Greetings from Denver

Computer access is hard to come by here. I'm writing from a library run by a Tokyo exchange school. There is some wireless on campus in the middle of the quad in front of a large, open-armed Jesus statue. When training lets out you'll see everyone everyone in the grass kneeling in front of the jesus statue with their laptops. This being said, computer time is few and far-between and I appologize if posts take a while to materialize.
The campus here is incredible. We are located about 10 miles from downtown Denver. Apparently our campus rests on one of the highest points in Denver. It is roughly the size of a city block and looks down on everything. You can see the bell tower from everywhere and when you stand on any of the four sides you look into the valley's of Colorado. The most impressive view, in my opinion is from the west side. You stand next to this South American-looking convent that is was founded by catholics in the 1890s, and you look out look down on rolling valleys and homes that stretch until they reach the base of the Rockies. The rockies look unbelievable. Coming from the Northeast, where you are swallowed by congested neighborhoods and strips malls, to the west is refreshing. It feels like you went from drving with the top up to being in a convertible.
The program itself has been fairly boring as well. We spent hours reviewing a rule book that legitimately could have been covered in twenty minutes. It's been a decent amount of repetitive in-processing stuff. Still, the program itself sounds incredible. We legitimately are given the oppurtunity to spend five weeks in four different locations, not including Denver. It sounds liek there is nearly a 100% chance that our first spike will be in the Gulf Coast, specifically New Orleans, Houston, Austin or Galveston Islands.
That being said I now have a tough decision to make. At dinner on Tuesday my friend convinced me to go to the Wild Fire meeting with him. I honestly went into with almost no intention of joining. [The reasons: It's means that you will spend three of your four spikes in Colorado. The areas we stay are remote and therefore I will meet very few new people during these spikes. One of the reasons I set out to do Americorps NCCC is that I wanted to spend a lot of time in the Gulf.] The meeting was lead by a team that is currently serving in the wildfire program. Their were also some people there who had served in the past as well as a few people in the forest ranger service. They were all ridculously haggard. The epitome of Mountain Men. They had Yukon Cornelious beards and their eyes were sunk 2 inches into their faces. They were all jacked. They told of their rigorous daily schedule and explained that we would still be getting to serve our first spike in the Gulf. At one point my friend Stephen asked if any of them could relate a story that was particularly intense. From the shadows behind us we heard the words "2002". We whipped our heads around and there stood a large, leatherfaced man in a park ranger uniform. I'm not making this up. He sais something like, "Sorry... never got the memo about the Wildfire meeting. Grunt. I'm [name left blank]. 2002." He paused again. (this dude had an impressive mullet hidden under a hat that said Hellfighter or something stupid like that) "The americorps team that I trained saw twelve fires that year, saw fatalities. I'm not here to bullshit you, this is one of the most dangereous jobs in the country, that Americorps team saw a plane get it's wing cracked off and smash into the forest in front of em. and it's hard work, if you don't want have your face burned off you're gonna rise at the crack of dawn and bust your tails all day long"
Everyone is just silently staring at this guy.
Finally our Until Leader, who had spent the last 45 minutes trying to convince us to try out, clearly pissed at already having to put out fires in the first meeting, told us that it was no more dangerous or more work than any other Americorps job and that there had never been a serious injury among corps memebers.
Some other questions answered by the man in the back invloved the following:
When asked if a girl of smaller stature would have a chance at making the team he relayed the story of a 4 foot 10, 90 pound girl who he had had on his team. According to Wikipedia that makes her a legal midget. According to this guy she out-hustled a team of 15 hulking football body builders who were also on her team.
When I asked if we would ever be doing work outside of Colorado he responded: "Oh yeah, I've had teams that do all kinds of stuff, NASA's spacecraft incedent in the early 2000's (?), went with a team to Florida, spent five weeks searchin the wilderness. Mostly for bodies and parts."
I didn't ask for clarification.
Needless to say, other more sane members of the meeting swayed me towards the wildfire team. I left the meeting feeling completely unsure as to what choice to make. I am still unsure. The physical tryout is Sunday morning. They select 27 people from the pot of applicant. If i go to the tryout on Sunday, I officially enroll myself in the wildfire program. Whatever, we'll see.
Anyway, tomorrow we have a scavenger hunt in Denver and then a hike somewhere around here. I'm going to try to upload some photos before 10PM mountain time tomorrow.
Any questions feel free to ask, I'm interested to hear Hank's first post, spoke to him once and sounds like some aspects of our service are identical and some are polar oppisites.
Thanks for reading people.