FEMA Corps: Groundhog Day

Day 56 - Monday (7), It felt really nice to have today off. Even though we didn't do anything, it felt good to relax.

I slept in pretty late. I've been feeling slightly under the weather and hoping that it doesn't get any worse. But as long as I continue to sleep and take care of myself, there should be no reason to get sick.

We went to the gym today for PT. We stayed about an hour. The gym here in Houston is a considerably smaller than the Austin one. It has less equipment and space to work with. But as least we didn't have to find a whole new gym and pay more money.

I took a shower and did laundry today. It is so much more convenient to do laundry at the hotel instead of going to a laundromat and sitting for a few hours until everyone's clothes is washed and dried. Here, we can do our laundry and go back to our rooms. There's no rush or planning activities around the laundry.

Day 57 - Tuesday (8), Definitely woke up with a stuffy nose, but not as worse as I have had in the pass. I'm only in the early stages of getting sick so if I get enough sleep and take care of myself, then I should be able to avoid the whole getting sick part.

Back to work today bright and early arriving at the office at 7 am. I worked on my media role all day - sending emails, designing a template and filling out that template. It takes longer than expected due to the creative aspect of this role and proofreading everything at least 10 times. So that took a bit of concentration and focus.

We returned to the hotel and chilled. We haven't been doing much in Houston as you can see because it's a big city and it just cost more money. It's also very different from Austin, where you can just take a stroll downtown. It's also slightly harder for us to find cheap things to do, but luckily we've been blessed with free tickets to the zoo and the space center so far.

Everyone stayed in their rooms until dinner time in which we all then congregated into the girls' room. Since there's only one girls room, meaning that Kristina lives with us, our room has turned into the "common area" because people come in here to ask her questions, hang out and it's also where we store the team's food. Not complaining about always having access to food, but sometimes, we have a lack in privacy and personal time due to the constant flow of boys walking in and out of our room.

Day 58 - Wednesday (9), Today was quite a long day for me - 12 hours. I started the first few hours at the office and then left with some co-workers to go on a site visit. We drove about 45 minutes out to the county's sheriff department marine unit. We examined one of their boats, which was damaged by the storms and flooding. There was damaged equipment and rusting had started in some areas of the boat. They took us to multiple sites including the U.S. Coast Guard base where they keep some of their boats tethered. I really enjoyed today's site visit due to the fact that it was interesting and the sergeants we worked with were really nice!

The site visit went on a lot longer than anyone of us anticipated, so I was cutting it close to our ISP, which was scheduled at 5. We're partnering with Volunteer Houston for 9/11 - National Day of Service and Remembrance. We're going to be teaching high school aged students the importance of emergency preparedness.

By the time the ISP meeting ended, I was exhausted. We went back to the hotel, where I ate dinner, took a shower and went to bed early.

Day 59 - Thursday (10), Morning started off slow, but started to pick up a bit as the day dragged on. I started the morning by combing through Twitter and Facebook for media mentions of our team. Got quite a surprise today to see that my church put my thank you note in their biweekly newsletter so I was quite happy with that.

We had two trainings to attend to today- one was a safety/induction briefing and the other ones was on roads, which we already took, but they made us retake it again. After the trainings, I did some more data entries for the rest of the day.

We had a good dinner- it was sort of a taco salad dish. We had lettuce with bean, bell peppers, tomatoes, and salsa. During dinner and as a team, we watched a 20 minutes Ted Talk and discussed that for a bit. We also went over our roles for a presentation that we are doing about disaster preparedness in which we are presenting on Saturday to a group of high school youths.

Day 60 - Friday (11), Woke up today to some amazing thunder and lighting. Even though Texas is in a drought, they still get rain here. It's usually gray and cloudy majority of the day and it could spill buckets of water on you anytime and when it does, it's come down hard.

Was pretty busy at work today- did a lot of printing and filing papers into the correct folders. Took the whole day to do and I'm still not quite finished yet.

We got back around our hotel at 4 pm relaxed for a bit. Some of us wanted to go out so I googled searched cheap things to do and a Elton John Impersonator Concert came up and it was free! A few of us decided to go and the performance was really good! The guy performing the songs had a really nice voice and I don't know much Elton John or his songs, but I really enjoyed it thoroughly.

Day 61 - Saturday (12), Today we were suppose to do our National Day of Service for 9/11. Our team was supposed to present a presentation on why emergency preparedness is important, but with some complications and an unforeseen situation, it was canceled.

We went back to the hotel and ate lunch. We then got ready and drove down to the gym. It felt good to be back after not going for a few days.

