One week down ...

After posting the last few entries, I feel the need to elaborate on some of the details about my experiences thus far...

As a member of the Earth unit, my unit leader is a guy named Kevin. He’s probably a little younger than my parents, he’s from Nebraska. He’s nice, but he’s definitely the kind of guy with whom you do not negotiate. My TL (team leader) for the first week(ish) was Ervin, from South Carolina. Also nice. Quite endearing, actually, and an interesting guy; he’s teaching himself banjo.
But today, we switched TLs (to get to know others, I guess?). I ended up with Allison. I don’t know much about her (though, it is only the first day), but all of the TLs seem nice, so I’m not too worried. My new group has Joanna, Chris and my roommate, Maddie. I’ll miss Ervin and our original team, though. Our dynamic was pretty hilarious, with Tish’s love of food and Greg giving Ervin a hard time. With any amount of luck, he’ll be my TL if I make wildfire. Of course, having said that, I’ve just jinxed myself.

Ugh, I tried to do my laundry last night. Mistaaaaake. First of all, people who arrived to the room after me were jumping on open washing machines before me. Lame. But that’s what I get for observing assumed unspoken proprieties. Anyway, when I finally got a washer I managed to pick the only one that didn’t have cold water hooked up to it. Yeah. When I tried to do a cold wash for my colored items, the water just didn’t come out. When I used the warm setting, it was hot. Sooooo … no rinse cycle. I ran both loads through the wash cycle twice to try and get all the soap out. Yeesh. On the upside, the dryers were pretty industrial. All of my heavy stuff was dry in about half an hour. That made up for all of the time I lost by washing my clothes twice.

Everyone has been getting sick. My throat feels a little sketchy, but I’ve been okay during the course of the day. Though I know that being out in the cold isn’t what gets you sick, I can’t help but suspect it aggravated a lot of immune systems because plenty of the people who tried out for wildfire are sniffling or worse. A chunk of people have the flu (rumor has it that a few are supposed to be on quarantine). Apparently, it’s quite the epidemic. I’m trying to be extra careful, as the one time per year that I get sick is usually in February. I will say that I’ve never eaten so healthy before in my life. I’m not a vegetarian, but the set up in the cafeteria is making it VERY easy for me. I had tofu twice today. And I chose tofu because I wasn’t getting the meat dishes, so I figured I needed to get some protein some how. It’s wonderful. I wish that I could always eat this way.