Alex's Adventures in AmeriCorps*NCCC

Thursday was a crazy day. About 20 minutes into our first training session of the morning I noticed that I had a swollen bug bite with a red line spreading up my arm. I got scared and showed my pod leader and he freaked out. Luckily in the next room over, there were CPR instructors from Red Cross who told me I needed to go to the doctor immediately. I was very impressed with how fast AmeriCorps took care of the situation. They drove me to a nearby doctor and within an hour I received a shot and a prescription for antibiotics and steroids. The doctor was not very friendly and when I asked her what she thought bit me, she said there's no way to know unless she saw the animal. Most of my friends think it was black widow though. I was back on campus by lunch and received way too much attention. People I had never met before asked if they could see my arm and took pictures.

I had to return to the doctor yesterday morning for another shot. There were 8 people that attended sick call and since none of us had appointments, we spent about 4 hours at the doctor's office. Normally I wouldn't mind skipping some of the boring lectures, but apparently I missed an interesting one about the history of national service.

I've been enjoying PT a lot more than I thought I would. It is definitely hard to wake up at 500am but when I realize that by 630 am I have already worked out, it's a good feeling.

Today was National Make a Difference Day. This is the first year that Sacramento participated so there was a ceremony downtown with many motivational speakers. Each pod spent the day volunteering for a different non-profit combating homelessness around Sacramento. The speakers were really inspirational and gave more meaning to our service project today. My pod volunteered for the Habitat for Humanity Restore. It's a huge warehouse like Home Depot that sells donated building materials for cheap. We cleared out a storage room and moved metal shelves for the majority of the day. It was tiring work but it was nice to be outside and get stuff done.

Pod 1 at Make A difference Day

There is speculation that we will receive our permanent team assignments tomorrow night since the Team Leaders serving in American Samoa returned last night. I'm really excited/nervous to find out who will be on my team, but less excited to change rooms. I really like my roommate and am going to miss talking to her every night.

We have the day off tomorrow and I'm planning on going to the zoo with some friends. No this was not my idea, but it should still be fun! Here are some pictures from the last week.