Americorps NCCC Denver Days One and Two

Monday 10/6

Today started at 5:15 am Eastern time when I got up to leave the house by 6:15 and be at the airport by 6:45. I caught a 7:55 flight out of Boston and arrived in Denver at 10:30 am Mountain time. When I got to the airport I was greeted by NCCC team leaders and taken to a waiting area full of people and bags before we got on a bus about an hour later to take us to campus. Americorps is housed on the campus of Teikyo Loretta Heights University in Denver. It’s a pretty campus and you can see the Rockies clearly, as well as the sun setting over the Rockies, which I really like. Forgive me for this writing, because I am sure some of it will not make sense due to my brain shutting down hours ago.
When we got to campus, we were given our room assignments. My roommate is from Georgia, and we are getting along well so far, bonding over our miserable room. The room is about 12 feet by 10 feet. The two beds are each under a shelf and have to be pulled out to sleep on. Each bed takes up a wall. The third wall is taken up by our desks and the 4th by the door, the two closets and the sink. There are no dressers, so all of my clothes are in my desk drawers (there are two). After filling out some paper work and finding the main office, we ate some old pizza and did “in-processing” which consisted of more paperwork and getting our ID pictures taken. After that we were free from about 2 to 5:30. My roommate and I unpacked and took naps.
At 5:30 we met our team for the week. My roommate and I are both in the “Fire Unit” which is how they break up the 250 class members. Fire, Earth, Sun, and Water (Captain Planet, he’s a hero). Within each unit, there are teams of about 10 people, so we are “Fire 3”. During our 4 week orientation, we will switch teams every week. Once we had all our team members and team leader, we got in a van and headed to subway for dinner. At 7 there was a Fire Unit meeting where we met all the team leaders for the unit and played fun bonding games. Then we were freeee. There are 3 working showers on my hall of 80+ people, so that is going to be interesting. I am headed to bed for 6:30 breakfast and another full day tomorrow. I really miss my friends and family back on the East Coast and I am thinking of you guys all the time.

Tuesday 10/7

Today we were up at 6:30 for breakfast, after a cold night in the dorms. I went to be between 9 and 10 though, so I got a good amount of sleep. After breakfast we had a community meeting where we were formally introduced to all the staff and team leaders from other units. At 10, we had a meeting to set up our direct deposit for paychecks, and then we were free until 11:30 when we had lunch. I have to say I had very low expectations for the food, but so far it has been really good. Today for lunch I had chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, broccoli and raw spinach...some of my favorite foods. At 1, we have our uniform issue which means that after that we are only wearing our uniforms from here on out, which I am a little sad about. It's weird right now because some units have gotten their uniforms and some haven't, so as my roommate pointed out we are sort of like the sneetches. Some with stars on thars...and some not. I am not sure what is up for the rest of the day, but at 6:45 there is a meeting for people who want to play ultimate frisbee, so I am excited for that.