Occupy Sam's Club

*Note: The phrase "Occupy Sam's Club" was originally coined by Ana Canizales. If I don't give credit where credit is due, she will punch me in the throat. 


You have probably always wondered what it is like to live in an empty Sam's Club. Who hasn't? Let me enlighten you.

Originally, when we deployed to this disaster, we just stayed in our rooms on campus. Since my team was in the Longmont DRC, it made for about a 2-hour commute every morning with traffic. That was unfortunate, but the living situation was nice. I had a dorm room to myself, a mini-fridge and sink in my room, and my car on campus. Then, we had to move out to make room for the new class of traditional NCCC that would be moving in. (Because of the furlough, they never actually moved in yet, but at the time that was the plan.)

The next place they moved us was the fairgrounds in Longmont. This was a pretty good set up as well. We were within walking distance of work, which meant a lot more sleep. Our living quarters were basically a giant auditorium. We were sharing the fairgrounds with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers, so they had their cots set up on one side, and FEMA Corps (there were a ton of us, not just our team) was on the other side. The Baptists cooked breakfast and dinner for us and set out food to pack lunches, so it was nice not having to worry about that either. There were pretty nice showers and bathrooms, too. But that only lasted for about a week.

Then came Sam's Club. We weren't given a lot of details about it at first, so there were a few questions running through my mind, like, Are we just setting up cots in the aisles? Do we have to pack up our stuff in the morning before the customers get in? Will anyone notice if I steal bulk cases of Starbucks coffee?

When we arrived, I realized it was a Sam's Club that was no longer in business, and was empty except for some stacks of wooden pallets. So basically just a giant cement floor and a vast expanse of fluorescent lights. So I picked an open spot on the far wall and set up my cot.

The first night was a little rough. No one knew how to turn the lights off, so they stayed on the entire night. Since the they've been dimmed. It's never actually been dark in here. Another unfortunate piece of news was that there are no showers here, not that we expected showers in a Sam's Club. However, the Rec Center, about 5 minutes down the road, and the YMCA, about 15 minutes away have been nice enough to let us use their facilities.

It's been interesting to watch the evolution of the Sam's Club. At the beginning it was just cots lined up around the perimeter, but then people started innovating. There were a few shopping carts lying around so some people snagged them to put some of their stuff in or hang clothes on. People got very creative with the pallets. I used them as shelves because I didn't like having all my stuff on the floors. Since it never gets dark at night, people got the idea to put 2 pallets up vertically on each side of their cot where their head is and put another one on top, and then cover it with clothes so the light doesn't come in through the slats. Someone else decided to buy some PVC pipe, and make a roof frame over the pallets, which they then covered with the AmeriCorps NCCC table cloth that they use for recruiting events.

The major breakthrough came when the first person put up a tent in here. Campus has some tents to rent out, so a bunch of people got them. I'm using the one that I took camping. It's amazing what a difference the tent makes. Just to have some form of privacy. I don't like sleeping in giant concrete and metal rooms, either, so the tent makes it a bit more cozy. I have my cot set up inside, and a little chair to use as a shelf. The girls on my team arranged our tents in a little circle and we have our "courtyard" in the middle. It's pretty great.

There are some silly problems with living in a Sam's Club. Little things, like the fact that the sinks in the bathroom are automatic, so when you're washing your face the water is constantly turning on and off every time your hands move. Or the fact that the automatic doors sometimes stop working so you have to pry them open with your fingernails. Or the fact that it's a huge area, so making coffee takes 3 times as long in the morning just because you have to walk so far to fill the water then go to the coffee pot then come back and get ready, then go back when it's brewed. (This has since been solved, since our tent circle is right next to the outlet and hence the coffee pot.) Then there are some bigger problems like when the roof leaks in like 8 spots. Luckily I was not one of the people that woke up with water-filled shoes.

People in the community have been great, though. The only cooking facilities we have here are propane camp stoves (and I'm not sure you're really supposed to use those indoors), so our team mostly eats out or buys stuff at the grocery store conveniently located next door. Hearing of our situation, the grocery store and Panera Bread have both donated us food, and Kohl's is planning on baking for us as well. We had some donated water and snack food to begin with that I believe came from Sam's Club. And the locals have been absolutely amazing to us. Different organizations have set up schedules to come in and bring us dinner. Churches, schools, Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts have all come in to grill for us, have casserole night, a burrito bar, a crock-pot buffet. We've had delicious homemade pies. Random people drop in to bring us fresh-baked cookies. They've been really sweet to us.

Today at the grocery store, me and a couple girls were pooling our money to buy some groceries. We were standing at the check out counter pulling money out of our envelopes that carry our $15/day food stipend, and the lady behind us told the cashier that if we were short anything, she'd cover us. People stop us in the grocery store or the Rec Center to say thank you, school kids made us Thank You cards. The community has been awesome and we really, really appreciate it. There's nothing like some homemade green bean casserole and apple pie to make you feel a little bit more comfortable when you're living in a warehouse.

So what do you do all day when you're living in a Sam's Club? People have found some roller blades at thrift stores and some people had skateboards, so you take advantage of the giant concrete floor. I drink tea and crochet a lot, because I'm 80 years old. There's like 10 teams here, so you can chill around the dinner table with some nice company.

