Columbus Ohio-HFH

This past month has been amazing! I am learning so much about myself, as my team, every day. I have grown stronger both emotionally and physically! I LOVE our sponsors. Habitat for Humanity Greater Columbus is amazing. Currently my team is working on 4 different houses. Tomorrow with be two home dedications for two of the homes out in the Whitehall area. We are also working on two rebuilds that are at the start of their construction. The team loves the hard manuel physical labor more than painting and finishing work, who couldn't blame them! Getting to knock out walls is AMAZING! Oak 1 is working hard to get things done for america. My team is bonding and I am seeing the start of something great forming on my team. I am very pleased that my team rather talk to each other to work out their issues before coming to me ( WHAT A RELIEF). They also are currently leading the injury count for our campus, which I have boiled down to Karma for last year haha.

This is when I realized the yoga I have been doing is paying off. I was helping my Corps Member set nails for window casings and needed just one more hand, so I decided my foot would work perfectly. My house lead just thought it was the funniest thing he ever saw. Hey what ever gets the job done right? After spending two weeks of straight hammering my arms have become beastly I must say, I love it. I can also now hammer fairly well with my left hand as well:)!

This was the best lunch break ever. In the sun in 70 degree weather! The ladies at my site with me this day decided we needed to work on our tans haha! Rico said it was too cold and sat in the shade. Kaylea is in front and Kaylea is behind me. We had so much fun working on putting up window casings and dow boards this day:) working outside all day in beautiful weather!

Oh man this tool, the Sawsall, it my favorite, but man when you use it for a long time your arms go numb from all the shaking it does. It cuts through EVERYTHING! Demo work is so much fun and it really relaxes you!

This is Rico's first time in a safety harness. I was helping him and he realized he need a rope to attach to the roof when I pointed out that is what I was currently showing him and how to use it.

This was the dow board Kaylea, Kenya, and Myself put up. We got the back of the house and half of both sides of the house. It is an insulation foam that is the same as tyvex but is thicker due to the cold weather Columbus gets.

CTI- First week of Round 1

I Know it has been a while, I am very sorry for that! CTI was CRAZY! I was working about 76 hours a week working on around 20-25 hours of sleep a week. I lost 25 pounds, which is good and bad in the same way. I lost it buy not eating or sleeping, I shake my finger at myself! Not good Stassia, not good. CTI was full of fun crazy adventures. My team, Oak 1 are the Oak 1 Penguins. We all love random dance parties, disney movies, and to sing off key!

This is our first team photo. It was team reveal and they had to make an Oak 1 sign out of glow sticks and play dough. They made one of the best signs ever:)! In the back left -rigt; Jaymie, Sam, Chris, Dani, Kellie, Rico, Myslef. Front row; Kenya Jordan, and Dan.

This was ropes course with our team. We had to make a tower of feet!

Oak 1 penguins at their first project! We are in Columbus Ohio working for Habitat for Humanity Greater Columbus affiliate. We are a small team but are very mighty, just like the penguins are. Tomorrow we start to work on the houses. This is going to be great.

This weekend we had some free time, what is this free time you say!?! We decided to go to the zoo here and see our fellow family members. The zoo here is great! They have manatee's, which is my new favorite animal! Just saying! I am trying to have a weekly non-work adventure for the team while here in Columbus. I think it will bring the team close together and help with bonding and also relief of stress from team living! Hahaha, if you can escape it!

get ready to start!

This crazy group of Team Leaders are enjoying their last "lazy" weekend! This past week has been spent getting ready for the CM's to arrive on Tuesday the 15. We got our most important trainings to the date, a refresher on everything we have learned in the past month and are super excited to get the corps members this week. I feel that we are going to rock this like no other! I have been working on the Unit/team reveal all week, along with the cohabitation skit for the cm welcome Tuesdays evening, and the bulletin boards.

I am getting a little anxious for this week. I signed up for the airport crew, which means I will be picking up the corps members from the airport and bring them to campus to start their in-processing. I have also been calling these corps members to see if they have any last minute questions and to make sure they have their flights/travel arrangements all done.

To celebrate this last "lazy" weekend, I have been working and have a give and take closet theme party. I moved into a new room and am organizing every thing to be prepare for this week.

Adventures

The last few weeks has been busy busy busy. We have continued to learn bucket full's of knowledge about how to be an amazing team leader. Learning ways to supervise was a good training. I feel like I got a lot of tools to add to my tool bag. We also received training on how to do our project completion reports (PCR) and quantifiable(QA). We also got trainings in how to do our weekly progress reports( WPR) which is how we keep time. Last week started with diversity training which always puts life in prospective. We also split up in to our units( I am an Oak, Oak 1 to be specific) and went to our team leader mini project. Our project was to go to Tilford elementary school to replace ceiling tiles, install new computers, and tutor students. The Oak unit rocked, but we could not have done it with out the Cedar unit and the Maple unit. We spent two nights sleeping in the basement of a church. It was such a relief to come back to campus and sleep in a bed! This weekend has been spent doing the mountain of paperwork that comes along with ending a project. PCR, QA,WPR, portfolio, and debriefs. We also had a monkey wrench thrown into the mix by finding out that we have to finish these online modules by tomorrow morning. We also had a birthday celebration and superbowl party.

