The Most Uneventful Week (Seriously)

Day 112 - Monday (2), Another rough Monday start waking up. Everyday I tell myself to get to bed earlier, it just simply doesn't happen. I need to fix this issue.

We had another pizza party at work today. Totally out of the blue. Our boss, Liz, decided that since it was too quiet at work today (well it's a Monday), she said "ok guys, we're having pizza today." She's just a genuinely nice person and she's fed us so much food already. Plus she's planning a Thanksgiving dinner for the entire office next week. No, not a potluck, she's going to buy Thanksgiving dinner for the entire staff! Turkey, stuffing, green beans, mash potatoes, thanksgiving food. What kind of person thinks of this stuff?! But thanks Liz!

Low key evening when we got home from work. I helped Kristina cooked dinner and we had our team meeting today. We went over a few things from our agenda and then for the learning activities, I learned about the solar system and art therapy. I really enjoyed the art therapy; it was an interesting and enjoyable subject. We had to chose 6 of our favorite colors and then write down six things that was important to us. I put down family, friends, traveling, basketball, food, and my background/heritage. Then we had an outline of the human body where we colored in our six things that was important to us. We then had a discussion on why we colored where we colored. (See pic below)

I'm also trying to finish up the wraps on the Houston portfolio and slowly attacking some of my college essays at the same time. I haven't heard back from some schools if they'll waive my application fee yet, but I think I'm just going to start and apply anyways. Especially to the schools I that I could see myself at.


Day 113 - Tuesday (3), Another busy, busy day at the office for me! I can't wait until I am done with this portfolio. The Houston one is almost done. About a page and a half to go! But that will get finished tomorrow since I haven't received all the information yet.

After work, majority of the team went to the zoo. I found out later that they went to the mall instead because they didn't make it to the zoo in time before they closed the booths for admission entry. I stayed behind so I could finish up some final touches on the Houston portfolio and start the Austin one. We're on a pretty good track right now as to getting in done if there are no unforeseen circumstances tomorrow at work.

I finally was able to get to bed early tonight! We had dinner, then I watched the newest episode of Blindspot, packed lunch, showered, and got into bed by 9:30. I checked my social media, wrote in my blog, then went to bed. Can't believe tomorrow is already Wednesday. This week so going so fast. And on Thursday, that marks two weeks remaining here in Houston.

Day 114 - Wednesday (4), After a long day at work, I finally finished the Houston portfolio and have one small section left of the Austin one which I'm waiting for the rest of the info to finish it. I still have to go through and proofread all of it, but for the most part, the designing of the portfolio should be finished.

After work, we went to the gym for PT. I went outside with a few others to play soccer on the field. It was kind of a bad idea. As much fun as I had playing soccer, I got bit by so many mosquitoes. I have approximately 21 mosquitoes bites. You can bet that I took a shower as soon as I got back at the hotel to wash off. I then put some calendula on it to help with the itching. When these Texas mosquitoes bite, they don't leave a little welt like the one in CA does, they leave a huge welt. I've had some as big as my entire palm. The bites are a pain in the butt. Some don't itch, but some of the welts will itch like crazy to the point that if even the slightest amount of air brushes by it, it will itch like crazy.

I have a scholarship deadline coming up just around the corner so I worked on the the essay before dinner. I also watched the Country Music Awards (CMAs) on TV.

Day 115 - Thursday (5), Today since the portfolios are for the most part 100% completed, I got the chance to work on some college essays and scholarships. Like I may have mentioned before, I have one due on Monday so I have to get a rough draft done by Friday night, have it reviewed and edit it on Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully it will get submitted Sunday evening.

After work, we did PT at the gym. I did some weights in the gym first, then played basketball outside. I got bit by a half dozen more mosquitoes so I'm not to happy about having big, red, itchy welts right now.

I made dinner tonight which was Pad Thai. It was a quick and easy dish. It tasted alright - I felt like I added too much rice vinegar although I did add as much as the recipe asked for. I don't have that magical touch my parents have whenever they touch food and it turns into something spectacular.

Today also marks two weeks left of Round 1. I can't believe we're a more than 1/3 of the ways done with this program. I think it's like 167 more days left!

Day 116 - Friday (6), Today was a quick Friday at work. I had a write a few paragraphs summarizing Round 1, then I worked on the scholarship essay that was due on Monday. A little bit behind on the essay, but with a few good hour tonight and plenty of it tomorrow, we should be good.

After work, majority of the team went to go rock climbing. I chose to stay behind to take that quiet time to work more on my essay. It was quite nice to finally have some quiet time where I was able to work undisturbed for the most part.

Day 117 - Saturday (7), Woke up a bit earlier than I wanted to today, but I wanted to go to the gym. I always enjoy working out in the morning because you can just get it out of the way and have the afternoon free. In addition to that, it increases your metabolism and just makes me feel better when I work out in the mornings.

