The return to Austin

Last Monday, rumors circulated around the St. Louis Red Cross chapter that my AmeriCorps team would be deployed to Texas the next week. On Tuesday, we heard we would be deployed to Oklahoma on Wednesday. An hour after that rumor, we received our special project request: we needed to be in Austin, TX by Thursday evening.

Although my team was supposed to be in St. Louis all summer, some Memorial Day flooding in central Texas has moved us down south. Currently, we are living in an Extended Stay America hotel in downtown Austin and working at a FEMA mobile unit in San Marcos. We leave the hotel at 7:30am and return at 8:00pm. Temperatures are in the 90s and expected to be triple-digit by next week. We have one day off per week.

Woo! It's quite grueling, and is a huge change from doing office work in the air-conditioned Red Cross but my team is registering people for FEMA assistance. For many, we are the first faces of FEMA that they encounter, so it is important to make a good impression. Listening to stories and giving them a little peace of mind by the end of the registration intake has been pretty rewarding so far. I'm not sure how long we will be in Texas, but I am making the most of it by spending time with my family and friends during the few moments that I have to myself.