It's really not that bad. This is actually a bit nicer than Georgia was. The bathrooms are indoors, and it's an actual toilet and not a smelly hole in the ground. Plus, it stays fairly warm in here, as opposed to my bedroom in Georgia, where my lotion and face wash would actually freeze in the bottle. The only part of it that makes it a bit hard to swallow is that the Reservists, who do the same job as me, are being put up in the Hampton Inn with about a $60 per diem to my $15. Not to mention the fact that they get paid. That's been one of the hard parts about this year, and probably one of the bigger differences between traditional NCCC and FEMA Corps. In traditional, you're usually working for non-profits. Basically, if you weren't there to do the work, it probably wouldn't get done, because they don't have the funds to do it. It's easier to do that work for $3 an hour, because you feel like you're making a difference. In FEMA Corps, the work would still get done, they would just have to pay people to work 90 hour weeks. (Which really they should, right?) And they would have the money to do it. (Maybe not anymore.)

On the bright side, I've gained amazing work experience and life experience. And it's always hilarious to see the faces of the Reservists I'm training when they ask me where we're staying and I tell them "in a tent in an abandoned Sam's Club."

Plus how many people will be able to tell their grand kids about that time they lived in a makeshift tent city in an empty warehouse for 6 weeks?

What the Furlough?

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency, which means the furlough has left it's mark on AmeriCorps.

Right now we're living in an abandoned Sam's Club (I'll have a whole other post about that soon).

Payday is on Thursday, so if it hasn't ended by then, I won't get my $157. Unfortunately, that means I'll have to hold off on buying that property in Martha's Vineyard.

Graduation is on November 20th, so if the furlough doesn't end by then, they won't have any money to send any of us home. They also probably won't have any money to feed us, since they didn't budget that for anytime past the 20th. They also won't have any staff.

What will probably happen is we will be stuck in the abandoned Sam's club for forever. We won't have leaders so our own warehouse society will probably evolve. Leaders will rise and fall. Empires will emerge and collapse.

We will have no money for food so we will probably form a gang of thieves who will sneak into the Albertson's dumpsters next door, scavenging for day old bread or dine-and-dashing at the Chili's across the street.

As the years go by and the warehouse population grows (either as a result of AmeriBabies or homeless people wandering into the unlocked doors), we may begin to have territory wars between the North Side Perry Pointers and the South Side Denverites. The winners (Denverites most likely) will become the elite and the losers the oppressed.

Eventually the Denverites will have to implement some sort of Hunger Games to maintain their powers over the Pointers. As the years go by and the rest of the country has fallen into chaos or been destroyed by the zombie apocalypse, our society will move past its concrete walls and begin to bring order back to our nation. But it will not be the freedom that we have known until know. Instead, it will be the dark, corrupt rule of our Panem-esque Denverites. Until a Katniss-like figure emerges (maybe from Vicksburg?) the nation will only know oppression and sorrow.

Just something to think about, Congress.

Passing the Torch

When I last left off, I was at the Longmont DRC. For the first few days there, we were slammed. Then they sent another FEMA Corps team, and slowly the Individual Assistance and DSA reservists began to trickle in. And soon we were faced with a very overstaffed DRC, and a decline in the amount of people that were visiting it. It was frustrating.

Not only were we left with too little work, but we were still not allowed to shorten our hours or get days off. I asked for one day off to hang out with my mom while she was in Denver for meetings, and such a big deal was made out of it that you would've thought the DRC would crumble without me there. I finally did get the day off, and lo and behold, the DRC was extremely slow that day and my teammates only talked to about 3 people each the whole day.

Usually I don't mind the long hours at the beginning of a disaster, but usually I'm working them outside. This time we were under the bright fluorescent lights of an empty store that used to be a JC Penny or something in the Twin Peaks mall. So I was sitting all day long, only seeing about an hour of sunlight a day on the  hour and a half long commute to work, and feeling useless. It was rough.

And then, while I was drinking cocktails with my mom at her hotel, good news came. Our team was out of the DRC. As the team who had spent the most time in the field doing DSA, we were chosen by the DSA folks from Headquarters to pass the torch to the incoming FEMA Corps and to do some refresher training for the Reservists. As I may have mentioned in another post, DSA (Disaster Survivor Assistance) used to be called Community Relations. Basically, they updated the program and made a lot of changes. The very first time DSA was tested in the field was with our team in West, TX. A lot of the Reservists have been doing CR for years, so it's a huge change when they get sent on disaster now.

First off, there's the iPad. That was also put into use for the first time in West. Before, if a CR team knocked on someone's door, and that person wanted to register with FEMA, they would give them the hotline number to call or tell them to go to the DRC. With the iPad, we can register them at their door or pull up their case if they're already registered to see what's going on.

The iPad also has a GIS app that allows crews in the field to mark the streets that they've hit and enter data about things they observe in the field to avoid duplicating efforts.

For the 18-24 year olds that are in FEMA Corps, learning how to use the iPad is a breeze. We've grown up with all these technological advances and they're second nature to us. However, a lot of reservists are retirees, and haven't spent the years of their lives texting or playing Candy Crush while sitting in class. They're not all as familiar with the technology, and it's a bigger learning curve.

