Friday, July 27, 2012
7.27.12
This has been a crazy week, probably one of the most frustrating and stressful yet. I have a traveler that has never really traveled and honestly I don't know how his family deals with him being in public at any point in time. Especially with people he is unfamiliar with. He runs off, he yells, he bullies the other travelers and he refuses to listen and follow the rules. Pair this up with another one of my travelers who is very much like Eeyore. Something is always wrong, he is always picking fights with the first traveler and he refuses to walk at a normal pace or move at all when he is upset, which is a lot of the time, or he does not feel like doing what we are doing. It has been a struggle to be stopped and convince him to move while trying to keep the others by me in crowds of people. Just one more day, just one more day! The schedule this week has been all weird so my days are thrown off too. It has seemed like a very long week. But the guys for the most part are so much fun. They sing and dance to everything and we have had a lot of musical activities. But, to top it off our boss will be coming down on Sun morning, as the travelers are leaving, with some campers to spend the night. So cleaning has to be perfect and very quick. But on a good note...we have no travelers staying over and we have nobody coming early so we all get Sun evening off together! This has not happened and probably won't again so we plan on doing it right...lol. We will start with lunch at Rainforest Cafe with the boss, then we are leaving him to go stay the night at Harrah's. We will spend a few hours laying out at their Oasis pool, then go to a coctail cruise for a couple hours. Then we will let them shuttle us to the boardwalk for a night out. It should be a lot of fun and much needed for all of us. I will miss the final night out at the end of summer since I am heading home before the other girls so I am super excited! I will post more pics up to FB at some point. I am going to get all the pics from the summer on my flash drive so I can have the ones that were not taken with my camera. You can tell that we are all more relaxed and just having fun with everyone by this point in the summer. Next week should be easier. It will be week 1 of 2 for high functioning and we will only have 9 travelers rather than the 11 we usually have. Most of them manage their own money and meds for the most part. Still plan on doing a flash mob with them. I will post about our night out when I get a chance :)
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
7.24.12
It has been a busy week and the time is still flying by so fast. Last weeks group was so much fun. They were loud and energetic and loved everything. We all really enjoyed them and even had 6 stay over for this week. This week seems like it will be a little bit more of a challenge but I think we all think that when the new group comes in and by the end of the week we are not ready for them to leave. We have one traveler that is on his 3rd week, which in this house, seems like he has been here forever. He is such a sweet guy and the whole staff has just fallen in love with him. It is going to be sad to see him go at the end of this week. Last night all 5 staff were putting him to bed...lol. It was really sweet.
We will finally have all staff back this week. 2 weeks without seeing my old roommate seems like so long. It is weird to be back in my own room and last night I spent the night down with the girls in the basement so I could sleep in today for my day off. I am just hopping beds here...haha. Enjoyed my day off today but the down time makes me miss home. I slept in and laid out on the deck and down at the beach. Got some laundry done and even took a nap. It has been a migraine day though so all I want to do is lay down. I guess it is a good thing that I had already planned on staying in all day and doing nothing. I just hope it is gone by tomorrow. I only have 3 more days off before heading home and keep avoiding the things I need to do before I get home. I am going to miss the beach and the girls and the travelers. Pretty much everything about this summer will be missed. But gonna enjoy all the sum I can get to have the best tan going home :) Nothing really exciting has been going on. Just usual everyday stuff. We have adjusted to our nurse leaving and it seems like the stress level has been improved. Our house manager has done a great job on organizing the house and it is running smoothly. I plan on making a scrap book from the summer and will probably start getting all the pics together pretty soon so maybe I can get started on it before I go home. Although that may be a bit adventurous...we will see.
We will finally have all staff back this week. 2 weeks without seeing my old roommate seems like so long. It is weird to be back in my own room and last night I spent the night down with the girls in the basement so I could sleep in today for my day off. I am just hopping beds here...haha. Enjoyed my day off today but the down time makes me miss home. I slept in and laid out on the deck and down at the beach. Got some laundry done and even took a nap. It has been a migraine day though so all I want to do is lay down. I guess it is a good thing that I had already planned on staying in all day and doing nothing. I just hope it is gone by tomorrow. I only have 3 more days off before heading home and keep avoiding the things I need to do before I get home. I am going to miss the beach and the girls and the travelers. Pretty much everything about this summer will be missed. But gonna enjoy all the sum I can get to have the best tan going home :) Nothing really exciting has been going on. Just usual everyday stuff. We have adjusted to our nurse leaving and it seems like the stress level has been improved. Our house manager has done a great job on organizing the house and it is running smoothly. I plan on making a scrap book from the summer and will probably start getting all the pics together pretty soon so maybe I can get started on it before I go home. Although that may be a bit adventurous...we will see.
