Hi Blog!
We’re done with week two in Wilmington, Delaware. We’ve been all over the place this week, working at two different job sites with Habitat and spending some time working in the Habitat warehouse. We also had the opportunity to take a trip down to Washington, D.C. to give a presentation at the headquarters of CNCS-the organization that runs AmeriCorps.
This is how the week went:
Tuesday we worked a full day, constructing and putting up wall panels at a construction site in its early stages. It was good to be doing something new, brushing up on our hammering skills (it’s harder than it looks, folks. I’m pretty bad at hammering). The heat was terrible. We hammered away until noon, when most of the volunteers left because of the heat. We finished out the day cleaning out houses, watering plants and working on fences.
Wednesday we worked a half day, then we packed it up and headed back to our campus at Perry Point, Maryland. We practiced our presentation in front of various staff people and prepared for our big day Thursday in Washington D.C.
The presentation was kind of a big deal–the advisory board for AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps was having a meeting, and they wanted a team to come and give a sample presentation, like the one we present to our regional director before and after each project round. Each round, we stand up as a team and give a PowerPoint presentation about how our project went, what we accomplished and what we learned, what was hard and what was great. Preparing and giving the presentation is nerve wracking at the best of times, but this week we presented to our boss about five levels up the food chain, along with the rest of the advisory board.
Moose 3 and our audience
Fortunately, we are the best of all possible teams and we rocked it! Everyone on the team spoke well and the presentation went off without a hitch. The board members were friendly and the headquarters staff were amazingly welcoming. They told us stories from their years in NCCC. Afterwards, our regional director treated us to lunch, so we must have done something right.
We teach the board members to “Get ’em up!”
Friday and Saturday it was back to work, installing safety railings and fire walls, painting more fences, learning how to use coping saws, and some heavy-duty street-sweeping and rug vacuuming. All this while keeping up on our paperwork, cooking and cleaning, grocery shopping and making inside jokes.
It was a good week, I think.
Got ’em up!
Next week–we finish with Wilmington and move back to Baltimore.
twigeaters 