NEW ORLEANS!!!!!

Our first spike was revealed yesterday and we are going to New Orleans for two months!! My team will be working with Habitat for Humanity and staying at Camp Hope. I AM SO EXCITED!!! AHHHHH! each team gets placed in a different area. Some people are in NJ, some in Georgia, Connecticut, West Virginia, basically all over this side of the country. We were one of the lucky teams to go to New Orleans on the first round! I am pumped. We were kind of crazy all day. If you are unfamiliar with Habitat for Humanity, then look it up! It is working together to build houses for the local community. There are Habitats all over the country. There are many other programs in New Orleans that are geared toward this. For example, some of my roommates are going to work with a St. Bernard's project down there, doing similar stuff. We just happened to get placed with Habitat. and i am psyched!!!!!!!!

Yesterday day was a crazy and busy day. We also found out our specialty roles for our team. Each team member holds a role. There are a few different roles but i won't bore u with that. if u are really interested in knowing what they all are let me know! cuz i love talking about this stuff. Our Team Leader (TL) had us write a few paragraphs explaining why we wanted a certain role and what our second choice was. I'm the SLI (the LOVE the acronyms here at NCCC) Service Learning Initiator and working with my teammate Beth. Basically, i am coordinating service learning opportunities for the team while we are working on a project. We make sure everyone is understanding the purpose of what we are doing, how to look forward when done with the project and not just put it away and move on, and to just reflect on what we've learned or experienced etc. There is a good amount of written work, but it's definitely something I am very interested in. It's making sure that we look at the big perspective. This could be a long discussion but I will limit myself right now. : )
Also, each round there is a new Assistant Team Leader (ATL). Someone who just takes on a lil more to help out the TL. so i'll be doind that for the first round. My team is fun and we all have been getting along great. Once we go on spike we will be in very close quarters all the time. sleeping, eating, working, living together. but i think we all have the same idea of what we want out of this so as long as we keep an open communication we should do ok. There is a mixture of ages. about half are 19 and the other half are 22-24. AmeriCorps NCCC is definitely a program i wish i new about before i went off to college. i don't even know how i heard about it! i think just from searching online. Anyways, I am WICKED EXCITED!!! NEW ORLEANS IN LESS THAN A MONTH!!! (and i'll be there for my bday, woohoo!)