Our job, basically, is to go out in the field and visit different crews while they're working. We can follow them around while they're canvassing or sit with them at a DRC and go over the mapping application, the registration and inquiry process, and how to access and utilize the tools available for them out in the field.

I love this job. The crews are spread out all over, so we've gotten to go to places like Sterling and Colorado Springs to work with them. The Reservists that we've worked with so far have been a lot of fun, and it's cool to meet the FEMA Corps from the Vinton, IA and Perry Point, MD campuses and swap stories.

Also, my team of trainers is awesome and we rock and we're awesome.

DR-4145 Colorado

Shortly after returning from my trip to Utah, I was informed that our team would be spending our third and final round working at FEMA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. I had mixed feelings about this. I have a strange dislike for D.C., based solely on the fact that every time I go there it's about 110 degrees and 90% humidity and a bottle of water costs $5. But there were a lot of other teams that would be stationed there and of course there is a ton of fun stuff to do.

The day before we were supposed to leave, the plans changed. If you haven't heard, there's been terrible flooding in Colorado, and the President has declared it a major disaster. All the DSAT teams were told to stay. The rest of the teams were told to wait through the weekend on standby (as of Monday morning they were told to wait through the week on standby as well).

So the next day, instead of heading east, we headed to the FEMA Region VIII office in Denver. We got all of our IT issues taken care of on Saturday and got briefed on updates to the reporting app that we use in the field on Sunday. The weather was too bad and the conditions were still too dangerous for us to be out in the field.

Both of those days we had the afternoons off. I savored it, because I knew it would not happen again for a while.

Honestly, when they told us we were deploying for another disaster, all I could do was take deep breaths and tell myself I had one more in me. It exhausted me to think about it.

Our team has not had a normal work schedule since we deployed to West, TX towards the end of April. Since then we have been on disaster, probably averaging around 70 hours per week. Our "relaxing" project was working 50 hour weeks in Long Island. I was excited to go to headquarters, and have time to hang out and do fun things with my team, and have a relaxing last round.

When I heard that I would probably be putting in 12 hour days, 7 days a week for the next few weeks, I kind of deflated.

To be perfectly honest, it also sucks to know that I'm still going to make $80 a week whether I work 40 hours or 80 hours. Trust me, I didn't join FEMA Corps for the money, but it's hard, after working overtime for 4 months, to be broke.

But...today was our first day out in the field, and I have to say, my head's back in the game.

I didn't really think they would send us out today. We had a meeting in the morning, and I figured we wouldn't be cleared by safety to go out in the field yet. But they surprised me. The TL's had a short meeting with FEMA and came back with our assignments. My team was being sent to Boulder. When we got there, it was the familiar "hurry up and wait" because things were still chaotic, but then we got word to go to the Disaster Recovery Center in Longmont, and off we went.

They were happy to see us. The DRC was just getting set up, and people had been there earlier in the morning wanting to speak with FEMA. The city emergency managers were awesome and met with us to learn about how we would be able to help the survivors, then set us up and let us go.

For the first 10 minutes no one was really coming over to us, but as soon as it started, it never stopped. I was registering people nonstop from around noon until 5:30. At 5:30, I stopped to take a break and have a piece of pizza in the back room. I was in there for a while talking with one of the awesome volunteers who was there helping to run the DRC, and my crew lead came in and said that she didn't mean to rush my break, but there were some Spanish speakers in line waiting to get registered. I came back out and there were about 10 people in chairs in front of my empty computer, waiting to get started.  Then it was go, go, go until the DRC closed at 7. We drove back from Boulder, got food for the next day at Walmart, and got back to campus at 9.

It was a long day and a rough day. My Spanish got put to the test almost all day long because Longmont apparently has a pretty large Hispanic population, I had to get back into DSAT mode after being in mitigation all last round, and I made an 80 year old woman cry because I had to be honest with  her about the limits of the assistance FEMA would be able to offer her in the unfortunate circumstances she was in.

But at the end of the day, I also feel like we helped a lot of people. We got them started in the process of receiving assistance, and we offered them some comfort and clarification in a really difficult and confusing time. I was also really proud of our team. We were FEMA at this DRC. There were no reservists there yet, just us, and we got things done. Like bosses.

I'm exhausted, but in a good way, and ready to get back in it tomorrow.

P.S.

If you would like to help out the folks in Colorado, click here to learn how. 

AmeriVacation - Roadtrip

After working with FEMA for 6 months you realize that plans just never quite work out like you thought they would.

Case in point, the roadtrip we planned to take over summer break.

Plan A

4 of us would take my car and go on a one week camping road trip. Starting from Denver, we would go to Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches, and back to Denver. 

And then we found out our vacation was getting extended to a week and a half. 

Plan B

In addition to the aforementioned parks, we would also stop at Joshua Tree, Laura's house in LA, and possibly Death Valley.

We would leave the first Sunday of break. A few days before we were scheduled to go, I noticed my car was having issues. Unfortunately it was Labor Day weekend, so not a lot of mechanics were open. In fact, almost none. Finally I found that Firestone would be open throughout the weekend and could fit me in on Saturday. 

Unfortunately, after I picked my car up from them, I soon found that it was still not running well, and, if anything, was worse than before. I took it back to Firestone, where the most helpful thing I could get out of him was "cars are complicated these days, I don't know what to tell you." No shit, Sherlock. That's why I paid you to figure it out. But, figure it out they did not. 