Today was another one of those cloudy and rainy Saturdays, but I didn't mind much. I dedicated most of the afternoon to writing my essay and its seems almost done for the most part. And thanks to my parents for helping me out with it.

Day 118 - Sunday (8), Today was a very quiet day. I had the room to myself for a good 5-6 hours. Part of the team went to the mall to set up an AmeriCorps recruiting table and afterwards, they went shopping. So with that good 6 hours of pure quiet, I was able to complete and submit my essay with the help of my parents.

There was really nothing much more to today. It mainly consisted of me sitting in my bed, typing away. Hopefully, these next few weeks will be more interesting especially that we will have less than two week before arriving back onto campus. There will be plenty of stories to share and listen. I'm quite excited for that.

I threw away the original one I did, but I made another one. This is as close to a replica as it will get. If you click on the picture, it should enlarge so you can read the text.

Found this at the mall. This is for all you wine drinkers at there! 

Disclaimer: this does not apply to my Mom because she already is smart and has all the wisdom in the world.

Pad Thai - didn't look too bad, but it could have tasted better in my opinion.

FARE Walk for Food Allergy - they promised us doughnuts for last Saturday morning, but since the event got cancelled, we never got doughnuts. But on Wednesday, they kept their promise and delivered us doughnuts, which was so nice of them!


Sorry for the lack of pictures this week. It was pretty much an uneventful week for me as you can tell by all the work needed to be done for the portfolios and essays. 

Another Wet Weekend

Day 105 - Monday (26), Today went by pretty quick at work. I spent majority of my time at the office working on designing a portfolio for my team. Our team has to make 2 portfolios this round, one for Austin and one for Houston, that details what we did in each city. So we'll talk about what kind of work we did in the office, what our ISPs were, what could have been better, etc. It's a debrief on Round 1 in which we'll have to present it when we arrive back on campus.

After work, while majority of the people went grocery shopping, I did a Insanity workout. It's similar to P90x where you do what's on the screen but Insanity targets different muscles groups and things along those lines. Insanity almost just about almost killed my legs and my right knee.

Day 106 - Tuesday (27), I was very busy today at work! I had a huge stack of papers that I had to get through. I had to add all the cost calculations, make sure they matched what was given to me, review labor and equipment hours and made sure they matched up. Once all that was sorted through, I had to insert them into an excel sheet. That took majority of the day.

My sister, Corey, called me today which was a pleasant surprise! I haven't spoken/texted my sister in while so it was great to be able to talk to her and hear her voice again. I really miss being able to talk/hang out with my sister and just be able to have her around like I did when we were both back at home in high school. So her phone call was the highlight of my day.

After work, we did the baseline test for PT. The baseline test is the test we did back on campus that consists of 1.5 mile, a timed minute of sit-ups and push-ups. Our team wanted to do it again to see where we stood compared to our original results back at campus. I improved in every category so I was decently satisfied with myself.

I spent the night washing my laundry, working on college applications, and packing for the morning. Tomorrow, we are going to College Station, TX to get a tour of Disaster City, which is a facility full of mock up and simulation on how to do search and rescue for disasters. Since we're not leaving until 8:30 tomorrow morning, we get to sleep in for an extra hour and a half! I'm very excited about that and on that note, I'm going to bed! 

Day 107 - Wednesday (28), Today we drove a hour and a half to College Station. We got there early so we stopped at a coffee shop where I purchased an Arnold Palmer and an apple fritter. Both were very delicious. There were quite a few college students studying at the coffee shop, so it seemed like a popular hang out place. The city was very nice and I really liked the vibe of College Station which is where Texas A&M is located. I could see myself living in that kind of city where it wasn't too crowded with cars and building and I saw people using bikes.

After coffee, we drove a couple miles down the road to Disaster City where we got a tour of the facility with a few other FEMA Corps team. We saw buildings in shambles/destroyed to pieces and other wrecked building that they use for simulation if an actual disaster was to come through and wreck it. Disaster City is a huge practice/operation facility for where people train and learn about disaster. We also saw them practice putting out fires. We were able to get pretty close to see the action, but it came with a consequence. We came out smelling like smoke! :) It was really cool to see all the work that goes on behind the scenes of a fire and the evaluation/thought process that goes on when conducting a search and rescue. There were so many things/strategies to think about especially for search and rescue - how many people were in the building, is it safe to go inside, how to extract people without this part of the building falling down and things along those lines. So it was neat to see what actually goes into this job.

After Disaster City, we went to go hang out with Gulf 2, which is another team from our Vicksburg campus. Some of them went ice skating, while I took the some of the boys on my team to the mall. The mall was decently sized and had a good amount of stores in it. We spent about 3 hours walking around the mall and the only thing I purchase was a smoothie and it was really good, Strawberry Pina-Colada!

