Spike Travel

Winter break is now over and before heading down to Texas we all spent a week in Denver preparing for our next spike round. I have to say that it was quite hard coming back to Americorps after seeing all my good friends and family back home. Everything in Chevy Chase just seemed so familiar and I adjusted to the overall situation so quickly compared to the places I have been living so far this year. I have found a bit hard to get back into swing of Americorps in the past couple of weeks without thinking about home.
My team was originally scheduled to move down to Austin for our next spike project, however FEMA decided that my team would be of better use in Beaumont Texas. My team was a little bit discouraged by the news as we had all been excited to live in Austin, but we were assured that our project in Beaumont would be a lot more fulfilling. Rather than running call stations in Austin to locate displaced persons from the recent hurricanes, we will be working directly in the affected areas and helping the local governments to plan long term recovery projects.
The trip down to Beaumont took about three days and ran pretty smoothly. Our first stop was in Amarillo Texas, home of the 72oz Big Texan steak. We then spent the night in Fort worth. The next two nights we spent in Houston where we took a training class for our division of FEMA (ESF-14). We finally arrived in Beaumont on the fifth day to the extended stay hotel where we will be living for the next two months. Overall the four days of travel in the big passenger van werent too painful, but the majority of the scenery through northern and eastern texas looks exactly like this...