The Time A Branch Got the Best of Me

Day 238 - Monday (7), Today was a busy day!

At work, I kept fairly busy. I started working on my team's portfolio early so I wouldn't exactly have to cram everything into the last week.

I also had a meeting with our training manager today. We're setting up a few more classes for me to teach and hopefully some iPhone classes because I love iPhones. I also helped her personally with her iPhone for about 2 hours.

After work, we changed out of work clothes and into normal clothes and went grocery shopping. I had no clue what I was going to cook by the time I walked into the store, but I figured something out.

We went to the gym after we finished unpacking the groceries. We stayed for about an hour until we returned home for dinner.

I got some rather good news tonight! SinIce I've been gone from home, my mom has been doing me a favor by opening my mail. Tonight my mom texted me asking if she could open some college mail. She texted back that I got accepted into my first choice school, which is Cal Lutheran! It's located just a little bit north of central LA.

Cal Lutheran was the 5th and final university to respond back so I've finished hearing back from all my other colleges and I've got quite a variety to choose from, especially location wise. My locations are Minnesota (Concordia University- St. Paul), Pennsylvania (Slippery Rock University), Ohio (Ohio University - Athens), California (California Lutheran University), and Florida (University of Tampa). So I got two opposite end of the spectrum here for weather. Hot vs. cold. I'm not any closer to deciding where I'll end up in August/September yet. I still have to research all of my facts for each school, but for the moment, I am leaning towards Cal Lutheran.


Day 239 - Tuesday (8),  I continued where I left off yesterday - the portfolio. This will the fourth and final portfolio that I will have to make. As much as I love coming up with new ideas in my head and turning them into real life, these portfolios are extremely time consuming and tedious. Luckily, I have a mediator that proof-reads all work before they get sent to me so I don't have to read and edit them all. I can just focus on the designing aspect for now and then proof-read everything at the end.

Our team decided to take today off and not do PT so I took some time to myself and worked on a few essays. We had our weekly team meeting today and discussed a few things on our agenda. We're taking a field trip to Clanton, Alabama on Monday to visit the Emergency Operation Center. We're getting a tour of their facilities and meeting a few people. Clanton was originally where we stationed at the beginning of Round 3.


Day 340 - Wednesday (9), Like usual, I spent majority of the day working on the portfolio. It's more technical and precise than I originally made it out to be. It's a slow process, but hopefully it'll look good when I print it out later early next month. I get pretty excited when an idea of mine turns out pretty well when I see it printed out on paper.

After work, we played soccer with Hickory 4. We finally found the right balance that made the teams pretty even so it's a little bit more competitive now.

I made dinner tonight - pita wraps. I almost had to change my meal because I could not find any pita bread. I looked for a good 10 minutes. It's been a little difficult for me to find all the ingredients that I want to use when I cook. The variety of bakery, produce, international foods, and the vegetarian/vegan selection is very limited. I learned a quite a while ago that the south is not very friendly to vegetarians/vegan people.

After dinner, I worked on a couple essays for a college honors program. Whether or not if I get in, it might sway my decision a bit.


Day 341 - Thursday (10), Today was a pretty good day at work. I spent majority of today working on my team's portfolio. Some really good ideas have started popping up in my head so it's been fun trying to create what I'm trying to envision. I also spent about a couple hours in the training department getting notices set up for future classes I will be teaching. I also taught an iPhone class today, which was pretty fun.

After work, we returned back to our hotel and I did a little catching up on writing. I also spent some time Google-searching things to do in Birmingham. My grandma is visiting next weekend so I'm trying to look up some fun things to do and we're going to Birmingham for a couple days. Yes Dad, we will visit the jailhouse! I didn't forget! (This time...)


Day 342 - Friday (11), Today went by pretty smoothly. It was Hickory 4's last day at work in the the JFO. They're wrapping up Round 2 and heading back to campus for transition. We had a good-bye party/lunch for them. There was lots of food - pizza, veggie and fruit platters, sandwiches, wraps, and a lot more.

After work, we went to the gym. I went pretty hard on the elliptical, abs, and arms today. It felt pretty nice to burn off a few calories especially since I ate a piece of pizza earlier today.

I took a shower when we got back to the hotel, ate some dinner and settled down for the night and watched a movie. It was called Room and it was nominated for best picture at the Oscars. My best friend, Kira, recommend it to me and it was a really good movie! It's been such a while since I've actually seen really good movie.


Day 343 - Saturday (12), Started off this morning by playing some disc golf with Kodiak and Drew. It was cloudy outside, but still in the 70s. My least favorite part of the disc golf course is the woods section. There are sections of the woods carved out for disc golf, but you still have to throw your disc very on target because if not, you will be digging your disc out of bushes, branches, thorns, and pokie (is that how you spell it?) things. For example, my disc flew into a bunch of branches and it was hard to extract. I got a nice little cut from a branch sticking out of the ground that I did not see. It was not very fun. I couldn't clean the blood from the scratch because my hands were dirty and I didn't want to touch it. And I also didn't have anything to wipe it with, so I just let the blood dry out.

