Spiders and Snakes and Lightening, OH MY!

Today was the scariest day yet...we had meetings all day that went more into detail about the creepy critters around here that we will most likely encounter throughout our stay. I discovered that black widow spiders are not actually that large, which is more scary, because they are less noticeable that way, and there is another kind of brown spider that is smaller than a nickel, but if it bites you, on the thumb, for example, it will eat away at your skin--and I know this because we saw a disgusting picture of it! I learned that wasps are attracted to vibrations, so if you swat your hands around, they will fly around you more and there are like 20 different kinds of wasps, bees, and other bugs with stingers around here. There are also these little tiny bugs called Chiggers that crawl under your skin, usually starting near your ankles and working their way up your leg...the best way to stop them in their tracks (or under your skin) is to put nail polish over the bumps you find...so strange! As far as snakes go, they have 4 types of poisonous ones, little rattle snakes, big rattle snakes, water snakes, diamondback, copperheads, etc. AHH so basically all training is doing is freaking me out and making me want to be back in Maine's safe climate! After all of that scariness, we went to another talk with some local Vicksburg police officers who told us how dangerous it is to walk around several streets near us, that we need to be in groups at all times, and even if we are in groups, they will most likely know that we are not from around here and jump us anyway....greatttt.OH we also learned that Mississippi's lowest temperatures in the summer are at night, and that's when it gets all the way down to the 80s-crazy! And during the past few days we have been here, they have been experiencing a heat wave, so we have been having 113 degree days with 80% humidity! It's so differnt from Maine! During our "History of Vicksburg" talk, I learned that Coca Cola was first bottled here, there are 13,000 unidentified soldiers buried at the Military Cemetary, the biggest one in the nation, Vicksburg is known as the "Art Park of the World", and he just HAD to also mention that they have snakes here that "can swallow you whole!" Awesome. It seems like I will most definitely be seeing one of these deadly creatures in the next 10 months and I just hope that it ends better than the scenarios in my head! As if hearing all of this wasn't bad enough, there was also a huge thunder storm going on...one lightening bolt struck reallllly close to the building we were in, the lights flickered, and the thunder boomed sooo loudly that I immediately jumped out of my seat and flew to the floor like I always do when I'm scared, because for some reason I feel that that is safest...which apparently was very strange to the other 50 people in the room who were staring at me and laughing....it's official, everyone here thinks I am a freak! A couple people who felt bad for me were looking at me sympathetically, reminding me to just breathe...which apparently I wasn't doing because I was still extremely scared and I could feel my face getting redder and my head getting lighter from lack of oxygen to my brain. I'm telling ya, these people must really think I am nuts by now! Anyways, the day ended well with a team dinner of spaghetti and garlic bread with my awesome teammates, so that was good :) and tomorrow everyone else who is normal and has their license is taking the van driving test, so I will hopefully have a less traumatic and stressful day than the past two!

Oh, we also did some skits to teach each other about the policies for AmeriCorps, and my group was doing swimming rules, so I had to act out "swimming with innapropriate swimwear on" in front of everyone....it was not embarassing at all going out and saying "ohhh I loveeee skinny dipping!" in front of my peers haha but it was pretty funny!