Today was a normal day at work, with the exception of one of our bosses bringing in bagels to work. People are really generous here and really seem to enjoy bringing in food for us. It's probably due to the fact that every time we tell them we live of of $4.75 a day for food, their jaws always drop. We have gotten doughnuts, pizza, bagels, vegetables from people's garden, candy, and much more.
We got off our at the normal time, and since I was really tired from this weekend, I took around a hour and a half nap that was really refreshing. We had dinner and then had our weekly team meeting.
Day 85 - Tuesday (6), Today was a short day for us, we got off at 2:00 pm instead of 3:30 because we are going to the Houston Zoo again! I got to see some animals this time that I was unable to see last time because they were sleeping in their nest or just too far away to see.
During our trip at the zoo, I learned that we might be going to Charleston, South Carolina due to the most recent flood. We could be leaving whenever or not at all. But we will find out later.
Day 86 - Wednesday (7), Today was the fun day in which I had to go to urgent care! But I'm ok! I did something stupid and careless last night that resulted in me smacking the back of my head on a nightstand. It was not one of my prouder moments and I'm surprise that something like that didn't happen earlier.
I did CT scans just to make sure it wasn't anything serious. And it wasn't anything that serious regarding the overall structure/function of my skull and brain. But the gift in which I got in return for my actions besides a huge bump in the back of my head was that I have a contusion and a minor concussion. But besides that, everything is all good! Nothing too big that I can't deal with.
We had a pizza party at work today. I have never seen so much pizza in my entire life. Liz, is our new boss that we got on Monday and she's the one that also brought us bagels. She had been really nice to our team and enjoys feeding us.
Our team learned today after work that we are not going to SC this week. So this means we get fall break! So I can take off to OKC this Thursday night!
I took a nap when I got home from work to rest my head and then I spent the rest of the night packing. I'm pretty stoked to go to OKC!
Day 87 - Thursday (8), Today was a very quiet day at work. Majority of our team was either out on a site visit or in a conference call. I fell into neither one of those categories.
Today went by semi-slow for me. I couldn't do much at work today because I couldn't stare at a computer screen longer than a few minutes without getting a headache. I would have to look away every so often. I ended up doodling or trying to entertain myself in some way.
We left work 15 minutes early so I could change out of my work clothes and catch my flight to OKC. Security was easy and so was finding my gate. We departed 20 minutes late because our plane arrived a little late.
I landed a little after 7 pm which was our original arrival time despite leaving late. Finding a way out of the terminal gates was easy, I just had to walk straight forward. I met my Uncle Dan and Aunt Stacy on the other side. It was so nice to see them again! We went to Chipotle for dinner and then headed towards their house. They have a beautiful house and two really nice dogs! One of their dogs, which is a 8 month chocolate lab, is huge! He would always want to play with me, I was just trying not to get tackled by him!
We spent the evening just chatting and waiting for my cousin Sara to come home from work. It was really nice to see Sara again after 4 years! We only saw each other for like a minute because she had to get ready for bed because she still has school tomorrow. I went to bed around 11:30 and it felt so nice to have a bed and a room to myself. I can roll around however much I want and have my own privacy.
Day 88 - Friday (9), I'm so glad to be officially on break! It felt so nice to finally sleep in. I woke up at 8:15 due to the rain outside. Stacy is working and my cousins are at school, so we'll see what today has in store for us and can't wait to see them all!
Dan and I went to Starbucks and took a walk around a nature park nearby. We had a good chat catching up on some stuff. He then took me downtown for a tour. Downtown OKC is made up of multiple districts. There's a Automotive District, Asian, Boathouse, Brick, Art District, and a lot more. We processed to the art district where we went inside an art museum to look at the Chihuly Art. It was really cool and hard to believe all that was made out of glass! (See pics below). We saw part of a video of how some pieces were made and it looks extremely long, tedious, and dangerous.
We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the Asian District. I had vegetable chow fun and it was really good! I missed eating Chinese food. There a Chinese restaurant about 15 minutes away from our house that I loved to eat at so I was happy to get Chinese again. We also stopped by the Asian market after lunch and got ingredients to make spring rolls for later.
Dan and I then went to pick up Sara from school and we ran a few errands together. We got supplies for a project that Sara is working on and we stopped by the grocery to pick up some dinner supplies. We had a bonfire later that night and cooked hot dogs. It was really nice to be able to sit outside and chat with them. When Kendall and Kelsey arrived, we made s'mores together. It reminded me of those nights back in LA when my cousins and I were all together, playing and having bonfires on the beach. I really missed those times spent with them. We ended our night watching some TV in their home theater!