After the gym, I spent a decent amount of time on the computer doing some work and personal things. We then got bored of staying in our room so we took a trip to Target to get a few personal things. There was also Mexican restaurant in the same lot so we went there to grab some food. Now looking back, I've realized that I've been eating a lot of Mexican food - apparently our team really likes tacos so we've been out to eat and home-cooked a lot of Mexican food which have all been tasty!

Day 62 - Sunday (13), Today was quite a busy day for me. We started the morning off by going to the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. We spent majority of our time looking at the African and Aztec/Mayan portion of the exhibits. We also stopped by the skeleton exhibits. They had some pretty nice galleries. This museum reminded me a bit of the La Brea Tar Pits in Southern CA and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. I've really have been fascinated by science of all kinds, hence the reason why I spent my entire senior year living in my high school's science department. But by far, my favorite part of science is space so I definitely can't wait to go to the Kennedy Space Center!

We went to another taco place for lunch, Bodega Tacos. I ordered nachos, which was delicious by the way,but it was a huge portion especially for $7, the same amount it would cost for a Chipotle burrito or bowl. It was was roughly the size of a medium mixing bowl.

After that I drove everybody back to hotel and some of us went grocery shopping for the week. This week, I'm going to attempt to make by Dad's drunken noodles in which I have not had for a long time. It's one of my favorite dishes that he makes. Wait a minute, who am I kidding!? I think every dish he makes is fantastic. Sometimes I don't realize how much I miss everything about home such as my parents, home cooking, my bed, my best friend and of course my cat.

After grocery shopping, we went back to the hotel and unloaded all the food into our room. It feel nice to have the cupboards and refrigerator stocked again. I then ran a couple of errands for Kristina. After that, I took Drew to H&M, which was located in the mall. The mall was amazing! Doesn't even hold a candle next to the Vicksburg Mall in which I don't really call a mall anymore. This mall reminded me the Roseville Galleria, but this mall was even bigger with even more stores! It had a lot of the same stores that I shop at back home. Luckily, I managed to get out without spending a single dollar! If this mall is big, then I can't wait to see the mall of America in Minneapolis St. Paul. Hint hint: Corey! Save me a spot to crash at your place! I'm coming to visit! :)

I ate dinner upon arriving home and did some photo editing and movie making on my computer for a couple hours. I also made lunch in advance for work tomorrow and packed my bags. It's pretty late as of right now so I will sign off!

Day 63 - Monday (14), Oh how I love Mondays, the beginning of the week! But just another day closer to October break. Not sure what I'm doing for break yet - I have 3 options so I'm still deciding and figuring out the costs. 1) I'm staying in Texas and hanging out with some my friends from Summit 2; 2) I might go to Oklahoma and visit some family; 3) I'm going back home to California.

Today was just the normal day at work. I inserted some more data into the database, printed pictures, IT, and media.

We left at 3:30 and went back to the hotel. I quickly changed out of uniform and Alex and I went to go get the van fixed at a Firestone. The driver's rear lights were out completely, which isn't very safe, especially in Texas where everyone drives super fast, swerves, and tailgates really closely. We dropped off the car and took a walk. We stopped at a CVS, gas station mart, a custard place in which I order a birthday cake milkshake (it was really good!), and Goodwill. The van took about 3 hours fix which was a pretty long time, but we finally got it fixed, I hope!

We had dinner when we got back. Drew cooked dinner for breakfast and he did really well considering no one helped him at all. We had a team meeting after dinner and discussed a few things that needed to be addressed that was on our agenda.

After that, I played around with a new movie maker software. It's pretty complicated for me so far, but using this new software should become easier once I familiarize myself with were things are and what I want it to do/look like specifically. I then took a shower, made lunch for the next day, and then off to bed!

Day 64 - Tuesday (15), Rough start to this morning - I did not want to wake up, but eventually rolled out 10 minutes after my alarm went off. It was a regular commute and day at work. I was inserting more data into the database and organizing files.

We got off at our usual time 3:30 and we dropped everyone back at the hotel. I had some doctor's stuff to take care of so I did that and then we all went to the gym for PT.

I took a shower and ate dinner after the gym. I spent part of my night working on a slideshow for the end of the year. The slideshow is on my personal time and it's mainly for my team and I's entertainment for the end of the year because I think it would be nice to look back and see all the wonderful times we had together. As I mentioned in my entry for yesterday, this program is new for me so I'm still figuring out how to what it want it to do. Only 3 slides in and it's a little difficult not to lie, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

I apologize that these entries/days are getting repetitive, buts there's really nothing much to our days besides the weekends. The work day itinerary is: get up, eat, drive to work, eat, work, eat, drive back to the hotel, eat, workout, eat, shower, eat again, sleep, and then the next day is Groundhog Day all over again. (In reference to the movie Groundhog Day)