So work has pretty much been the same...making phone calls and talking to people in really sad situations. One exciting thing though is that when we started work there were about 10,000 people in the queue in the computer who needed to be contacted and helped. When I left the day before Thanksgiving there were only about 600. So it feels like we've made a lot of progress.
For Thanksgiving the office gave us half of Wednesday through Sunday off. On Monday we're going to Galveston as a team to see the destruction first hand, and then another teammate and I have Tuesday off, so I have almost a full week off of work. Yesterday on Thanksgiving morning my team volunteered at "Operation Turkey" which is a group that delivers food and clothing to the local homeless. I mostly organized clothes and carried boxes to cars to be brought out to different people.
Afterwards my friend Ruthie and I went for a drive to get out of the hotel and we found this little park and went for a walk and talked about how we missed our families and being home for Thanksgiving. When we came back the girls in my room made mashed potatoes which was interesting with no peelers and only tiny pots. We ended up making four little pots and peeling all the potatoes with knives. It worked out though and the potatoes were delicious. We had Thanksgiving dinner in our team leader's room. Each room brought a dish. We had stuffing, chicken, mashed potatoes, yams and guacamole. I was more sad than I expected to be not being with family, but it was a cute attempt at Thanksgiving dinner in Texas in a hotel.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Workin for the man
So work has been exhausting with the long hours and emotionally trying phone calls. We have to tally every call we make as a call and then tally the number of people in each household, where we place them, etc. Today I added up my tallies from the past 5 days and I realized that in those 5 days I made 102 calls, affected 103 people in 43 families. I helped 2 families find apartments and signed 15 people up for mobile homes. That made me feel a little better about what I am doing.
I also had this crazy thing happen today where someone who was answering phones transferred a call to me that she said was mine. The woman on the phone was asking for Sarah, but after much confusion on my part, I realized it was another Sarah's case who was out of the office today. By the time I realized this though, it was too far into the conversation for me to admit to the woman that it wasn't my case and I had never heard of her before. Basically her issue was that the mobile unit she was getting was being sent to the wrong address. She said she was so frustrated because she was so close to getting a unit and this thing tripped up the whole process. I said I would work on it. She called me back a few times during the day with new information and I had to call her back a couple times. On the last call I had with her she stopped me as we were saying goodbye and said that she wanted to tell me that she really appreciated what I was doing for her. She said I was the first person she had talked to who had actually helped her and she really commended the work I was doing. That one little comment made the whole day of craziness worth it.
I also had this crazy thing happen today where someone who was answering phones transferred a call to me that she said was mine. The woman on the phone was asking for Sarah, but after much confusion on my part, I realized it was another Sarah's case who was out of the office today. By the time I realized this though, it was too far into the conversation for me to admit to the woman that it wasn't my case and I had never heard of her before. Basically her issue was that the mobile unit she was getting was being sent to the wrong address. She said she was so frustrated because she was so close to getting a unit and this thing tripped up the whole process. I said I would work on it. She called me back a few times during the day with new information and I had to call her back a couple times. On the last call I had with her she stopped me as we were saying goodbye and said that she wanted to tell me that she really appreciated what I was doing for her. She said I was the first person she had talked to who had actually helped her and she really commended the work I was doing. That one little comment made the whole day of craziness worth it.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30884286&l=f19de&id=10300564
Here is a link to the pictures I have taken so far, including the drive down to Austin. Work is same old same old, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, no windows, calling people who are living in their cars and who say they just have nowhere to go. I will write more when something exciting happens!
Here is a link to the pictures I have taken so far, including the drive down to Austin. Work is same old same old, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, no windows, calling people who are living in their cars and who say they just have nowhere to go. I will write more when something exciting happens!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Getting Started
Today was my first official day of on my own calling people. I got a call list at 8am with about 22 people on it. With each person, I have to look them up in two seperate data bases and get some background information on them like whether they are eligible for rental assistance and whether they are part of the HUD (housing and urban development?) program. Then I call them on one of two or three available numbers. If they are there I talk to them and see what their current housing situation is...whether they are still living in their damaged home, or if they are living in a trailer, an apartment, or with family or friends. If they need somewhere to live, I pull up a list of rentals in their area and give them telephone numbers of landlords to call to try and rent. If they are in Galveston or Houston though, there aren't any available because everything is gone or being used, so then I have to ask them if they are interested in living in a mobile unit.
I talked to one woman today who said if she kept talking to me she was going to start crying. She sounded so exasperated with the whole experience, which I can understand. I called another man who I never got a hold of. The notes on hims said that he was older and who had been living in his car. He was losing his sight and could not write things down, so when the person before me tried to give him some resources he could not write them down. It is really hard to be on the other end of the phone with these people, because it feels so impersonal and disconnected.