Day 89 - Saturday (10), Woke up at 8:30 this morning and went to get Krispy Kreme with Dan and Kendall for breakfast. I hug out with the girls a little bit this morning and we all headed downtown. We went to a botanical garden which was pretty cool because it was located inside this big cylindrical greenhouse building. It had a bunch of plants as well as a few birds and spiders. We also headed to a pumpkin festival that was right next to the gardens and took a nice walk through it. It was more for little kids and families, but it was still fun!
After the pumpkin festival, we headed to the Dust Bowl, a bowling alley. The alley was unlike others I've been to. The alley was semi-fancy. It had a bar off to the side so majority of people were watching the football game. It wasn't crowded where we were at all, we were the only ones bowling. I did really bad at the beginning and I mean really bad. I rolled 5 gutter balls within 4 round, but towards the end, I picked it up and redeemed myself a bit.
We headed back to the house and we chilled for a bit before heading back out. We went to Hobby Lobby to get some supplies for the girl's Halloween costumes. While Dan and Stacy were out at a dinner, the girls and I did more Halloween shopping. Sara, Kelsey, and I made some rounds to the Halloween store, Spirit. We also went to a thrift shop for more Halloween clothes and to Sprouts to get a few pumpkins.
When we arrived at home, we did the Bean Boozled Challenge. If you know Harry Potter, you know what that is. It's basically good and horrible flavored jelly beans. There is a spinner that you spin and whatever it lands on, you have to eat that flavor. But the trick is, that whatever you land on has two different flavors, but the same color. For example, chocolate pudding and dog poop are both brown. If the spinner lands on that one, you choose a brown one and hope it isn't dog poop. Some of them were nasty and some weren't as bad as I thought. The worse one I got was moldy cheese, and it was disgusting.
After the jelly bean challenge, we put a couple small pizzas in the oven and watched a movie. Towards the end, Dan and Stacy returned from their dinner and watched it with us. After the movie, Kelsey and watched her favorite TV show, Gotham. I've only seen a couple episodes with her and I've liked it so far, but I'm still really confused on what it's about, but I'll catch up on Netflix.
Day 90 - Sunday (11), I slept in pretty late this morning, probably around 10:30. For lunch, I taught Uncle Dan how to make spring rolls with the supplies we picked up from the Asian market. We prepared the tofu and cut up the vegetables, which go inside the spring rolls. Then we made Asian peanut butter dipping sauce. I think he enjoyed it.
After lunch, we went to Cabelas, an outdoor store. Uncle Dan had to get a dehydrator for his meats, he hunts. We then browsed around the shop and I was very lost. Dan likes to hunt so when we were looking at guns, I knew nothing about them.
After Cabelas, Kelsey and I watched no one of Gotham, in the home theater until dinner time. Uncle Dan made dinner tonight, eggplant parmesan, which was good as usual and always a favorite of mine. He used to always make it for me when I used to visit him and Stacy every summer when my cousins were over. We then dropped Kelsey back at her mom's house which was a little over a hour away. The place where they live is very, very rural. It has like almost nothing there. It reminds me of the county movies with barely anything and only a few stores.
Day 91 - Monday (12), Got a good sleep in today also. When I woke up, I had the house to myself. Sara was at school and Dan and Stacy were both at work. While they were gone, I did laundry and watched some soccer on my phone.
When they got home, Dan and Stacy took me to their favorite sushi place. It was the first time I went to a all sushi restaurant. I would have sushi at Christmas and holidays when relatives were over but it was my first time at a restaurant. I struggled a bit to eat the sushi cleanly at first because I usually bite it in half and/or use a fork, but using chopsticks and biting it in half made the middle fall out, making a mess. I also didn't want to use my hand so I just starting eating the whole thing so the middle didn't fall out.
After sushi, we went back to Cabelas to just browse around again and look at some clothing. We returned to the house and played with the dogs for a but until Sara returned home from work. Sara and I watched a movie before going to bed.
Day 92- Tuesday (13), Today, Stacy worked from home and Dan had a business trip. After Dan left for the airport, Stacy and I went out to downtown OKC and grabbed some lunch at a cafe. It was a pretty cool looking cafe and had a really tasty looking menu. It has quite a few vegetarian options and I couldn't decide what I wanted, but the waitress recommend the avocados wrap so I ended up ordering that and it was really delicious.
Stacy took me for another tour through downtown and all the districts to get another look. We stopped by the OKC Memorial for the bombing that occurred in 1995. We walked through the memorial and looked at all the chairs that represent the 168 victims that died due to the attack. We also went inside the memorial museum. It was really neat to read and learn about what happened. The whole process leading up to the attack, the attack itself and the rescuing of the victims, the arrest made after the bombing, and collecting evidence and all the court trials and etc. I never knew about the OKC bombing, it was something that had never been taught to me in my US history class and so I learned quite a lot about the bombing. The memorial was a little depressing on how detailed and descriptive they were about the entire attack, so I had to skim over some of the placards because it was way to detailed, especially since I was learning it for the very first time. And this year celebrated 20 years since the 1995 attack.