On the way back home, amidst my angry ranting about how much I hate getting my car fixed in other places because you don't know who to trust and it's so easy to get charged to fix things that aren't broken and how I just wanted to take it to the mechanic in Winner because I know it would actually get fixed for a fair price, Laura suggested that we do just that. 

And that is when we formulated...

Plan C

We would drive to Winner that same day, take my car to the shop, and use my parent's car to go on a new camping route which would take us through the parks in Wyoming and Montana. We would loop back around, trade back cars once mine was fixed, and drive back to Denver.

However, the other 2 girls who were planning on going on the roadtrip weren't exactly excited about Plan C. We don't make a lot of money in FEMA Corps, and they didn't really want to spend it on going places they didn't really want to go. 

There wasn't really another choice though. I wasn't about to risk driving my broken car through the Arizona desert. So...

Plan D

Laura and I would drive back to SD, take my car to the shop, and in the meantime, until it got fixed, camp in the Black Hills. When it was fixed, we would head back to Denver, pick up the other girls, and go camping with whatever time we had left. 

So on Sunday, we drove back to Winner. Luckily, the car made it, although at times I was a little nervous we would have to pop up the tent on the side of the highway in Middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. 

Laura's dream, for some reason I am unable to understand, was to see the Mitchell Corn Palace. So on Labor Day we drove to Mitchell and checked it out. On the way home we stopped at my grandma and grandpa's to get some lunch and a batch of my grandma's insanely delicious bars. 

Then we headed to the farm roasted our dinner over a bonfire. 

On Tuesday we got up early and drove west. We stopped at the Badlands where we purchased our Annual Pass to all the National Parks! Exciting!

At the Badlands

After visiting the Badlands we drove to the Black Hills. On our way to find a campsite we drove past Mt. Rushmore. We were planning on going in for free with our handy dandy pass, but Mt. Rushmore doesn't charge admission. They charge $11 for parking, and the passes don't cover that. That's how they get ya. So instead we saw it from a distance and rolled through to Sheridan Lake, where we got a beautiful campsite right by the water. 

Our campsite at Sheridan Lake

We sat up the tent, made a quick lunch of tuna and pita bread, and then went to Deadwood.

We visited the cemetary at Mt. Moriah to pay our respects to Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane and then went back to the campsite, where we met up with my friend Kelsey from high school, who lives in Rapid City. 

The next morning we visited the Crazy Horse memorial. This, much to our disappointment, is not a national monument, but a private endeavor, which charges $10 per person to get in. Being broke FEMA Corps members, we decided to admire it from a distance. 

Then we drove the scenic Needles Highway and stopped for a short hike to the Cathedral Spires.

Next we drove to Spearfish Canyon and stopped for another short hike at 11th Hour Gulch. 

I had received a call from my dad saying that they had figured out what was wrong with my car. It turns out it was the alternator, not the spark plugs and engine filter as Firestone had believed. Funny thing about that is, after a short google search, I had found a guy who was having the exact same troubles with the exact same car as I had, and it had been his alternator. I had chosen to trust the "experts" instead of the internet, and look where that got me. (Note: I later explained to Firestone that my free Google search engine had been more effective than their $105 computer engine analysis, and they agreed to refund me for that at least). So the new alternator was coming and would be there the following day. 

Since we had an extra day, we decided to make the drive to Wyoming to see Devil's Tower. We got there and got a spot at a great campsite in the park. And our national park pass actually worked!

Devil's Tower, WY

We noticed a pack of Montana Conservation Corps people at the campground and we ended up talking to a few of them. The Conservation Corps is another AmeriCorps program and one of the girls had actually been in NCCC on the Vinton, IA campus the previous year. The program sounded really cool. Definitely something to keep an eye on for the future. 

At night, a thunderstorm slowly started moving in and pretty soon the rain started and we hopped in the tent. Before we knew it the tent was almost blowing over on top of us. We had to hold down the edges until the storm passed, but at least we stayed dry!

On Thursday we hiked Devil's Tower and became Junior Rangers at the park (I have the badge to prove it). 

A deer we passed on our hike

Then we made our way back east. We made a pit stop at Wall Drug to get presents for our team - I chose a jackalope to sit on the dashboard of our van. Next, we stopped in Pierre to pay a visit to my brother's family. They made us amazing shrimp and crab enchiladas and I got to rile up my nephew right before bedtime. Then back to Winner.

Plan E

Head to Denver, pick up Denise and Merissa, and hit up Arches, Canyonlands, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. 

We got back Friday, stopping along the way in Cheyenne to eat lunch at Taco John's, because Laura, poor thing, had never had a potato ole before. Since the other girls didn't want to leave Denver until Sunday, we were planning on camping a night in Rocky Mountain National Park. We got there and saw some pretty nasty storm clouds moving in. Remembering how my tent held up against the wind in Wyoming, we thought it might be better to just go back to campus for the night and then head to the mountains the next morning to hike. 

And that we did. The next day, after breakfast burritos at Cafe Chihuahua, we hiked to Ouzel Falls. Then we came back to repack the car. 

