Did you miss me?

I finally got internet so I can blog again! So stop crying, you can crawl out of that fetal position...you once more get to be blessed by my humble words.

I have a lot of catching up to do! I had a mini project this past weekend where every team was assigned to an organization close by so they didn't have to find housing. However, my team was assigned the coolest project ever so we left for the whole weekend. We actually did three things: acted in a haunted house, did some forest clearing, and… wait for it….. wait for it…. PRAIRIE BURNING! It was soooo cool! We set fire to 33 acres of prairie land and I found my new favorite past time. When we all got back from our projects, we discussed with the other teams what we did. I heard a lot of “oh, we helped the squirrels” or “we moved rocks”. Well I burned things down, lopped trees, and made grown men pee themselves! Man I love serving my country.

Moving on, we got our Rep Roles for our team. I’m a service learning initiator, a project outreach liaison, and on governance council. It’s a lot of fun and involves a lot of planning, promoting, and interacting directly with sponsors and the communities.

PT is getting more fun because now we just do it with our teams, no more scary ex army dudes. We still are getting up at 5am to workout, but we do all cool things since we are the ones who plan it. A few days ago, I brought my light up Frisbee and we played Ultimate Frisbee out in the field. We started the game by throwing the Frisbee over to the other team, and then in true battle style, screamed “UUUUUULTIMATE!!!!” at the others while charging them. However, because it was in the dark, I ultimately ran into people, ultimately fell into the compost pile, and ultimately introduced my face to every tree around me.

A couple of days ago, my team went to a local Elementary School to do a few things for them. One included putting together and installing a new playground toy called an X-Wave. Its basically a huge, curvy teeter-totter that fits about 15 children. The only problem was it was below freezing and we had to rope off a section of the playground so none of the students could get to our tools, leaving a lot of bitter children staring at us. One little angel of a 2rd grader led about 30 kids in an oh so funny (*read with sarcasm) chant of “HUUUR-RY UP” while one on-looking girl growled at me. Oh how I miss children. It ended up being a fun day in the end because I got to jackhammer- which I loooove! Its right up there with burning stuff down. Well, it was fun until I fell over and killed my knee. (You will note that this is a habit of mine. Prayers encouraged on chainsaw day…)

Anyhoo, today I received an e-mail letting me know I was accepted into AmeriCorps NCCC and that I was assigned to Vinton, Iowa. Uuuummm, a little late guys….

Anyways, that’s about it for now. Only a little bit more training left then I get inducted and then go on my first official big project on the 16th!!! Woohoo!

Happy EARLY birthday Danielle!