TomTom, You Suck

We arrived in Houston on Wednesday.  This place is HUGE.  I am definitely not going to be relocating to this area. 

We are staying in the Lutheran Church's Family Life Center.  It's a nice facility with a huge kitchen and an indoor basketball court.  Unfortunately, we have a babysitter every night from 6-10, and she has been less than hospitable; turning the lights and a/c off on us, fussing at us for going in rooms other than the two we have to sleep in.  Seems a bit ridiculous that she is so harsh, but we are only here for 3 weeks, so we will deal with it.

We started work on Thursday morning with an orientation the the Neighborhood Centers, Inc.  We learned all about the organization and what it is involved in within the community.  It is basically a community development organization with several different branches, including early childhood, asset development, and senior centers.  The branch that we are working with is Disaster Recovery, implemented in 2008 in response to Hurricane Ike.  This program has been working to repair the homes of victim's, primarily roofing repairs.  There were over 11,000 people affected by the hurricane in the area and just over 1000 have been fully helped.  While here, we will be working on homes replacing their temporary tarps because they do not have the funding right now to repair the roofs completely.  The tarps will hopefully sustain the homeowners through this next hurricane season.

On Friday an Army Corps of Engineers employee came to train my team in how to put the tarps up on the roofs.  We went through a slide show, which seemed simple enough, and then went out to the first house.  It was ridiculous.  The house had three different pitches, so four valleys, which made the tarping extremely tedious and difficult.  It was a very slow process for all of us, since the Engineer was unable to be physically on the premises due to government policy.  I think once we get a routine going it will be far easier for us and go much faster.  Right now they would like for us to do 100 houses, however, we will really have to pick up the pace for that to happen without anyone experienced to help us.

This weekend we are going to explore the Houston area a little more.  Annie, Emma, and I have already gone on quite the adventure this morning just looking for an open post office.  Madison and Chris, expect some mail this week!  This afternoon we plan on going down to the museum district to check stuff out there.  Emma and I are planning on going to the science museum for sure, they have interactive exhibits that I am really excited about.  I have spent the morning looking and applying for jobs in South Carolina.  Keep your fingers crossed that someone wants to hire me!