Day 29 - Tuesday (11), Woke up at 5:30 due to some really amazing roars of thunder and an amazing light show. It was really cool for the part that I saw in my window before I fell back asleep again.
It was lightly raining when I woke up for breakfast and it was mainly dark for majority of the morning and cloudy in the afternoon. Thunder and lighting looks really cool here.
We had another day of FEMA Academy. One of our instructors brought us Shipley's Doughnuts! I also drank some caffeine and ingested more sugar than I care to admit to help keep me awake during training. It worked, but I cannot wait to get to Austin and get me my Starbucks coffee! And go to Target! I think Austin will be more convenient for me when it comes to shopping.
We are really starting to get things in gear for Austin next week. It's getting a little chaotic with all our deadlines coming up. Of course, we all still have to pack but probably not until next Monday, but we're getting all our paperwork and forms ready. That's how I spent majority of my night filling out and submitting my media paperwork. Still got a paper to write for my media role, but also helping my team out by designing our presentation on our spike project for a briefing in front of our Unit Leader.
Day 30 - Wednesday (12), We finished session #1 of FEMA Academy today. Tomorrow is part two. The academy took up majority of the day and for the rest of the day, I hung out with friends and worked on more paperwork. Stayed up way too late once again.
We had a team meeting about our trip to Austin in which I'm really excited about. There are so many great opportunity and things to do in Austin. Besides getting my Starbucks, which is very high at #1 spot in my to do list, I really want to explore the city and possibly attend a football game. We are currently still in preparation mode for Austin next week.
Day 31 - Thursday (13) - Today was the same as yesterday. We had FEMA Academy from 8-4:30. I spent the majority of my night working on my team's briefing presentation for Austin. And then I drove a few people of Wal-Mart and Dairy Queen and then resumed working on the presentation.
There's a basketball tournament this weekend so I signed up! I'm the only girl on the team so hopefully I can live up to expectations! I did slightly tweak my knee earlier this week so I'm going to be taking it easy for a couple days and stretching it out.
I stayed up way to late tonight considering we have PT in the morning because we didn't want to do it in the afternoon. I'm going to take that opportunity to stretch out my knee muscles and work on upper body and core muscles. I didn't realize how much I like going to the gym until I got here so I'm considering about getting a membership at our gym by my house.
Day 32 - Friday (14), We spent the day doing online classes for FEMA. That took me about 8 hours to finish 4 courses. Our instructor was really nice today and bought the whole class and the class next door pizza! When we tell people we live on $4.75 a day, they are just utterly shock on how we manage to survive. I thought the food budget was going to be challenging, but when we combine our money together for the week, we actually are able to purchase a lot more food than you think. Majority of the time we'll fill up at least 2 grocery carts full of food.
We went to dinner after classes ended. The food quality has been improving drastically because I think the operations staff put in a complaint and had a talk with them. So far, we had not had any undercook rice yet! And the seasoning has also improved slightly.
A few friends and I went to grab some fro yo after dinner and I spent the rest of the night working on our debriefing presentation in my friends, Kaitlynn and Ashley's room. I think I spent more time laughing/crying and having fun than I did work. They are really funny so I really enjoy hanging out with the two and I can't wait to go to Texas together!
Day 33 - Saturday (15), Today was a relatively easy day. We had some excel and outlook classes. We need excel to make charts and sort data for our project and outlook is the main email communication.
We got off about 4 pm, and took some boys to buy Xbox games and spent a good hour playing Risk with a couple other friends. Then a spent about a half hour just chatting with some friends. It was a pretty good day, but like always, there's always a few bumps in the road.
I also spent part of today working on our presentation. We're not done yet so that scares me and I still have to prepare my portion of the speech. So I'm a little stressed at this point and it is a professional presentation so I want to do really good. Plus we still have so much things on our to do list before we leave on Tuesday. For me that includes washing laundry/bedding and packing. I'm really worried that I will have space issues and not be able to fit everything in. I don't intend to leave a lot behind.
Day 34 - Sunday (16), Today started off a little slow. Slept in until 10, went to lunch, played some basketball in the gym.
After basketball ended, it was work, work, work. It was crunch time. I worked for an hour on my speech for tomorrow's briefing and the presentation. We had a team meeting for about 2 hours to prepare the team for tomorrow's briefing. We get to go first because we're Summit 1 and then Summit 2, Summit 3, and so on. I'm really nervous and I don't want to mess up. It's a really professional presentation and we want to make a good impression on our unit leader and our region director.
After the meeting, I stayed behind for another two hours finishing the presentation and making it look professional and clean. I then spent about an hour packing my red spike bag that I'm going to take with me and the black box that I'm leaving behind. I still have to pack my Nike duffel tomorrow but it's 2 am and I need to sleep. We have to get up at 6:15 tomorrow for PT. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day, but hopefully it will be an easy day after our presentation.
Day 35 - Monday (17), We started the day off early, but right. We played ultimate frisbee for PT this morning. I'm really starting to like playing ultimate more often, but I find it slightly challenging for me to defend or catch sometimes due to my height. I can't always jump and catch or knock it out of someone's hands. I took a quick shower after PT and starting prepping for our briefing.
I got 4 hours of sleep last night so I was purely running on adrenaline and coffee this morning. We presented our briefing to our Unit Leader and a couple other people. We did really well and I was pleasantly surprised at how well our team pulled it together.
After the briefing, I literally spent the rest of the day packing. I repacked, unpacked, then repacked about 10 times trying to rearrange the clothes so they would fit better and I could fit more clothes into each bag. I finally finished getting everything into the bags about 6 pm. I still have some last minute things to pack such as toothbrush, toothpaste, and etc.
It's getting really late and I need to wake up early tomorrow and be functional when I drive. This is the last blog from Vicksburg for a while and the rest will be from Austin, Texas.
I also apologize for the lack of pictures in this blog due to that this was a busy work and preparation week. I will definitely have more for you next week! Thank you for all your support!
2 comments:
What do you learn about in FEMA academy?
I told you not to overpack!!!
What will you do in Austin? What was the presentation on??
Yay for Shipley'a donuts!!
In FEMA Academy, we learned how to do a lot of paperwork stuff, input forms on the computer, grant writing, and etc. That's basically what we're doing for the next 3 weeks in the JFO.
I didn't overpack! I didn't know that we had to lug 3 textbooks of PA materials with us everywhere! I might be bringing some clothes home though. Especially the summer clothes.
Each person has a speciality role on our team so we each had to present our goals and responsibilities for this round. And also a description of what we were going to be working on in Austin
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