We went home after the memorial and I relaxed for a little while before Stacy drove me to the airport. Getting through the security, finding my gate, and boarding was really easy. My gate was directly across from security so I sat there for a hour before boarding. It was a short hourish flight. While on the flight, I started reading a bit more, trying to learn about the OKC attack.
I got picked up by my teammates at the airport. I returned to my hotel, unpacked, and got everything ready for work tomorrow. I wish I could have stayed at Dan and Stacy's longer, but good things have to come to an end eventually, but I always really have such a great time when visiting them. They are one of the most nicest and generous people I have know and I have always enjoyed visiting them.
Day 93 - Wednesday (14), Today was our first day back at work. It was a little rough waking up. But today went by pretty quick considering we knew we only had a 3 day work week.
After work, we went to the store to get dinner supplies and other groceries for the rest of this week. I picked up a few boxes of cornstarch for my learning activity tonight.
We had our team meeting today. We covered a few things. We're not going to SC after all because they have enough to teams there and it's pretty chaotic because FEMA hasn't assessed the entire situation yet so they don't know where to station people. So majority of the team's there aren't doing any work yet because FEMA can't assign duties until they evaluate what they needs to be done. We might possibly be going to SC next round because that should be the start of when the Public Assistance role kicks in. PA always comes in after the disaster so it makes sense that they don't need us right now and plus our POCs in Houston wanted us to stay because we're doing good job.
After we finished the points on our agenda, I did my learning activity. I did the cornstarch and water experiment teaching them about non-Newtonian liquids. This was an experiment that my Dad always did with me and I thought it was always fascinating how it works. If you apply force to the liquid, it was get hard and not let you penetrate, but if you go towards it slowly and without pressure, it'll let you move around. It's like quicksand!
Day 94 - Thursday (15), Today was a pretty normal day at work. I mostly researched colleges. I also did my investigator meeting today where a government guy was investigating my background and making sure it accurate and not shifty looking. I think I passed Mom!
After work, we went to an ISP. Our ISP was at a small farm where they let a couple refugee farmers grow food there. The food grown there is sold at farmers markets or to restaurants and part of the money generated goes back to creating new opportunities for refugees. There were a few rows of weeds and overgrown plants that we had to take weed wackers to and wack all those down and haul them out of the way. That area will be used again to grow more food. We spent about a good two hours working on the overgrown area of the field.
We got back to the hotel, where I took a shower, watched some TV, ate dinner, and went to bed early. I have been really tired lately. It's probably due to me sleeping in over break and not having to wake up early.
Day 95 - Friday (16), Today was a really quick day at work. Time flew by and I spent majority of my time googling colleges that I might possibly want to attend to.
After work, we went the gym to renew our memberships. I didn't feel like renewing it at the moment because they have a basketball court outside and I would spend more time on the court than inside with the machines. I love doing basketball as a from of cardio, but I really dislike running on treadmills because it's really boring. I would rather run a mile outside because I'm actually moving and it's somewhat of a nicer scenery sometimes. But when I looked at the weather later that night, I saw it was going to be raining this week, so I will be renewing my membership sometime next week anyways. I spent a good hour on the court just taking some shots and working on some moves. Still a little rusty but warming up.
Day 96 - Saturday (17), I made breakfast this morning, which was my Mom's potatoes dish and I really enjoyed it because it's almost as good as home cooking, but definitely doesn't taste 100% like my Mom's though.
We went to the gym around noon for PT and I played on the basketball court some more. There have been other high school kids showing up also so we've been scrimmaging with them a little bit.
After the gym, I took a shower, did some errands, and did a little bit of college stuff. Kristina helped me with with finding good schools and looking for scholarships. I'm struggling to find a good college fit for me that has my major and is not really expensive because I don't want to end up with a lot of student loans when I graduate. So we worked on looking at some colleges and filling out forms, and etc.
Day 97 - Sunday (18), Today was a very low key and somewhat relaxing day. I spent majority of the day looking at colleges again and deciding what I want to do with my life. I've always been into computers and designing such as playing around with websites to designing print materials, but never really took classes in high school. It was more of a hobby/interest that I did in my free time for my clubs or personal use. So if I'm able to do that in real life, I think I would really enjoy it. But until I find out/have part of my future set, I'm going to be a little stressed.
We went grocery shopping today and I'm going to be cooking eggplant/chicken parmigiana for my team. It's a pretty simple meal, and the eggplant part will be easy, but I've never cooked chicken or any type of meat in my life before so it's going to be a learning experience for me. So hopefully it will turn out all right and be edible.
Houston Zoo again - some of the animals that I couldn't see last time because they were hiding/too far
Botanical gardens we visited after the zoo
Some of the Chihuly Art that we saw in the art museum
Botanical Garden in OKC
My cousin Kendall and I
