AUSTIN and FEMA!!

So where do I start... So my team and I left Sacramento on Nov. 1 around 6:15am in the pour rain... yes it was raining. We got out of CA right before the rainy season starts! :) But we loaded up the van and set off on our first day of travel... We stopped every 2hours to change drivers and after about 12 hours of traveling and 629miles later we landed ourselves in Kingman, AZ at a Hampton Inn & Suite. Our team has 9 girls and 2 boys (one of the guys left right before induction) so the boys had a room to themselves with another guy from a different team and then the girls got split up into 4, 4 and 1 well I was the one person who was suppose to go into another room with the three girls from another team. However... I didn't know anyone from the other team and didn't really feel like sleeping in a bed with someone I didn't know at all so I ended up sleeping on the floor of the room with 4 girls from my team, which was perfectly fine with me cause it got rid of the awkwardness of staying with people I didn't know.

The next morning we left around 7am and traveled for around a total of 13 hours, 672miles and landed ourselves in Roswell, NM. Yes that's right we stayed the night with the aliens :D It was crazy the town was completely devoted to aliens. The Micky D's had a play structure that looked like a UFO, the street lights had like green globes with black "alien" eyes on it. It was crazy but really cool at the same time!

So side note for traveling through New Mexico... We drove on Interstate 40 which is exactly the highway Rehoboth Christian School is off of. It felt so awesome to pass there where I spent two spring breaks and see familiar things when I'm so far away from home. To see the pyramid rock where I hiked up, or the hand looking mountain. It was an awesome feeling!!

Anyways.. Monday morning we left Roswell, NM at 7am and continued on our way to AUSTIN, TX. Let me tell you there is NOTHING in Texas sometimes. We had to stop for our two hour stop and ended up pulling into a "city" we thought... aka it was on the map. Well it was completely abandoned and while using bushes for the bathroom my TL (Team Leader) found a barrel of Toxic waste... (something you really don't want to find while going to the bathroom) :D But we finally arrived in Austin around 7pm... a 1/2 hour after my predicted time of arrival... P.S. when I stated i thought we would get in at 6:30pm about three girls on my team go "No WAY... Please no!"

Austin... what do I say. Its big, bright and beautiful! I haven't seen much of the city cause we have been so busy since we got here. Monday night was spent finding out our first hotel room had a leaking A/C unit and so we had to move to another one. Then our second one had a leaky A/C unit too but we didn't want to move again so we are just keeping that A/C unit off and using the other one. Yes that's right we have 2 "rooms" in our Hotel... These Extended Stay Hotels are kinda cool. I'll post some pictures:

Our Bathroom

The Bedroom

Our Living room, view from the door.

Our Kitchenette, to the right of this picture is where our door is.

So FEMA... lets just say I have one phrase to say.. AHHHHH!!! Today was a lot of hurry up and wait... yesterday (Wed) we shadowed members of the Denver Class 14 teams but it was their last day yesterday. So we left with the impression that we were going to be doing everything today... (SCARED FACE!!) however even though we were suppose to, we didn't get our login information until about 4pm so we sat around and shadowed some of the FEMA workers. I shadowed my neighbor whose name is Robin (Robe-in not Rob-in like my MI accent makes me pronounce it) lol Anyways she is awesome and really helpful along with the lady behind me whose name is Linda. So tomorrow hopefully we will get our logins for our phones and we will get our rights for the other system that we don't have access to yet. But on a cool note.. I now have a Department of Homeland Securty e-mail address HAHAHA crazy huh?!

So more to come about my FEMA experience but as of now it is really stressful cause we are deciding if these people will get Mobile Home units or not and if they have enough damage to get a Mobile Home or if we can only provide renters resources (different apartments that can be rented) So we have a lot on our plates and people can get pretty angry with us or sad or happy about everything so it will be a crazy next 5 weeks. I will keep you all updated and hopefully I can get to update more then every 5 days so that they aren't crazy long posts like this one. :D

P.S. I will post more pictures later but it is dinner time!