Since the blood was dry by the time I got back to the hotel, it took a few tries to get majority of the dried blood off. It helped that I took a shower, which got more of the blood off. Thanks to my parents who bought me calendula earlier in the year for mosquito bites, I used some of that to put on my leg. After a few layers and several hours later, the less shallow end of cut showed signs of improvements. I'm just hoping that I don't get a scar!


Day 244 - Sunday (13), Got a super good lie in today with daylight savings. Since the mornings are now dark, I slept right through the morning. 

I started my day by applying for jobs! I applied to a couple - Starbucks and Apple. I also wanted to apply to Barnes and Noble, but they didn't have the positions I wanted so I'm going to wait on that one. I also made a curriculum vitae. I didn't know what that was but I google searched it and made one. So it's basically my resume, but with added areas of interest, honors/awards, education, references, and etc. 

Later in the afternoon, I dropped one of my teammates off at the airport. He took a few days off and went home. The Montgomery airport, similar to the one in Columbia, people are almost non-existent there besides security. It's very unlikely that you'll see another car there when arriving at the airport. I bet TSA is a breeze and there's no sprinting to a gate because the airport is so small. I find it funny because I've never seen anything like that. But after all, I live in a place that has a lot more people and a lot bigger airport. 

After dropping him off, Kristina and I went to Target. The Target in Montgomery is always super crowded and the lines are always full. I just needed to get one thing - a toothbrush - and luckily I got in line at the right time to avoid the longer wait times.  

Shortly after we finished our Target run, we picked up the boys and went grocery shopping. I'm going to making a broccoli pasta salad this week or as my family calls it 'Corey noodles'. Luckily the store had sesame oil, which was the only thing I was worried that the stores here may not carry. Everything else, I found relatively at ease. 

After we unpacked the groceries, Kristina and I made another run to a different grocery store to pick up a couple things that the first groceries store didn't have. Being tax exempt is pretty nice since we don't have to pay taxes, but also at the same time it is a hassle. Stores are reluctant to take our tax ID and we always have to fill out a form and talk with the manager. Then they ask what who we are and AmeriCorps isn't something you can explain in a couple words. It's just a long process.

Lunch with Kodiak last week. Veggie burger. It was one of the couple choices on the menu besides a veggie quesadilla and a caesar salad.

Kodiak, Drew and I out on the AUM disc golf course

My lovely cut. I look so tan in the second pic.

We Love Natural Disasters

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the long absence. It's the final stretch to the end of this round, to graduation, and to the end of our term. I've been taking a break to enjoy my last couple months in this program. 

I just want to give you all a heads up. I will still be doing the blogs, but a little more sporadically. I want to put my main focus, like I said above, to enjoy the end and to finish out this term with some amazing memories.

Thank you all for your support and understanding.

- KR

Day 224 - Monday (22), Today was a fresh start to begin this week. It was cloudy outside for majority of the day due to thunderstorm and bad weather that will be rolling in tomorrow.

We left for work like usual around 7:40 am. I took a couple hours today prepping for my Excel classes that I'm teaching tomorrow. I'm not sure if I told you yet, but FEMA wanted me to teach a few Excel classes to the staff here because Excel is extremely handy if you know how to use it and what you are doing.

After work, we returned back to the hotel to change before we left for grocery shopping. Kristina is gone and has been for the last few days, so this is the first time we went grocery shopping without her and I was in charge of the credit card and responsible for not going over our budget. Gulp. No pressure there! We did fine though.


We drove back to the hotel, and it started raining hard. We unloaded the groceries as quick as we could, parked the van and ran back into the hotel.

We had pizza for dinner...again. For one of the few times, it wasn't burned. I have never eaten so much pizza in my entire life. Throughout this program, I have eaten more pizza in the last 8 months than I have in my 18 years of existence. I definitely need to go on a greasy pizza cleanse when I return home.

Around 10:30 pm, Sean and I went to go pick up Kristina from the airport so she didn't have to take a taxi. The airport is only about 20 minutes from our hotel so it didn't take too long to pick her up and return back to bed at a decent time.


Day 225 - Tuesday (23), Today, I taught my first ever class. Well, that's not actually accurate. I interned for several teaches in high school and taught the class when our teacher was absent. But I taught my first ever Excel class to FEMA staff. I taught 2 today - a beginners/refresher and an intermediate one. I thought both of them went relatively well. My intermediate class was cut short by 10 minutes due to a tornado warning and were requested by our commanding staff to leave early so we could make it home safely.

