CLE and Training!

Here I am working the desk again at 5 am on a training day, but that's okay. I can't lose ALL my hours for this 2 weeks of training. So, I thought I'd bring you another early morning rant as it's been awhile since I've done one of those.

I last left off after going rock climbing and on the high ropes course. The next morning we woke up nice and early to head to First Street (the residence hall on UM-Flint campus) to load the bus with those RAs and head to Ann Arbor. UM Ann Arbor sent one of their awesome M-busses to take us to and from the training camp so that was pretty sweet.

The M-Bus!!!

By the way, the bus driver was a maniac on the highway, we got to Ann Arbor in record time!

CLE is the acronym for Community Learning Experience. It is a 2 day training camp held on the Ann Arbor campus for all the Ann Arbor RAs. 3 years ago, First Street and Riverfront started going to the camp to get the same kind of training as we are also Michigan RAs. UM Ann Arbor campus is HUGE so it is expected that there are about 400 RAs and they were all in the building with us during that time. We stayed at Bursley Hall, one of the biggest residence halls in the country (that's what one of the campus safety people told us) and it was HUGE! I will say that. 

After settling in and practicing our skit we made up, we had the opening ceremony. During the opening ceremony of CLE, there is a roll call portion where each residence hall gets in front of the group and performs their skit to show off a little about their hall. Some jabs are thrown between competing halls, they are usually pretty hilarious and say something about the job experience (drinking residents, loud people, etc were shown in some of them). Riverfront rewrote the words to "Ghostbusters" to fit some of the things that shave happened around our hall and went over pretty well. We got lots of compliments and were called the Ghostbusters for the duration of the camp. 

That night after dinner and other meetings with our halls, they held a Karaoke night. And it was a lot of fun. Everyone really got into it, and we aren't afraid to embarrass ourselves in front of the others because no one is perfect. The 5 guys on our staff went up to sing "Bye Bye Bye" by N*Sync which was pretty hilarious. A few of us, I included, went up to "fan-girl" and scream over the boys. It was great fun. After we retired to some Euchre before getting some sleep for the next day.

The Boys singing Karaoke. (Yes, I have finally gotten into instagramming)

The next morning we were up nice and early for a packed day. On the 2nd day of camp, they put you together with different halls for different team building activities while your directors are away. Basically you have to figure it out on your own with your team. We were put with Martha Cook and Northwood dorms for the duration of the day. In the morning, there were a set of stations we all moved between including a balloon toss, survivor game (order things by importance), alphabet game (kind of like catch phrase), grid (where you have to find your way across the grid in an unknown route), and empty spaces (where you have people blindfolded and you have to put them into certain shapes in a time period).

After lunch was the crazy task. It was kind of like the Amazing Race. Each large group was split into groups of 5 with people from each dorm in each group. These smaller groups are given tasks to complete. There are some tasks that are required while others are not but give your group as a whole points. Some tasks stayed in the building while others too people all over North Campus. My group had 2 photo tasks. One was to visit the Arthur Miller Theater and get a picture of the group by it. There was a bonus if you got a picture of what was playing. The other photo was to get a picture by "the gift from the class of 1961." That one took a little Googling since there was no info other than the line "the gift from the class of 1961." It ended up being a statue that we had to find. It ended up being in a construction zone. I was happy to see a bit of campus while I was there. That night was BINGO night where we all won prizes. I came home with 3 t-shirts!

My group at the Arthur Miller Theater (the other member was taking the picture)

It's not ALL fun and games though. We had individual hall meetings to go over expectations of the job, expectations of each other, and getting to know each other on a deeper level. I have to say that the group of RAs here at Riverfront are awesome, we are all fighters in our own way. Learning some of their back stories that I didn't know before gave me a whole new understanding of the people around me. And we are all able to laugh at ourselves and make everything as fun as we can, which just helps for enjoyable times. I'm happy for my "Riverfront family" and know that though we will all have hard times this year, that we will also have each other's backs.

During one of our individual meetings, Jessica was writing with her toes to all our laughter.

Tuesday morning we all packed up and headed home. As we were getting on our M-bus, people were moving in! How crazy. All the way home we sang Disney songs, popular songs and even sang a rousing chorus of The Star Spangled Banner. Getting home, we met some of our own campus safety, then took the afternoon off to recuperate from the long days we have been having for those first few days.

Yesterday was a lot of general "job training," the kind you would expect. We went over the rules, the guidelines for putting on our programs and started to plan those and worked on the duty calendar for the fall semester...something that took longer than expected...before eating some dinner made by some of my coworkers and heading off for the night.

Yes, training has long days, I go right back to it right after I'm off work at 9. But there are lots of laughter and fun to go with it. Here's what my schedule looks like for the coming days:

• Training all day today
• Tomorrow I head to Lapeer to see some friends as I get the day off for having my CPR and emergency response certifications.
• Saturday I am hanging with Kevin as I haven't seen him much. 
• Sunday is my friend Natasha's baby shower. I haven't seen her in forever, and she's having a girl. I'm excited :)
• Monday, all us RAs head up to Sara's (my boss') parents house in Mesick.
• Tuesday we are tubing the Manistee River!!!
• We come home Wednesday and spend Thursday and Friday preparing for move in.
• The 1st/2nd (Saturday and Sunday) everyone moves in!
• The 3rd is "Le Epic Day of Shopping" with Molly and whoever else joins us to get everything I need for school and my apartment.
• And the 4th, school starts (except I don't have class until the 5th)

I'm one busy girl! I'm sure there are more of these rants to come. I'll leave this here, have a GREAT Thursday!

Music

I just got the newest David Cook CD off Amazon for like $3 so I've been listening to it all morning because I can!

P.S. I had to buy this book because it cracked me up. Basically it is a list of people who get on our nerves. I probably WOULDN'T punch someone in the face, BUT sometimes its nice to agree with other people when it comes to people who deserve a punch sometimes. A good book for a nice chuckle.