Induction and Louisiana

So we were officially inducted into the AmeriCorps NCCC program on Tuesday. It was sad while we practiced marching in, because since I have never been inducted into anything before, it reminded me of graduation, which made me think that I would be leaving all of my new friends and it was really sad! As much as I wanted to be done with trainings, I didn't want to go separate ways from all of my new friends for our new and exciting, but scary (because they are so new) projects! We had some good speakers (including the mayor of Vicksburg) and we got to wear our awesome AmeriTuxes though, so it was very eventful haha. My team also made an awesome poster telling everyone about our project (pictures below). Then, as if all of that craziness of induction wasn't enough, my team and one other team got called on disaster and we had to leave right after induction instead of the next day like everyone else. Now, this seems like no big deal, because it only meant we were leaving 1 day early, but my mind likes to have a plan and when the plan does not go the way it is supposed to I sometimes have a hard time dealing with the change...which some of you know about me! So I was basically freaking out all that day, trying to clean my room, pack everything into 2 backpacks for 2 months, and also make time to hang out with and say goodbye to my new friends from other teams. It was really stressful, but I managed to fit it all in by staying up until 3:30am and waking up at 6:30am the next day, gahhh! I did surprisingly well the next day on only 3 hours of sleep though! So yesterday after induction we traveled 4 hours to a beautiful church to stay the night and help out with Feed The Children the next day by distributing boxes of food, hygiene stuff, and water to families affected by the oil spill. But before we could distribute the boxes, we had to unload them from a huge mack truck...all 288 24 packs of water and 800 boxes! Thankfully many hands make light work so it didn't take too long! I did get a little sunburn on my face today for the first time since being down south though, because we were actually outside for once instead of in an air conditioned room! Oh, I forgot to mention that the church we stayed at the night before was beautiful on the outside, but super sketchy and old and dirty and had no AC on the inside...blahh! So I guess the whole Feed The Children event was sponsored by Eli and Peyton Manning, so they took a group picture of us for their website :) Woohoo! And the local news crew was also there to film us for awhile, which is exciting. AmeriCorps really gets a lot of publicity!
After all of that we drove another hour or so to our home in Chalmette, LA. Its a cute little house, but was really messy and dirty inside because the other group that just left this morning decided to just leave all of their junk here for us to deal with...so we had to spend 2 hours cleaning before we could even think about moving our own stuff in! It was a really long day, but the house looks great now and it has wireless internet that my computer actually connects to (knock on wood) so that made up for the mess, in my book! Tomorrow starts our 2 week training here for the St. Bernard Project, where we will be working until Oct. 15th, unless we get called out to a disaster site again! Okay, well it is getting pretty late and I still have to shower before bed and get up early tomorrow, so I'll update you all again soon! Oh yeah, and for everyone who is wondering about my health....I am feeling much better these days! My voice is still not 100% back (my mom and sister both thought I was my 11 year old brother on the phone...haha) but I feel great and I am also done with my ear infection medicine, because it has been a week...so yay for feeling better!