Grocery shopping and nap time in the van is a highlight of our weeks!

Erin and I had to grade papers for a morning while the students had to do their Iowa state testing. We realized that we could spell correctly and that being a teachers aide is fun when we get to make valentines:)!
One day we did a trip into Iowa City to go thrift store shopping. Darcy and I found the swear vests and thought we should bring them back in style!
Us TLs love our chucks! If you didn't get the memo then its a sad day to you!
The question is... " How many TLs can you fit in to a govie-van comfortably?"... The answer is 15... no more though cause then we run out of seat belts. This is what we call team bonding!

training, pac, and fun

This week has been full of fun and busy work. We have been in trainings for polices and how to become an awesome TL. It started out with a fellow TL falling down the stairs and breaking her ankle, I spent sunday evening with her in the ER and monday with her in Surgery. She is doing fabulous with her healing process at the moment. Her and I moved to a TL suit on the main level, they are very nice.

We have been to the voo here in Iowa only twice, but its a nice hang out for us out of our campus.

First night out at the Ron-Da-Voo
Hannah and I needed to tenderize our chicken, sadly we had no meat mallet. In true AmeriCorps fashion we got creative and used a hammer:)
Yes beat that chicken with a hammer Hannah:)
A team builder game, that brought us so much entertainment.
Our TL's taking the pac test! They all passed and did an amazing job:)

Day 1 of TL for Iowa

HELLO from IOWA!!! This is day one of my continuing adventure of AmeriCorps NCCC. Today I am officially a Team Leader. I must say I am a little nervous. I feel the pressure already. This campus in Vinton Iowa is AMAZING! We have a 5 lane lap pool that is heated, a hot tub, bowling alley, air hokey, foos ball, pool table, work out room/gym, I have wifi in my room, and the housing is WAY better than P.Point.

Iowa is covered in snow, it is a marshmallow world here. The staff is amazing and the school is beautiful. It is all breath taking:). I leave you with my first picture of Iowa!!!

Reflection

I realize the last few months of my adventure in AmeriCorps I let my blog slip and be out dated! it got super busy and on top of that I did a writing class online at my college. I apologize!

First I will catch you up on Maine, then I will reflect on the greatest adventure ever! I miss Maine so very much! It was a blast and a great way to end the year. I suggested that if you have the chance to get to Maine, southern eastern part, in the fall you should! It was very relaxing and brought together the year. Our team continued to build rabbit habitats, clear trails, and maintain the ecosystem. I learned how to Make signs with a sign cutter thing, FYI I want this machine. I got really good at it, i would be happy to make it my new hobby.

This is my first sign I made and the machine:)! I ended up making around 10 and painted 20 total. I loved the fact that this was a job I could do well and rest my knee. Sadly I injured my knee and had to be on light duty the last 3 weeks in Maine. I was still able to work though, so that was a good outlet:)! The Wells NERR at Luadholm is an amazing place, there is over 7 miles of hike trails and goes right out to the beach and the Estuary.

Our last weekend in Maine we decided to invite over Badger 7, the team in Portland, Maine, and have a thanksgiving feast. I made my first two turkeys ever! They turned out amazing:) It was a great feast with apples to apples and fun football. We called it "AmeriThanksgiving"! One of the best thanksgivings I have ever had!

We came back to the Point to prepare for our last week in AmeriCorps NCCC! It was nice to come back and be with everyone to reflect on our time and enjoy the last week as a team that saw each other every day. We realized that even though we had our ups and downs we were a family. A dysfunctional normal every day family:) We realized we didn't need to see each other every day to be together. With this realization we realized we were not only Wolf 7, we were L is for L 7!

Eryn has grown so much this year! She turned 21 in the summer and is now participating in drinking olympics :) haha! Sometimes we grow in other ways than just service learning ;) I thought that with this being her first drinking olympics she needed all the support possible, this includes her sign! I like to think this sign is the reason she did so well! :)

The last night in NCCC we had a banquet that we all had to dress up for. We were served food, had awards, and saw our slide show of the year. We enjoyed one last meal as a team :) which is always the way to go.

Graduation from the program was nice, short, and tearful. I never knew I had to many tears! Our last team photo:) wolf 7!

This year has taught me so much! I will take everything I learned from it and will not only put into my everyday life, but into next year. This year gave me all the tools I will need for being Team Leader next year, putting on the green shirt and to lead a team! So this is not the end of my blog. I will continue this next year when I start in January!