A realization the other day came to mind when I looked at my heading. Where are the sketches? I've been slacking hardcore about showing any kind of proof that I can even draw. My pants will eventually be on fire if I don't do something about it, and pants are expensive. So without further delay, we'll come to the first of the sketch turned artwork.

If the names Antoine de Saint-Exupery or The Little Prince sound familiar to you, then this will be a brief nostalgic moment. If not, then I suggest you to check it out even though it's a children's book. We're all kids at heart, right? Either way, it's aesthetically pleasing and a nice tribute. A little background story, I made this with the intention to give as a gift to a friend who loved the book...a year or so later I finally got around to it. (There's that slacker in me again)

Photo from the book that I referenced:

And my little re-creation:  

Almost completely done with all the paperwork that I need to send in...and to make sure I'll be able to leave. I got the welcome packet from NCCC a couple days ago, which tells me I have to fill out a travel form, healthcare information, and all that jazz.  I haven't read through all the way, but here's some stuff I found interesting that stuck out:

• On the travel sheet I just mailed, I chose to get to Iowa by plane. I've never been on a plane before. This is kind of a big deal for me, since I used to be terrified by the thought of being on a plane when I was younger. Right now I'm completely fine about it, so perhaps I just grew the hell up.

• I could test to be a wildlife firefighter if I so choose.

• Apparently I'll being doing PT while I'm there (physical training? did I just accidentally sign up for the Army? I would be very, very annoyed at myself if I did.)

•  Corps members are assigned to one of three units: Cedar, Maple and Oak. Units are comprised of 70-80 Corps members, broken down into seven teams. Personally I think it's cute that they are all named after trees, however if I could choose I would choose Cedar just because I love the smell of cedar chests.

• I will probably have to get a tetanus shot there, since I can't even remember when I last had one. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had a shot. That's probably not good.

• Projects can very from one day to two months. The average is six weeks.

• Spikes are projects that are more then one hour away from campus (like when I go to another state). I might not have access to a computer/cell phone reception, depending where I would go...but I can still get snail mail. I'll post up my address when I figure out what team I'm on. Letters would be cool!

That's it so far. I'm sure I'll run into something interesting again soon. Over and out.

Saturday. Naps galore.

To give a sole reason as to why I joined Americorps wouldn't necessarily be accurate or true. Why I wanted to stemmed from my own interests and curiosity...and the fact that I just really, really didn't want to go for another round of school (and grad school at that). My last undergraduate semester, while it felt great to be finally done, left me with extreme anxiety from my last classes.

Since I wasn't working full-time, I spent a portion of my summer volunteering at the children's Fly Art Center, which gave way for wanting do more volunteering. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I first heard about the Americorps program (specifically the one I'm going to be in, NCCC) through a co-worker at the Ypsi Food Co-op. Traveling has always been on my mind, so that was what attracted me. I kept it as an idea in the back of my head for a year.
Fast forward to graduation. The two things I have been thinking about most is whether or not I want to go to grad school right away, or begin to look for work. Standard post-graduate issues.

Then I remembered about Americorps.

The more I continued to think about it, the more I was kept saying to myself "why the hell not?" By this point mid-summer I was still going through my options of what I wanted to do. Every day I woke up pretending a different future path. Monday, grad student. Tuesday, teaching English overseas. Wednesday, finding work anywhere, even out of state. Thursday, Americorps. By Friday I would exhaust myself from over thinking it and just worried for no good reason.

From volunteering at Fly Art, I gained an overwhelming sense of achievement from helping the kids and it gave myself something else to think about that wasn't my own problems for a while. Finally, I just decided to go for it and apply. Doing selfless things and feeling good about it was right up Americorps alley. Because I had applied to grad school and was waiting for them to also call me back, that whole month of August seemed incredibly long. I'm talking molasses slow here. The more I sent in information for Americorps, the more I wanted to get in.

Grad school called me back first, and I declined. Not as easily as I just made it sound in that sentence. Since I hadn't heard from Americorps yet I thought about it for an entire month whether or not I should just go to school instead. It certainly would have stopped me from freaking out about the future, especially if I wasn't picked for the Winter 2010 program. Then I would have had to wait until Fall 2011 to get in and I wouldn't know what to do with myself for a whole year waiting. Probably go crazy.

Obviously you know the end of this story though, and if you don't I'm going to have to ask you to read the two previous posts and my little info box, stat. But I'm going to stop myself before this turns into an unnecessary ten page essay. Adios!

So let's start with what this blog is going to be about in a few months. Normally when I mention Americorps to someone, they don' really know what it is, so I compare it to Peace Corps and then they get a familiar idea of what that entails.

Americorps is federal government program that started in 1993. In it, people serve and work for the country in a variety of ways ranging from public education to environmental clean-up. So like Peace Corps in the sense that it is community service goodfunstuff, except that people stay in the United States to work on projects.
There are 3 divisions of Americorps, and the one I applied for was the National Civilian Community Corps or NCCC (N triple C so it's less of a mouthful). To learn more about what the other two programs are, click here!!

In a pinch, the NCCC works like so:
-Only people 18-24 can apply (unless you sign up as a team leader)
-You're sent to one of five regional campuses (California, Iowa, Colorado, Maryland and Mississippi)
-You are on a team of 10-15 people
-You work on about 4-6 projects for ten months
-Each project is different, and you're not set to one place on the campus. You can go anywhere within the region for projects, this includes states that are around your state.

I didn't get to everything about NCCC, but that is the general gist of what I'll be doing come February. I'll post why I applied in my next entry.

Over and out.

Testing...

So to begin, as always with any kind of new social media I try to give myself on the internet...I never can decide straight off what I want my blog to be called or look like. Hence, the delay.

 But aside from my indecisiveness, welcome! I started blogging again mostly because I want friends and family to understand a little bit more about the Americorps program I signed up for, and what exactly I'm doing. I'll even explain later what exactly IS Americorps.

As for what I'm doing now...I have a few months before leaving to Iowa for Americorps, so a majority of my posts will just be thoughts, rants, what-have-you. I did miss writing every so often, so perhaps I'll keep this blog after the program. Who knows? Just enjoy the here and now of it.

Credits to Thunderpanda for the Barlow type I have heavily decorated all over my blog.