This is when I found out that I had severely overestimated my trunk space. We would have never been able to pack for a week and a half road trip with 4 girls. We could barely fit stuff in for a 4 day trip. My car was packed to the brim. 

We headed out Sunday morning and made it to Moab, UT. Camping at Arches National Park was full, but we found a nice campsite a few miles down the Colorado River. It was right on the water and it was beautiful. 

After we set up the tent, it started to sprinkle, and it was downhill from there. We were able to build a fire the first evening with only a few light showers here and there. At night, it started to rain. And it never quit.

On Monday we got up, quickly got dressed and ready in the rain, and then headed to Arches. I had tried to pack as light as possible because we had no room, so I didn't have a jacket or sweater. It kind of sucked, because dressed like we were dressed, we couldn't go for a hike or anything without getting soaked. Luckily, Arches is a lot of driving and not so many hiking trails. And it did actually look pretty cool. Not a lot of people get to see Arches in the rain, which is a shame, because when it starts raining waterfalls spring up everywhere and it's actually really pretty. 

After seeing the rest of the park, we drove over to Canyonlands. That park is a lot higher than Arches so we just ended up being in the clouds, which meant we could see absolutely nothing except the road in front of us. Everything else was white, dense fog. We gave up and headed back into Moab where we tried to stay dry by grabbing coffee, browsing shops, and having dinner at a restaurant, since we couldn't really use the camp stove or a fire in the pouring rain. 

The next morning it was still rainy and foggy, so we packed up and were planning to head to Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Once we were able to get cell service and check the weather we realized that was probably pointless. It was raining there, too. 

Plan F It

Let's just go back to Denver. 

All in all, it turned out nothing like we had originally planned, but we did get to see some cool places, do some fun camping, take some nice hikes, and generally enjoy our vacations by turning off our blackberries and not thinking about FEMA. 

Transition Week in Denver

I will spare you the nitty gritty details of all the sessions and AmeriCorps stuff we had to do during transition week and skip right over to the fun parts.

Garden of the Gods

For an SLI (service learning initiative), our team planned a trip to Colorado Springs to visit the Garden of the Gods. It was a beautiful day and we spent the morning hiking through the park. 

Afterwords, we stopped in Manitou Springs to have lunch at an overpriced Mexican restaurant and then to browse the shops a bit. Right outside of Manitou Springs is a trail called the Manitou Incline. 

According to Wikipedia, "The trail is the remains of a former incline railway whose tracks washed out during a rock slide in 1990. The Incline is famous for its sweeping views and steep grade, as steep as 68% in places,^[1] making it a fitness challenge for locals in the Colorado Springs area. The incline gains over 2,000 feet (610 m) of elevation in less than one mile." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitou_Springs_Incline)

The Manitou Incline from the top

We decided to climb it. I decided to climb part of it. We'd been walking around all day, and my feet hurt, and I wasn't really feeling it. But then you get up a little ways, and you figure you might as well keep going. You can see the peak. It's so close. You keep trucking through, step by step, wheezing and sweating, and finally.....shit. That wasn't actually the top?!?

The Incline has what wikipedia refers to as a "false summit" and what I refer to as a cruel, cruel joke. What you thought was the top was actually just a crest that blocks the real summit from view. At that point my legs felt like jelly and I was dying for oxygen, but going back down wasn't really an option, because it was very high up and the steps were very janky, and I am not a fan of heights. So I kept going to the top, where I would be able to take a different trail down which was much less steep. Finally, I made it, in a little under an hour, I think. 

I'm still alive!

By the time we got down it was sunset. The end of a long, fun day of team time. 

Day of Volunteering at Summit Lake

Our team had talked about setting up some ISP's (independent service projects - basically volunteering with someone besides FEMA) to do over break and transition week. I had found an awesome organization called Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado that does environmental conservation and restoration projects throughout the state. 

We got a group of seven of us together to help them out on their Summit Lake Ecological Restoration and Shelter Rehabilitation project. This is an excerpt of the email that VOC sent us a few days after the project:

" 40 volunteers showed up at Summit Lake to restore delicate high alpine tundra and install a stone floor in a historic structure.  In all participants were able to transplant 89 plants, restore 112 ft of buck and rail fence and install 176 square feet of rock flooring. The work will help restore an extremely sensitive area that sees thousands of visitors a week during the summer months."

As you can see, I worked on the transplanting. 

Summit Lake is on Mt. Evens, a 14er about an hour and a half away from Denver. We were working up at 12,800 feet. 

It was absolutely gorgeous, but the altitude definitely made the work difficult. I could use the pickaxe for about 30 seconds before I would start getting lightheaded and gasping for breath. So unfortunately, we had to work pretty slowly. 

After lunch a storm rolled in and we had to call it a day. They made it very clear that lightning is no joke at that altitude. So we ran through the rain back to our van and headed back to Denver. 

The rest of transition week was spent catching up with teams we hadn't seen in a while, discovering the $2 margarita happy hour at Cafe Chihuahua, and square dancing at the Cowboy Lounge. 

Headed Out West

It seems like we just got to NY, and now it's time to leave again. Time flies in FEMA Corps.

Our journey began on Sunday, August 18th. We left Melville at 7 a.m. and drove to Cleveland, OH. This drive was extremely uneventful. Pennsylvania has lots of barns. That's really all I got out of it.

