As you can probably tell by my lack of posts, it's been a busy couple of weeks. (Also, sorry about the lack of pictures, but it's not letting me add them to my posts right now, for some reason.)
On Wednesday, March 27th (ish), we left New Mexico and embarked on our short 8 hour journey to Ft. Worth, TX. If you don't think 8 hours is short, you should talk to the teams who had to drive for 5 days to get to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Our lodging in Denton wasn't quite ready for us yet, so we hung around Ft. Worth at the La Quinta for a couple of nights. Oh the La Quinta, with it's giant soft beds, it's numerous fluffy pillows, it's amazing showerhead, it's ice machine, pool and hot tub. We soaked it all in, knowing that might be our most luxurious dwelling for the next 8 months.
FEMA didn't make us start work until Monday, so we enjoyed a relaxing 4-day weekend. And we needed it after 2 weeks straight of classroom time, trying not to confuse PPI with PII, or trying to remember whether a microwaveable is reimburseable or not. Not to mention trying to keep straight the multiple rules being enforced for the training center, which was not easy, since they changed them every day. Plus, Ft. Worth was a nice taste of civilization after being cooped up in Artesia, New Mexico, home of nothing. So we took advantage of our little break there. We went to the Ft. Worth stockyards, a historic center that was used as a livestock market in the late 1800's. Today it's a tourist trap and I loved it. It reminded me a lot of Deadwood or Keystone in South Dakota, so it was a nice taste of home. We browsed a cute little tea and spice shop, which was sadly way out of our AmeriBudget. We talked to the cowboys who were riding their horses or walking their longhorns up and down the street, and we went to a petting zoo. It was probably aimed at children under the age of 12, but remember that most of us have dogs or cats that we had to leave behind (my Macy, *tear*) so petting a baby goat was very therapeutic. Then we went to the thrift store, where we spent the entire time trying on Hawaiian shirts, coveralls, and muumuus and then taking pictures of ourselves. It kept us entertained for a good hour and we bought nothing. I'm sure the employees loved us. Afterwards, we were going to check out downtown Ft. Worth, but we can't park the van in parking garages, and couldn't find a spot big enough for our colossal 15-passenger, so we just headed back to the hotel.
On Friday, we were able to head to our lodging in Denton. However, 3 of my friends from my days in Peru were meeting up in Austin for Easter weekend, and I really wanted to join them, since we had the weekend off. Although my Team Leader is a self-described "worried Jewish mother" to all of us, she was nice enough to let me stay behind and grab a ride down to Austin with a friend who was coming from Arlington.
And thus began my first venture out of the AmeriBubble. This term is used to describe the tight-knit AmeriCorps community that is formed from the start of the program and the isolation, so to speak, from the outside world. You eat, sleep, live, work, and play with the corps. Contact with "outsiders" is rare. Contact with outsiders without another corps member within 20 feet of you is almost nonexistant. We live in our own little world of blue shirts and khaki pants.
On Friday I took a brief hiatus from that world, and it was both refreshing and really weird. I had a great time being around old friends and getting away from it all for the weekend, but I also truly did miss my team. It's strange to be around a small group of people for 6 weeks straight and then hang out with people outside that group. You start to make a joke about ground guiding or
My friend Joel had moved from Lima to intern with a company in Austin, and my friends Hannah and Carlin both lived in the region, so they decided to reunite for Easter. Luckily, Hannah saw on Facebook that I was moving to Denton, and I got the invite, too! It was a really fun weekend. Austin is a very cool city, and it was great to see friends that I haven't seen in a year and a half. We went up to Mount Bonnell, where we had great views of the city. We went to a park with peacocks roaming around. We ate delicious Peruvian food in a partially abandoned mall. We went to an outdoor grafitti gallery. And of course we enjoyed Austin's night life. I personally loved Rainey Street, a street where all the houses have been turned into bars and the backyards have been decorated with fire pits, torches, lanterns, and comfy chairs. It was brilliant.
Meanwhile, my teammates were arriving at Camp Copass, our new lodging until June 6th. The feedback I was receiving did not sound too promising. Cold showers, gross bathrooms, cramped living quarters. Rustic, to put it nicely. So I enjoyed my last shower in Joel's nice apartment, and braced myself to return.
I took the Mega Bus back to Dallas where my team picked me up and we headed to Denton.
Read my next post to find out if Camp Copass was as terrible as I feared...
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