Here Safe and Sound

Well everyone I got here to Vicksburg all safe and sound with only a few minor glitches.  My traveling yesterday was an interesting experience for me.  It's the first time that I'd ever had the misfortune of not getting to my connecting flight on time.  I arrived to my connecting flight's gate and they wouldn't let me on my flight because they'd already given my seat away to someone else :(.  But no worries I was able to get on the next flight about an hour later and I got to Jackson no problem and my luggage didn't even get lost! Winning! 

My arrival to Vicksburg was quite interesting.  I was met at the airport by an entourage of people all headed the same place and got to take my first ride on a 15 passenger van! (The first of what I am guessing are many more to come.)  We took our just about an hour drive to Vicksburg in the van without a hitch.  Got to meet some great people already!  It's quite the diverse group of people that I met even on the van ride back with 6 TL's (short for Team Leader [be ready for a lot of acronyms because the Federal Government loves them]).  The group in the van alone was myself with individuals from the U.S. Virgin Islands, Washington State, North Carolina, Michigan, and New Jersey.  It's wonderful that I can meet so many people already! 

When I got to campus it was quick in and drop off my stuff and have some dinner! FEMA Corps Style dinner of pasta and sauce self serve.  As soon as I got done eating I was able to get my key to my room and bring all my stuff up and get unpacked and moved in.  Below is an image of what I first saw arriving to campus.  Can you say traditional Southern building!?

I started training today.  It was the first of about a month of training.  Luckily we have the weekends off to do as we please for the most part.  Today was filled with in processing and getting uniforms that we have to wear every day while training or in the office and some training.  We also began to learn some of the million acronyms that we will end up needing to know throughout the year.  UL, STL, TL, CM, PCR, and many many more to come.  Eventually I will update ya'll with a complete list of what they are.  I am as expected inevitably going to pick up some of the southern accent. 

I got to venture into downtown Vicksburg for the first time today and went for dinner at the Southern Mississippi River Museum and meet some locals.  The Southern hospitality as they call it was clearly evident and I look forward to my time here in the city.  It's very different from any of the cities i've ever been to.  I look forward to going out and exploring this weekend and seeing a Jazz band perform (for free!!). 

Well I've summed up most of what I've done the last few days and I need to get up early tomorrow.  5:45 a.m. comes very early!  Tomorrow morning we are doing our Baseline PT to see where we start out at for the year and start to set goals for ourselves.  We have to run 1.5 miles in the quickest time that we can and then also do as many push ups as we can within a minutes time and then as many sit-ups in a minutes time as we can.  This ought to be interesting as I haven't run in a very long time.  Everyone wish me luck.  I'll update everyone more once I have time this weekend.  I also learned an important term: FEMA Flexible.  I'm going to come to really embody this term as things change all the time.