And it was my first time in Ohio! Another state crossed off the list. We didn't really have time to do anything in Cleveland, and it was a Sunday evening, so most things were closed. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame costs about $30 bucks unfortunately, which is about 2 1/2 days pay for us, so that was out of the question. My teammate has family in Cleveland though, so it was nice that she got to stop and see them. Meanwhile, the rest of us found a nice little Cambodian restaurant down the road and got a ton of food for our budget and had an awesome waitress. If you're ever in Cleveland (the boring part, close to the airport) head to Cuisine du Cambodge.

The next day we headed through Ohio and Indiana to Davenport, IA. We stayed at the La Quinta, which has been our hotel of choice throughout the program because they have big beds that feel like clouds. The woman at the front desk was a sweetheart and baked chocolate chip cookies for the guests. We arrived right when they were fresh out of the oven. Team dinner was at Texas Roadhouse thanks to a 10% coupon.

The third day we went to Lincoln, Nebraska! Home of the Huskers, and home of me for 4 years of my life. I hadn't been there since the previous July and I was super pumped to be back. It was kind of weird having my team there. It was a bit out of context. Another weird thing was that I found myself wanting to impress my team with Lincoln. It was like having them meet a good friend. I was worried that they might think my friend Lincoln was a bit lame and boring at first, but if they only knew him like I knew him! But thanks to the delicious ice cream at Ivanna Cone (my first stop of course - a scoop of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch and a scoop of Vanilla Ice Milk), a friendly bus driver who chuckled when we blocked his way backing out our 15-P van (that don't happen in NY), scrumptious pizza at Yia Yia's, and a beautiful stroll through the Sunken Gardens, I think they saw that Lincoln was good people. And I got to hang out with my friend Sarah who I haven't seen in way too long, so it was a good day!

And finally, after a long drive through the endless cornfields of western Nebraska, we made it back to Denver!

Our Days Off

Note: I finally have my personal laptop! Previously, I was trying to blog from my fema laptop, which was a horrible, awful, stupid piece of junk. This had been written for awhile, and I'd been unable to post it, but here it is, complete with pictures and everything! Enjoy.

After my last post about data entry, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Days off? Why would they want days off? Data entry and property inspections are probably the most fun thing there is to do in New York anyway.”

You’re right. Unfortunately, the man says we can’t come in Saturday and Sunday, and so we don’t. So let’s see if I can remember all the excruciatingly boring things we’ve done on the weekends since we got here. 

Our first weekend here...

….a few of us went into the city with our teammate, who’s from the Bronx and had a doctor’s appointment there. We ended up getting to meet her mom and brother, too, which was awesome. I like meeting my teammates’ families ( I met my other teammate’s mom and sister who live in Queens, and am going to Massachusetts to another teammate’s house this weekend and will get to meet her fam). It explains so much, while raising so many new questions. We also tend to get in a rut where the only thing we know about our teammate is their AmeriLife and we have a vague idea of what they were before that, but really not a lot. Meeting their family gives a little bit of insight.

After her appointment we took the train down into Manhattan and wandered around a bit. We made a stop at the Museum of the American Indian, and then checked out a street fair that was going on outside of it. We decided to walk around and find a cheap bar to hang out in while we were waiting. Since “cheap” and “Manhattan” don’t usually show up in the same sentence, this was difficult. As we were walking around, we stumbled upon Les Halles. Having read Kitchen Confidential last year, I recognized it as the restaurant where Anthony Bourdain used to work. Seeing as how my life goal is to become Anthony Bourdain’s protégé and take over for him as a host of a TV show where I get to travel the world and eat delicious food, I was excited to have found his former employer, who probably still keeps in touch with him and could recommend me as his predecessor. Really, I just wanted a picture. But then we saw a sign out front that said “Happy Hour - $2 Shrimp, $1 Oysters, $5 Beer”. Lucky us, that sounded within our price range, so we decided to pop in. It was very swanky, and I’m sure our waitress picked right up on the fact that we were not about to drop $100 on a gourmet meal. She gave us menus, and after seeing that the apps were in the upper teens, we gave them back and said, “We’re just here for Happy Hour,” and each ordered a beer.

“You have $2 shrimp right now, right?” my teammate asked. The waitress nodded. “OK, I’ll have that.”

“And how many would you like?”

“Umm….how many comes in an order?”

“As many as you like.” The waitress saw the cogs turning as we processed what she meant. “Each shrimp is a dollar,” she confirmed.

“Oh. Hmm…..And you have $1 oysters?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never tried oysters. I’ll take one of those.”

“Just one oyster?”

“Yes, please.”

We devoured the complimentary bread basket because all we had eaten for hours was a bagel. And then this was delivered to us:

She enjoyed her one oyster very much, and we decided to move on. I’m sure our waitress was very disappointed that we didn’t hang around.

We walked down to South Street Seaport, and it began to rain. Being of very high intelligence, we chose to sit outside on the pier. The umbrella over our table had one job, and it failed miserably. After one drink we were soaked, but decided to wait it out under the leaky umbrella instead of going out into the rain to the subway. Finally, we gave up on that and made our way back to Melville. 

On our second weekend here...

