Dev Does NCCC: Training and homesickness

I think I've figured out why they call it "homesick." It's not just sadness, not just wishing you were home. It's a very real ache in your chest, gnawing in your gut, swelling in your throat. The thought, "I want to go home," consumes you.

That's not to say that I'm constantly miserable. In fact, most of the time I'm really enjoying myself. I've clicked with a lot of people here and I think the work will be really rewarding and interesting. The other day a group of us went for a three-hour hike, and it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

The pictures don't begin to do it justice. Although we're due for snow tomorrow and this Louisianarkansan isn't ready for that, I absolutely love it here.

We had a training session today called "invitation to serve." We basically talked about different types of service, what inspired us to serve, whether one sort of service is more important than another. I might go into it in more detail later, but I'll just say that it really opened my eyes. We all come from so many different backgrounds, and have so many reasons for why we're doing what we're doing, but we've all reached this same point and have a lot of the same goals.

We've also been changing "temporary teams" every couple days, shuffling team members and team leaders. I'm really happy to say I've liked all my team leaders so far, and that pretty much everyone seems really nice and able to get along. I'm eager to really get started.

At the same time, now and again--when training is over and I sit in my room during free time, or I'm walking alone from one place to the next--I'm swallowed whole by the overwhelming urge to book the next flight home. I miss my family, particularly my mom, my sisters, my nephew. I miss going to sleep curled up in the arms of my fiance. I miss my dog running to greet me and being so happy I'm home at the end of the day. I miss my bearded dragon falling asleep on my chest. I want to go home, and I want it badly.

I've never been away from my family for any real length of time. I guess I'm just not handling it too well.

I'm pretty introverted by nature--while I need a certain level of interaction throughout the day, I go crazy without some quiet alone time. Unfortunately for me, alone time tends to coincide with homesick time. I feel like just about everyone else seems to be adjusting to it, and I'm just not. When I'm okay I'm great, but when I'm not okay it's horrible. Calling my guy and my mom is helpful some, but hearing their voices also makes me want to be with them.

I'm sure I just need some time and I'll get used to it, if not get over it. And most of the day, everything is pretty fantastic and I'm glad to be here. For now, I guess, I just have to keep walking the line and pushing through. I know that in the end, it'll be more than worth it.

Dev Does NCCC: Getting started

The last two days have been exhausting. And exciting. And wonderful, and awful.

The start of the bad stuff was my fault: I got less than an hour and a half of sleep before I had to leave for my flight. I didn't finish packing until four in the morning even though I knew I had to be up by six. The fact that I was drowsy through the whole first day was my doing entirely.

No lie: I did a fair bit of crying the first day. I cried at the airport when Byron (my fiance) kissed me goodbye, and then I cried for a good while on the airplane. I held it together after that until bedtime, when I called Byron to say goodnight. Totally lost my composure for 15 minutes straight--I'm really glad my roomie was in the shower.

Most of the rest of the bad was circumstantial. I came up to my room at lunch today with a friend (I'm making friends! Yay!) to deal with some paperwork stuff. While there I realized my roof was leaking a little bit onto the heater next to my bed. It was a slow leak, so I wasn't too concerned; I went downstairs to get some towels and tell the person in charge about the situation. I grabbed two towels, headed upstairs to find out what the problem was (the room above me had a pipe break in their heater, but the repairman told me he was fixing it), then went back to my room.

Thirty feet away from my door, I could hear the leak; it now sounded like raining.

Apparently the repairman didn't think to shut off the water before he tried to fix the pipe; in a matter of just a couple minutes, my bedding was soaked.

They got my roommate and me moved into a different room, but because we were dealing with that we were late to our uniform issue. As a result, all my tops are one size too big (they ran out of my size), and I don't have several of the things I need (such as a hard hat etc.).

Enough of the bad; let's move on to everything that's been fantastic so far.

I took pictures of the view from campus on my camera, but I don't have a card reader on me, so you'll just have to wait to see them. All I have access to are the pictures I took on my phone--I'll get some of the good stuff tomorrow! But take my word for it--the view is amazing. From the cafeteria, you can see 200+ named peaks. The campus where we're staying is at the highest point of the Mile-High City, and the view is absolutely breathtaking.

And everybody here is so nice. I made a friend in the Denver airport within minutes of stepping off the plane; I've talked to several people since that I really seemed to click with, and have already made plans with. One of the things I was really nervous about was being surrounded by strangers, but it feels less and less like that with every hour.