If the person is not there, I have to keep calling them back throughout the day. You have to call each person three time a day if they do not answer. After you get finished with each client, you have to code them according to what their situation is, and that goes into the two databases. At 3pm every day we have to report our numbers to our supervisors and they tally them up and compare them with other teams, etc. That is what we do every day for 10 hours, with two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch break. The time actually goes by pretty fast when you're calling people all day, but the days are still long, and there is still minimal sunshine in my life. Everyone on my team is in each other's nerves, so that is going to be tough. We are all waking up tomorrow to do PT at 6am, which should also brighten everyone's spirits : )
I talked to one woman today who said if she kept talking to me she was going to start crying. She sounded so exasperated with the whole experience, which I can understand. I called another man who I never got a hold of. The notes on hims said that he was older and who had been living in his car. He was losing his sight and could not write things down, so when the person before me tried to give him some resources he could not write them down. It is really hard to be on the other end of the phone with these people, because it feels so impersonal and disconnected.
If the person is not there, I have to keep calling them back throughout the day. You have to call each person three time a day if they do not answer. After you get finished with each client, you have to code them according to what their situation is, and that goes into the two databases. At 3pm every day we have to report our numbers to our supervisors and they tally them up and compare them with other teams, etc. That is what we do every day for 10 hours, with two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch break. The time actually goes by pretty fast when you're calling people all day, but the days are still long, and there is still minimal sunshine in my life. Everyone on my team is in each other's nerves, so that is going to be tough. We are all waking up tomorrow to do PT at 6am, which should also brighten everyone's spirits : )
Monday, November 10, 2008
Everything is bigger in Texas
I haven't written anything in so long. It's been a crazy week or so and the internet at the hotel we are staying at is not very good. I am also trying to get some pictures up on Facebook, and if I do I will post the links for those.
So we made it to Texas. We left last Monday and drove to Amarillo, TX in a 15 passenger van, stopping every two hours to switch drivers. We slept in Amarillo and were on the road again at 7:30 the next morning to drive to Austin. Through our whole drive in Texas, the landscape was pretty bleak. I did see a lot of cotton growing though, which I had never seen. I'd say that was the landscape highlight. One of the low points was driving through cattle farms where I thought the smell of poop would never leave the van. We got to Austin around 6:30 pm and sat around in the parking lot for about an hour while we figured out our room situation.
There are 2 men, 7 women, and one team leader on my team. The team leader gets his own room, the guys share a room, and the 7 girls are split up 3 and 4 to a room. My room has 4. Each room has one bed and one pull out couch. There are no dressers, and the closet is about 4 feet wide with no door. So, it is pretty tight, but we are making due. We also have a total of $4.50 a day per person for food, so we've been very creative in our eating. We also have to be creative because we have no oven and only two burners per room. Tonight was my night to cook and I made tuna melts and tomato soup, which I think turned out pretty well.
We didn't start our official job until the end of the week, so on Thursday we spent the day volunteering. In the morning we did Meals on Wheels and drove around delivering lunches to people, which I really loved doing. Then in the afternoon we went to a food bank that moved to a new location and spent about 5 hours painting their new place. We have to have 80 hours of independent service to finish Americorps, and we got 10 hours that day.
We are working in Austin at the Joint Field Office (JFO) which is basically the headquarters for disaster relief in the Texas gulf. Most of the teams from Denver got sent down to Galveston, but we are staying in Austin with 3 other teams. We work Monday through Saturday from 8am to 6pm in an old JC Penny's with no windows. Our job is to call those who have been displaced by the hurricanes to see what their current housing situation is and what their plan is for the next couple of months. If they do not have one, we provide them with "rental resources". Saturday was our first day and we mostly got training on the computer programs and shadowed workers. We also got our official FEMA ID badges...which we were advised not to wear outside of the building because so many people dislike FEMA.
Today we got our laptops and set up our desks, which are long tables inside of cubicles in what used to be the juniors department of JC Penny's. The best part of the day was going to the supply station and getting to pick whatever we wanted for our desks. It was like going to Staples and having everything be free. For the rest of the day though, we mostly sat around and waited for IT to set up our passwords, etc. We shadowed for about half an hour before we were called to a meeting for the entire department. During the meeting, 4 cranky women who run the department complained about all the things everyone is doing wrong and threatened everyone with various things if they didn't do their jobs right. It was a pretty terrible ending to a pretty long and terrible day. It is going to be a really hard 6 weeks manning a phone in a sunlight-less room.
On the bright side, the few times I have been to Austin have been really cool. On our day off (Sunday) a bunch of my teammates and I went downtown and explored around the UT area. Austin really comes alive at night. There are a lot of local vendors out and the bar crowd is huge. I guess the warm weather keeps people coming out, and they stay out late, so there's a really good energy all the time. It's a fun city and I hope to get to hang out there as much as possible to balance out these mind numbing work days.