….we decided to take a tour of Brooklyn Heights with a company called Free Tours by Foot. Just like it sounds, the tours are actually free. At the end, you pay the tour guide what you think it was worth. Seeing as how we’re all broke, this seemed like a nice idea.

The tour was exactly what you’d expect to get from a tour that cost $30. Our tour guide was funny, knowledgeable and friendly, and we learned a lot about the area. Also, our tour guide loved us when he found out we were in AmeriCorps. He kept telling the Australians and Israelis on the tour about AmeriCorps and what we do and how awesome we are for volunteering our time. 

He pointed out some interesting things on the way, like the house Beyonce and Jay-Z almost moved into, subsequently driving up prices on the whole street, the house where Truman Capote used to live in the basement, and a stop on the Underground Railroad. The tour ended at the Brooklyn Bridge and we walked over the bridge and headed to Chinatown. We got some food there, then walked through Little Italy.

Our tour guide had suggested we take the free Staten Island Ferry if we wanted a nice view of the Statue of Liberty, so we did that at night. It was a really pretty ride. After that we headed back home. AmeriCorps was nice enough to provide us with a metro card that gave us unlimited rides for the month. This really helped to get around the city for free, and usually we were able to take the van into Queens where we could get on the subway, instead of taking the Long Island Railroad, which cost $6-9. 

On our third weekend here...

….a group of us came back into the city. Me and a teammate walked through Central Park and attempted to do a Harry Potter geocache in the park. However, we were not smart enough to figure out the puzzle, and after about 5 minutes, we gave up and just took a walk.

Our next stop was the Highline Park. It used to be an elevated track of the New York Central Railroad, and now it’s been converted with plants and artwork into a really beautiful elevated park. 

After a stroll there, we headed down to Brooklyn, because I found some Georgian restaurants there, and this will probably be my last chance to get authentic Georgian food for a while. It was quite a long train ride, but it was worth it.

The place was called Tbilisi Restaurant, and as soon as we walked in I felt like I was back in Georgia. My favorite Georgian song, Ramdeni Malodine was playing on the speakers, and a big table in the corner looked like they were at the tail end of a supra. We had the adjaran khachapuri, a bread in the shape of a boat, filled with cheese, egg, and butter, the eggplant rolls filled with walnut puree, mchadi, a fried corn bread patty, and khinkali, or Georgian dumplings. My friends loved it, and in true Georgian fashion, we were all completely stuffed by the end. It only came out to about $10 per person, too, which was insane for the amount of food we got. And, our waitress was awesome. She talked to me about Georgia, and after I told her where I was living, she didn’t really believe me when I said I enjoyed it… She also came over and told us we were doing it wrong when we were eating the khachapuri. Apparently I never learned how to eat the Adjaran kind correctly, so she grabbed our forks and knives and did it for us. Then she stopped over later to double check that I was showing them how to eat the khinkali the right way.

Deep in our food comas, we boarded the subway back to Queens. 

On our day off because of a gas leak in the office...

….yes that happened. Apparently there was a gas leak in the office in Woodbury where we work, so we got the day off while they took care of it. We took that time to go into Manhattan and check out the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. I’d been there when I came to NY in the past, and was excited to go back, because it’s one of my favorites ever. After spending a few hours there, we walked around and tried to find a cheap place to eat on 5^th avenue (ha!). Then back to our good ol’ extended stay hotel.

On our fourth weekend here...

….we did team stuff. On Saturday we had an ISP (independent service project) which is AmeriCode for volunteering somewhere other than our project. We are required to do 10 hours of ISPs relating to disasters, so we signed up to work with an organization called All Hands that works with disaster survivors. We went to a woman’s home in Island Park to help her clean and gut her garage so that they could sanitize it and get rid of the mold. This woman was awesome. We were ready to get to work when we arrived, but she insisted that we come in and sit down for some bagels and coffee. After that, we started helping her clean out her garage and sort through the stuff she wanted to keep or give away. We then packed the ‘keep’ stuff into a storage unit in her garage. Once the garage was completely cleaned out, we started tearing out all the shelves, drywall and insulation. By the time we got all that done, it was about lunchtime.

We had all packed lunches, but it turns out our Italian hostess had been preparing us homemade pizzas. It was absolutely delicious. She made sausage, cheese, mushroom/eggplant/sausage, and sausage and onions in white wine sauce pizza. Upon her insistence, we sat for a long time around the table. Her Italian mother was there also. She didn’t talk much, but when she had something to say she said it. She saw my team leader eating goldfish crackers and said “Why you eat this? This is not real food! This is junk!” Later, she turned to us out of the blue and said, “You like-a the pope?” It was classic.

We went back to work after lunch, but it didn’t last long. After about an hour, her mother started sticking her head out the window saying, “Coffee’s ready! Come drink coffee!”

We went back inside and she had coffee and espresso ready for us. And blueberry pie. And apple pie. We got very spoiled. But I think we were able to get a lot done for her, and helped her move a tiny step forward in the long recovery process. 

On Sunday we did a team SLI, or Service Learning Initiative. This can be a broad spectrum of things, and this one was a community and cultural SLI. The team went together into Manhattan to visit the 9/11 Memorial. This was the first time I had seen it, and I thought it was a great tribute to those who passed away. My favorite part was the Survivor Tree, a pear tree that had survived the attacks and was then replanted in another park. After the memorial was built, they transplanted it back. 