We left College Station around 7 pm and got back at 8:30 in Houston. I took a shower, got lunch ready for the morning, and went to bed.


Day 108 - Thursday (29), Today was a busy day for me at work. I have a few deadlines coming up and there's still so much work to do still. I have less than a week to put together and design my team's two portfolios. Plus I'm trying to do college applications at the same time. So I have a lot of work to do and stressing about the little time left before the deadline.

We left work a little bit late today. We were suppose to do PT today but we had to get the oil change in the van so we're doing it tomorrow instead. I spent the night working on media for my speciality role.


Day 109 - Friday (30), Today was a very long day for us. We had work as usual. I worked on designing and formatting my team's portfolio all day.

After work, we went back to the hotel for a bit and got changed to go to our ISP. We are setting up for a run/walk for an organization called FARE. They are an organization that promotes awareness for food allergy, so nut, gluten free, etc. We hung up a bunch of ribbons and decorated the front entrance of Minute Maid Park. We got done pretty late so we all went to bed upon arrival home because we are also helping them set up in the morning at 6:30.


Day 110 - Saturday (31), Happy Halloween! Today we left our hotel at 6 am to drive downtown to Minute Maid Park to help set up for the run/walk. Before we were about to take off, we got a call that the event had been canceled due got the weather. The weather was very nasty earlier this morning at like 2:30 am. I was woken up by the hard pounding of the rain on the window, the flashes of lightning and the sound of thunder. There were also more flood warnings issued today.

Although the event got cancelled, we drove down to help them take everything down. It was a little heartbreaking to take it all down just after we got it set up last night. There were quite a few pop-up tents that got destroyed by the wind so we had to take those down throw them away. The organization, FARE, gave us a bunch of the food that they were going to hand out to the participants. We received boxes of food such as bananas, oranges, nut free granola bars, sunflower seed "peanut" butter, cookies and cases of water. They wanted to keep giving us more, but we couldn't eat it all before we headed back to campus. Plus the bananas and oranges wouldn't would spoil before we could get to all of them. They were very generous and treated us very nicely! I really enjoyed working with them and wished the event would have been a little more successful.

After taking everything down, we drove back to the hotel. We got caught in a nasty rain cloud and I had drive super slow because I could not see anything in front of me besides a couple car lengths. So it took a little longer than usual to get back, but we got back safely nonetheless.

I took a shower upon arrival back at the hotel because the weather outside was a little humid and sticky. I worked on a college essay for a little bit before I let the boys use my computer to watch a scary movie. While they were watching their movie, I watched some Netflix on my phone.

After the boys finished their movie, us girls went out to the mall and hung out their for a couple hours. It was a pretty nice mall with plenty of well-known stores. It was semi-crowded due to the fact that it was Halloween so there were a bunch of parents and kids trick or treating for candy from store to store. I really didn't buy anything. There are things that I would like to have owned, but I don't need anymore clothes or shoes than I already have with me. It would also present a difficulty for me to lug it back to campus and home. The only thing I bought is Starbucks because I had a 50% off coupon for espresso. So I enjoyed that and it was only my second Starbucks drink since arriving in Houston.


Day 111 - Sunday (November 1), Another rainy and cloudy day in Houston. This morning was a slow start. We stayed in our room for majority of the day due to the weather outside. I worked on the team portfolio for a bit and another page is almost done. The Houston portfolio is almost done(ish). There's around 6 more pages to do from scratch not to mention that we haven't even started on the Austin one. Since we don't have much time left, I don't have enough time to plan and design another portfolio for Austin so the Austin one is just going to be using the same outline and design as the Houston portfolio, but just different content for the body of the portfolio.

We left for the gym around 3 in the afternoon and I got a pretty good workout in. Since I was cooped up in the hotel all day this morning, the gym was somewhere where I could let all of my energy out by doing resistance training, some running and letting loose on the basketball court. It was nice to be able to do that and relax and clear your head for a bit. Let the stress out for a while.

Shortly after we got back from the gym, a few of us went to the grocery to buy food for this week. I'm going to attempt at making my Dad's Pad Thai dish and hopefully that turns out ok. All of the recipes that I have been making for my team, majority of them I have never made before. I've always seen my parents make them, but never really bothered to learn. So that's something that will have to change if I want to learn how to cook and eat healthy. I need to start helping my parents out in the kitchen a little more and hopefully I'll pick up a few hints and tips here and there.

Putting out fires from the train

Houston Astros Baseball Field at Minute Maid Park

All the food that was given to us. We took the out of the boxes and put the inside the blue reusable bag. From bananas to your left, then oranges, granola bars, sunflower "peanut butter", and cases of water.