Currently Reading: Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
As I write this I am on Amtrak from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. I received my train tickets on the 24th. On Tuesday, Alan and I went down to the Forrest Theater to see Avenue Q. Oh, it was so hilarious! I owned the soundtrack without ever having seen the show, and I’m glad I did. But there was so much more to the show than the soundtrack lets on. The best characters by far were the Bad Idea Bears. The show was really awesome, there were so many funny parts that I couldn’t possibly describe them without recounting the entire show.
Then on Wednesday night I got a call from Ervin. Ervin is a team leader for one of the wildfire teams and he called to let me know that I was going to be in the Earth Unit. What does that mean? Nothing in particular, it’s just how they divide everyone into groups, which will later be divided into teams. So I am in the Earth unit. There are also Fire, Wind and Sun units. The Earth unit has all of the wildfire teams, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the teams are wildfire teams. It’s just that they’ve put all of the wildfire teams in the same unit to keep them together, I suppose. When I first read about the different team designations, I made the comment “What are we, Captain Planet’s sidekicks? I hope I get a magical ring with this.” So now, everyone in my cell phone whom I know through AmeriCorps has/will have the Captain Planet theme song as their ringtone. =)
I spent all day yesterday packing up. The total damage is one rolling suitcase – with my sleeping bag and bike helmet strapped to it – and a backpack. Both are stuffed, but not uncomfortably so. After doing Jersey Surf for three years, I’m pretty capable of low-maintenance packing. Thank God for drum corps! =) As we were loading up the car, I decided to have my pillow and quilt shipped to me. I probably wouldn’t be able to fit them in lockers in Chicago and I’m not carrying them all over the city; that would be both strange looking and inconvenient.
I’m riding with Maggie, a girl from Cherry Hill, NJ, who is also doing AmeriCorps. We planned to leave from the same station on our travel forms and, sure enough, we’re traveling together the whole way to Denver. We’ll meet up with three or four more AmeriCorps people when we arrive in Chicago.
Maggie just told me that one of her friends offered her a word of advice for our Katrina projects: If you’re gutting a house, whatever you do, do NOT, under any circumstances, open the refrigerator. Good grief.
So I’m surprised I manage to eat my breakfast this morning, I’ve felt nauseous a few times. It’s nerves, I know. Things were finally sinking in a little last night that I was leaving. Even though I was packing yesterday, it still felt like a normal day. I didn’t do anything extraordinary. When Alan finally came over, we just hung out like usual. But every now and then my heart would jump or my gut would twinge. I was trying hard to act normally because I was afraid that if I got too nostalgic or sentimental, I wouldn’t be able to handle the trip. I’ve basically instead maintained the mindset that the trip will only last a week, two weeks, a month. So, in the worst times when I feel like I want to quit and hop on a plane, I can just tell myself “Just make it to the end of the week/month.” I’m sure it’ll get to be like aging out – before you know it, you’re on the field and saying goodbye to it all.
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