So we made it to Texas. We left last Monday and drove to Amarillo, TX in a 15 passenger van, stopping every two hours to switch drivers. We slept in Amarillo and were on the road again at 7:30 the next morning to drive to Austin. Through our whole drive in Texas, the landscape was pretty bleak. I did see a lot of cotton growing though, which I had never seen. I'd say that was the landscape highlight. One of the low points was driving through cattle farms where I thought the smell of poop would never leave the van. We got to Austin around 6:30 pm and sat around in the parking lot for about an hour while we figured out our room situation.
There are 2 men, 7 women, and one team leader on my team. The team leader gets his own room, the guys share a room, and the 7 girls are split up 3 and 4 to a room. My room has 4. Each room has one bed and one pull out couch. There are no dressers, and the closet is about 4 feet wide with no door. So, it is pretty tight, but we are making due. We also have a total of $4.50 a day per person for food, so we've been very creative in our eating. We also have to be creative because we have no oven and only two burners per room. Tonight was my night to cook and I made tuna melts and tomato soup, which I think turned out pretty well.
We didn't start our official job until the end of the week, so on Thursday we spent the day volunteering. In the morning we did Meals on Wheels and drove around delivering lunches to people, which I really loved doing. Then in the afternoon we went to a food bank that moved to a new location and spent about 5 hours painting their new place. We have to have 80 hours of independent service to finish Americorps, and we got 10 hours that day.
We are working in Austin at the Joint Field Office (JFO) which is basically the headquarters for disaster relief in the Texas gulf. Most of the teams from Denver got sent down to Galveston, but we are staying in Austin with 3 other teams. We work Monday through Saturday from 8am to 6pm in an old JC Penny's with no windows. Our job is to call those who have been displaced by the hurricanes to see what their current housing situation is and what their plan is for the next couple of months. If they do not have one, we provide them with "rental resources". Saturday was our first day and we mostly got training on the computer programs and shadowed workers. We also got our official FEMA ID badges...which we were advised not to wear outside of the building because so many people dislike FEMA.
Today we got our laptops and set up our desks, which are long tables inside of cubicles in what used to be the juniors department of JC Penny's. The best part of the day was going to the supply station and getting to pick whatever we wanted for our desks. It was like going to Staples and having everything be free. For the rest of the day though, we mostly sat around and waited for IT to set up our passwords, etc. We shadowed for about half an hour before we were called to a meeting for the entire department. During the meeting, 4 cranky women who run the department complained about all the things everyone is doing wrong and threatened everyone with various things if they didn't do their jobs right. It was a pretty terrible ending to a pretty long and terrible day. It is going to be a really hard 6 weeks manning a phone in a sunlight-less room.
On the bright side, the few times I have been to Austin have been really cool. On our day off (Sunday) a bunch of my teammates and I went downtown and explored around the UT area. Austin really comes alive at night. There are a lot of local vendors out and the bar crowd is huge. I guess the warm weather keeps people coming out, and they stay out late, so there's a really good energy all the time. It's a fun city and I hope to get to hang out there as much as possible to balance out these mind numbing work days.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Spike Prep
This is a picture of some of my teammates and me on Halloween when we all had lunch together in our costumes among the sea of Americorps people all dressed the same. My team leader, Mike, is the one with the footie pajamas
Our projects where we are away from Denver are called "spike projects". This week we mostly prepared for them. We assigned roles on the team, so each person has one or two jobs. Mine are PT (physical training) coordinator and Yearbook representative. I am doing both of those jobs with another member of the team. We are going out on disaster relief, so we are only allowed to bring one bag with us, which they provide, so we have been trying to cram all of our stuff into another suitcase, since we are only allowed to store one when we are gone. We have daily room inspections to make sure we are packing, cleaning, etc.
Today we had our project briefing, where each member of the team stands up in front of the director and unit leader and talks about their role on the team and what they will be doing in that role while on spike. During this meeting we found out that our team would be traveling to Galveston, TX to live in a tent city and do work down there. We were excited to finally know where we would be going, after weeks of not knowing. A few hours later though, during my room inspection, my team leader said that plans had changed and that now we are living in Austin for the entire time, and most likely living in a hotel. I am excited, because I like Austin, and I think it will be a good opportunity to get to know the city better. We leave Monday, drive to Amarillo and spend the night, then drive to Austin on Tuesday.
Today (Friday) I volunteered at the Children's Museum. We have to complete 80 hours of independent service project (ISP) while completing our 1700 hours of service during the 10 months of Americorps. The Children's Museum was my first 5 hours. They had a big trick or treat event where kids came and played games and trick or treated in different rooms inside and outside of the museum. It was really cute. My friend Ruthie and I were assigned to games first, and then to mask making. The kids were really adorable and excited about everything, which was awesome.
Tomorrow is our induction ceremony where we are officially inducted into the program. I think tomorrow night I am going to camp in Boulder and then we leave Monday!
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