After leaving the memorial, we visited Trinity Church, walked down Wall Street, and then headed to Chinatown for lunch. We went to a place called Wo Hop, which was recommended to us by our tour guide from the Brooklyn Heights tour we had taken. It was in that basement restaurant that I had the best Chinese food of my life, the Roasted Duck Chow Fon,  for like $6.95 or something. Amazing food seems to be a theme of my time in New York. 

On our fifth weekend here...

...a few of us joined our teammate Ana, on a trip back to her hometown of Wareham, Massachusetts. She had taken a few days off and gone home earlier, and we met her on the weekend. Unfortunately we were cursed by the bus gods, and had a terrible time getting there and back. 

We booked Megabus on the way there, and ended up missing our bus, because the employees told us to get in the wrong line. Then they told us we'd have to pay for new tickets and leave the next morning. After bombarding their tiny customer service call center, we got our tickets transferred over to the next bus to Boston, without having to pay extra. We didn't end up getting in to Boston til about 4 a.m., but luckily Ana and her mom are awesome and still came to pick us up. 

The next day we headed to the beach at Cape Cod and got to enjoy this...

Then we stopped in Plymouth to try some real New England clam chowdah. We were practically licking the bowls. We also got a chance to check out Plymouth Rock, or what they claim was Plymouth Rock. 

Then it was back to Ana's house, where her family had prepared a feast for us. Lobster, crab that her dad had caught that day, shrimp pasta, and of course s'mores around the bonfire for dessert. A great end to the day.

The next day we went into Providence where we were taking the Greyhound back to NY. We walked around Providence for a little bit - it was Sunday, so it was a bit quiet - and then we got in line for the bus. Unfortunately, when we'd made it to the front, the bus driver informed us that he had 2 seats left and 5 of us left. Thank you, Greyhound, for overbooking your bus, and leaving us on the side of the road. They sent us on another bus an hour and a half later. We then got stuck in traffic for a good 2 hours on our way through Connecticut. When we finally got back into the city, it was much later than we had anticipated, and we didn't finally get to Melville until after midnight. 

Lesson learned: most major bus companies in America suck.

-----------

And that is what we did in New York when we were not staring at computer screens. 

Resting Bitch Face

I learned about Resting Bitch Face from an article my dad emailed me on the topic (still not sure what he was trying to imply with that email).

As I read the email, it all sounded much too familiar. I remembered how one of my high school teachers (who may have had a case of Constant Bitch Face) would always come up to me when I was minding my own business and say “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I would try to tell her, but she wouldn’t believe me. For so long I thought, “What is this woman’s problem? Jesus Crackers, just leave me alone!” But then other people started asking me what was wrong at other times when I was just chilling. After reading the email, I had to face the fact that it is me with the problem.

I have a severe case of Resting Bitch Face.

After reading the article, I told my team about it and they confirmed my fears. Even at times when I’m completely content, and just sitting there thinking, they point out to me that I’m doing RBF. I had no idea this happened so often!

Not long after this discovery, I was sitting at my desk at work, and my crew lead came up to me and asked if everything was ok.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

“I don’t know, you just looked like you were not happy about being here. Did you get enough sleep last night?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m not unhappy, it’s just my face. I get that a lot. I swear, that’s just my face.”

Here’s what I think the problem is. First off, I have extremely droopy lip corners. If I’m not actively making an expression with my face, they just droop like dying flowers. One side is worse than the other, so when I have to do a no-smile picture, like my FEMA badge for example, which is more awful than I can convey with words, the right side of my mouth droops way down, and I look like I’ve suffered a stroke. There’s no way I can control it. When I know I’m going to have to take one of these photos, I practice in the mirror ahead of time, trying to purse the right side of my mouth up. Somehow it makes it even more pronounced, and the picture always turns out horrible despite my best efforts.

Me trying to look normal. Notice the dead eyes and droopy crooked lips.

The second problem is my dead eyes. Again, when I’m just chilling, my eyes tend to lose all life and I look like a corpse. A corpse who died of a stroke.  When I realize I’m doing it, I attempt to open my eyes wide and focus on some kind of object so that I look alive. This may backfire too, as I recently found out, when my friend turned to me and said “Wow, you look super alert right now for some reason. What’s going on?”

Some other alternatives I’ve tried are Resting Happy Face, but that just seems to creep people out. I tried Duck Lips Face, like the girls on Instagram, but unfortunately I was born with chicken lips, and am unable to convert them to duck form. Resting Alert Face, like I said, is just awkward. When I do Resting Pensive Face, it just ends up making me look angry or confused.

In the end I can only cross my fingers and hope that people will realize I’m not actually a bitch. Or at least not as big of a bitch as my RBF makes me look.

And sadly, the bad news keeps coming. I was recently informed by a friend that I also suffer from Train Depression Face. If the name is not sufficient explanation, basically it means that when I ride a subway, I look like I’m about to off myself. People are probably concerned that I’m going to get out, run across the platform, and jump in front of the next one. So now I’m going to have to remember to think happy thoughts next time I’m on a train, and hope that some of it registers in my facial expression.

Or I could get a tattoo on my forehead that says “It’s Just My Face”.