I also seriously lucked out in the roommate department. Araina is hilarious and super-sweet.

I think I'm really going to enjoy it in NCCC. We're still sort of in the processing stage, so time will tell, but I'm more excited now than ever to really get started.

Dev Does Goodbyes

It's one in the morning, and I have a plane to catch in 8 hours.

I've always been a procrastinator, but when it comes to packing I tend to do it way early. Not this time, though. I'm leaving for the airport in under 6 hours, and my carryon is empty. My suitcase is open and only partially full. My bed has clothes and miscellaneous... stuff, strewn all across it.

It's not that I'm inherently disorganized or that I'm unable to pack. It's just that I feel like, once I'm all done and ready to go, I'll have to start saying my goodbyes.

That's something I'm really bad at, and always have been. I consider myself a fairly confident person, and sure of myself, but the other night when my nephew wrapped his arms around me and cried, I felt all my resolve draining. When he said "I don't want you to go," over and over, I found myself thinking, I don't want to go either.

I do want to go; I just don't want to leave.

Three feet away from me, my fiance Byron plays a computer game. We've lived together for over a year and a half, and have spent only a few nights apart since. How am I going to sleep, night after night, in an unfamiliar bed without my cuddle bud? How am I going to look him in the eye tomorrow morning and know that I'm going on a huge adventure without him?

The hardest goodbye though, I think, is going to be my dog. My nephew is sad that I'm leaving but knows I'm coming home for Christmas; my fiance was the one who encouraged me to chase this dream in the first place. My family and friends understand and support my decision to do this thing.

But my dog?

Max isn't going to know that I left to get things done for America. He's not going to understand that I'm... building trails or keeping up national parks or providing disaster relief, or whatever I end up doing. How can I explain to him that I still love him and am not leaving forever?

All Max will know is that I'm not here.

I know he'll be thrilled when I come home for the holidays... but what about two weeks later, when I leave for another 7 1/2 months? He'll be upset all over again. When I come back for good, I know he'll be happy and get over it... but I hate knowing what I'm going to put him through. He's going to be upset and hurt and confused, and that's going to be my doing.

When I moved into an apartment across town and couldn't keep him for awhile, I left him at my mom's house. Even though I came by to visit pretty often, she told me that Max would lay next to my old bedroom door for hours, or wander around the house whining and looking for me, or stare out the window. How can I knowingly put him through that?

I'm going to go to Denver, and Max is going to be fine, and my family's going to be proud of me. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy and be rewarded by my time served in Americorps. But the next few hours until I leave? They're going to be torture.

Intro: Dev does the waiting game.

You probably know me; if not, you will soon enough.

I'll skip some of the boring stuff and get to the meat: this Thursday, 10/24/13, I'll be heading 950 miles northwest of home to serve my country in a less-than-conventional way.

If you've managed to find my blog, you're probably at least a little familiar with Americorps NCCC (if only because I won't stop talking about it). I'll have training in Denver, then spend 9-odd months doing service projects throughout the six-state area. If there's a national/natural disaster, I may go outside even that broad section of country to help wherever help is needed.

I've had a lot of people ask, "Why are you doing this?"

The answer's not an easy one because there are so many reasons. Because I learned about this years ago and have always wanted to do it (cop-out). Because I want to put off finding a "real job" or going to college by another year (the ultimate cop-out). Because I have a deep-seated need to travel, to have experiences, to "do things." 

Ultimately, I guess the truest answer is that I want to help.

Getting past the "why" leads us to the what, as in, "Devon, you leave the day after tomorrow, what are you doing to get ready?"

The unfortunate answer is, so far, not a dang thing. I kinda started to pack, in the form of shoving things into my suitcase that I need to remember to pack later. I almost started to pick out which clothes I'm bringing; I sat and started a blog instead.

Oops.

This is all just finally starting to feel real to me. I was supposed to leave a couple weeks ago, but with the government shutdown, I was delayed. Since that happened, I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. While I know nothing will likely happen in the next couple days to delay or cancel my plans (again), I can't help but be a little bit nervous about it. I'm the unfortunate sort who expects it to rain on picnic day despite clear skies, only because she's having a picnic.

That's one of the eighty zillion things I plan to work on in the next year or so. In the next hour or so, though, I really need to work on the packing.