On that note, there has been another PDS for a tornado watch issued. We had another a couple weeks ago also. It was raining at night pretty hard, and lighted up a little. I fell asleep just before the tornado was suppose to hit/start, but it never came, thank God. We managed to escape all of the tornado but other areas in Mississippi and Louisiana was not so lucky.

Natural disasters have just been following our team! They have never striked on us yet, and hopefully they never will. In Houston, we had really bad rains which caused flooding but it didn't reached us. It stopped just shy of where we were staying. Round 2 in Columbia, we had more flash flooding in addition to a tornado warning where we had to take shelter. And third, we had a tornado that just missed us. Who knows what's next!

Since we in in danger of a possible tornado, we were all grounded in the hotel. It didn't make much difference to us if we could go out or not because we had dinner and our weekly meeting. After that, I watched a couple episodes of Law & Order to keep myself entertained until I went to bed.


Day 226 - Wednesday (24), Today is the day after the tornado. Like I said, we're thankful that none of us got hurt or had to proceed down to the bottom level during the middle of the night.

I slept pretty soundly during the night and only woke up a couple times. We woke up when my alarm went off in the morning and left for work at our usual time. It was chilly and quite a bit windy when we walked outside.

I didn't do too much at work today besides keeping up with my media role and catching up on some writing that I was behind on.

After work, we were going to play soccer but the fields were closed due to weather so we went to the gym instead. I got a decent workout in. Did some core, arms, and cardio before getting in a hydro massage bed to loosen some muscles and kinks.

The night was pretty laid back. We had our team dinner, I took a shower, and got to bed early.


Day 227 - Thursday (25), Today was just another day at work. Nothing going on. The section where I'm working in is External Affairs, and they're de-mobbing next week so there is no work to be done. So to make use of the empty time, I spent a couple hours working on essays.

After work, we had a quick dinner. I made chili tonight, which worked perfectly because it's a relatively quick meal to make. Takes around 20 minutes.

We went to the gym after dinner. Had a pretty good workout and finished it out by sitting in their massage chair for a few minutes.


Day 228 - Friday (26), Finished another week at work! I really enjoy Fridays because it's the day before the weekend and I usually have a good time on the weekends. We've been here for about a month and it's been going by a lot slower than I anticipated. It's probably due to the lack of work our team has been assigned to, but everything has been going smoothly. This round will be over, we'll be graduating, saying goodbyes, and flying home before we know it! But I made quite a few friends so wherever I end of for college next year, I'll know a few in the area!

After work, we hit the gym again. This was definitely the best gym membership that I have signed up for. It's the massage chairs and bed that sealed the deal. Getting out of them makes it feel like your walking on air!

Didn't do too much Friday night. We had our team dinner and watched a few shows together.


Day 229 - Saturday (27), Today we drove to Downtown Montgomery. We walked around for quite a bit. It was a very beautiful day. The sun was shining with a breeze - uppers 60s today. I stopped at a couple historical buildings and passed plenty more on the way. Unfortunately, the capital wasn't open today, but I took a nice walk around the exterior.

I also walked across the street to the Montgomery Department of Archives and History and was able to go in and look around for a few minutes. It was full of history. Since Alabama was a confederate state it made me slightly uncomfortable to be in the building.

After the archives, I took a nice walk back to the van and we then drove to the mall. I was able to pick up a couple things at Target, stopped inside of Ross and World Market before crossing the street to a book store. I spent about 45 minutes in the bookstore looking for new books and reading a bit. If anyone has any book suggestion, I'll take a look into it! I'll enjoy anything as long as it has a good plot, happy ending, books that make you think and I'm always fascinated by war stories. I'm still reading Unbroken, I got sidetracked for a while so gave up reading it. But I'm going to try to finish before I head home.


Day 230 - Sunday (28), Got a good lie in this morning. It was beautiful weather outside today - high was 72 degrees - so I couldn't let a day like today go to waste!

Kodiak, Kristina, and I went on a little outing by ourselves. We first went out to the driving range to hit a few golf balls. This was my first time out on the range so I did remarkably well - NOT. I missed quite a few times and also took out a couple patches of dirt. I am also relatively terrible at mini-golf so it definitely translated over to the driving range.

After the range, we stopped at a coffee shop. I had coffee a couple days ago, so I opted out for a smoothie and bought a couple cookies. Everything was relatively cheap there and tasted good, so hopefully I will go back. They had gelato, plenty of sandwiches, bagel, paninis, and other baked goods.

We had a few hours to ourself when we got back so the cafe so I was able to relax for a bit. We then went grocery shopping and we were able to do it quick enough before the Oscars started, which I watched before I went to bed.

Downtown Montgomery

Out on the golfing range!