 1 which is pretty awesome because that was the team I was on during our temporary teams also called PODS. My team leader is pretty chill and seems overall pretty cool so I'm super  excited about that. My whole team minus a few of us went to DC last night for a project. I couldn't go because I just had my tb shot yesterday and it hasn't been read yet so there were a few of us who couldn't go. So i have the entire weekend to myself. Also a little fun fact if that's what you would call it is last Monday I had three teeth extracted (pulled) and I have been in some serious pain these last few days and the medicine they gave me is kickin my butt. Hopefully I'll be fine the rest of the year and no more problems or accidents. There have already been some people here that have broken their arms and on guy broke his foot. Its only been two weeks of training. Next week we are going on a mini spike about 3 days but I can't remember where lol. Overall I feel pretty good about the people on my team and hope there isn't any problems. 
   Already I'm thinking about my Life after Americorps and my options so far are applying to be a Team Leader for next year. Its just a thought and an idea not really set in stone but who knows what could happen. Our Induction into the program is March 9th then we leave for our first spike the day after. We don't know where we are going yet..... I'm sorry if im all over the place I'm typing it all down as I remember things so it will probably be jumbled. 
 As far as trainings go i am officially certified in CRP,First Aid and AED. also a Certified American Red Cross member and Van driver. 
  Well that's about it for now hope to be able to put up pics on here and my facebook soon but until then...... "Getting Things Done" for America