In freshman year of college, we had week one, were we did
nothing productive except orient ourselves to the campus and try timidly to
make friends with the people around us and wore dorky name tags. I was extremely hot and humid.
Between the heat and awkwardness, week 1 of FEMA corps feels
a lot like that.
In some ways it is worse.
The food was much worse, we are perpetually stuck in a basement for all
of our orientation speakers, and there seems to be less pressure for some of
the speakers to make their material interesting.
Or maybe it is just impossible to make medical benefits interesting.
In some ways though it is better. After four years of having to learn how to
make new friends, and some spectacular failures along the way, I think I have
finally made par. There is now a good
group of people that I feel comfortable talking to and hanging out with, enough
so that I do not have to worry about who I will sit with at meals. During college week 1 I managed to slip so
far into the background that no one knew who I was. That has not happened here.
I have a few more roommates than I am used to. Our rooms sleep 16, and we are full. I don’t know if this qualifies them as
barracks, but they are nicer than the barracks you see in movies, with partial
walls giving a little more privacy than just rows and rows of bunks. I am on the bottom bunk and have taken using
the sleeping bag we were issued to create a curtain and give myself some
privacy.
We are living in what was once a catholic elementary
school. Our bed rooms were old classrooms. The building is old and it feels
like it. But we have air conditioning,
thank goodness. Classes and food are in
the basement auditorium; we sleep on the top floor. That puts five flights of
stairs between us and most of our activities.
There is an elevator, but we are not allowed to use it. AmeriCorps seems unhealthily obsessed with
getting us into shape. Not that that is
necessarily a bad thing, as I, along with many people here could probably
benefit from getting into shape. We also have required physical training three
times a week, and have to do a fitness assessment on Monday to get our baseline
level health. Bleh.
As mentioned before, much of our activities this week have
been straight orientation. Starting next
week, we will get more specific training.
We are trained here for three weeks, then drive to Vicksburg MS for a
weeklong FEMA specific training. Then
after that we are stationed different places with our teams. I am part of Eagle 6 (Eagle – because
America!), which will work in Public Assistance. We will in theory be doing a lot of
photography, talking to people and damage assessment so that FEMA can give
people money. My team seems very calm
and chill. My team leader is amazing, fun and very understanding.
Starting on Saturday, we have to cook meals for
ourselves. We get about $4.50 per person
per day. We are not wasting taxpayer money on food, believe me! How this actually plays out is
that we buy food together in the groups that we travel with. We have standard breakfast and lunch stuff
that we can prepare ourselves (think sandwiches and cereal). Each night, two
people cook dinner for everyone else. So far it has been better than the food
we were given during the first week, but it is a bit of an adjustment to have
to cook myself for the first time really in my life.
Saturday we went to the harbor area of Baltimore, which I
think can best be compared to Navy Pier. There were shops and
restaurants and public spaces. It was a
lot of fun. On Sunday we went to the
Minions movie, which was nice mindless fun.
I guess the final question that I have been getting a lot is
how am I doing. I am doing all right,
but not great. I miss family, friends,
and my boyfriend. But I have met some
awesome people here too. The problem
with meeting awesome people is that it is not good motivation to work on med
school applications. Oh well, I will get
everything done eventually. On the whole,
things have been good.
Signing off for now,
Andrea