Friday, July 20, 2012
7.18.12 (LA Trip)
What a crazy week it has been. So much has gone on and it went by so fast. I can't believe I am already back from LA. I started off by borrowing on of the girls bags to take with me since I broke mine on the way down here. But apparently there is a trick to the handle and once it is up it is difficult to get down. No big deal, I decided to just leave it down. I got to the train station to head to Philly the night before we were to fly out. I wasn't even sitting there 5 min before I realized I forgot my glasses. Not a good start to the week but it ended up that was the only thing I forgot. Not too bad. I got to Philly with no problems and we only had one traveler in for the night. The next morning was a 4:30am meet-up at the airport. The other 3 travelers arrived on time and we were off. As we were walking onto the first flight one of my travelers tells me he is not feeling well. Already holding his stomach. My thought was "oh great...this is going to be an interesting flight" Turns out he just gets nervous at take off and landing. All was good. No delays, no big issues. Switched planes in St. Paul, which is a really big airport. Then we got into LA. LAX is a terrible airport. There are a ton of people and it is laid out very bad. I had to go meet some other travelers and at LAX you can't go from one terminal to the next. So I had to go through security again just to get back into right beside where I came in. What if people had flights from different airlines and had to catch connections? Luckily I had plenty of time. It took a while and a little bit of running around but we had everyone picked up and on the bus. The driver was very rude and ended up getting lost on the way to the hotel. He had to pull over and call someone to help him get us there...it was kind of funny. Check into the hotel, room assignments are done, then rooms are changed and everyone is happy. We walk to dinner at this place called Mel's. It is supposed to be pretty good and they are ready for us when we walk in. Always a good sign with a group of 24. It goes downhill from there. It takes longer for us to get drinks than it does food, some end up with the wrong order, some end up not having food at all. It was a big disaster that took forever. They could have received a lot of business from our group since we eat out every meal on trips, but we were not going back.
The next day, thursday I think, I started out with 2 of my girls waking up super early and deciding to leave their room to go sit outside, or wonder the halls, or wake up everyone else. It was great! We headed to breakfast at I-Hop. It was nice, service was good and we walked down to the strip. We noticed a guy running across the street with a camera. We think that he has to be running to catch photos of someone famous...we are in Hollywood. We see him a few minutes later on our side of the street running through everyone. It was the Amazing Race people. There was a team right there running in the middle of us looking for a specific star on the Walk of Fame. Who knows, maybe we will be in the background when it shows on tv. A pretty cool way to start off our trip. We went on a city tour of all the famous Hollywood home. I took lots of pics but now don't remember who's house was which one. But oh well. It was pretty interesting but got a little boring in the end. 2hrs of looking at houses that you can't really see because of the gates and shrubs is only so entertaining. After the city bus tour we went to the wax museum. That was really cool and I got a lot of pictures. It was interesting to see how these figures are made and they are so accurate. It is crazy how short most famous people are. The only one that I was disappointed in was Jennifer Aniston. It did not really look like her and I had to read the board to figure out who it was. The travelers had lots of fun posing with the figures. That night for dinner we went to California Pizza Kitchen. The service was great and the food was amazing. I was surprised at how many choices they had and it was all really good.
The next day was Universal Studios. I ended up only having 2 travelers with me that day since it was a lot of walking and rides and a couple of my people did not want to do it. It worked out well to have such a small group. We ended up getting to do more that they wanted to do. We took a train down to Universal and we had one traveler get scared on the train. Then it was a short shuttle up to the gates. It was mass craziness trying to get everyone into the park and our passes to not have to stand in line but once that was done it was perfect timing for the show of Waterworld. One of my girls wanted to sit in the splash zone so we did but we didn't get wet. It was a neat show and a good way to start the day. Next we all went on the ride through the movie sets. That was really neat. There was a 3D park with King Kong that was pretty cool, although a few travelers got really scared. Then we got to sit through the earthquake set that was used in Bones, again a few travelers were scared. But my girls loved it. I was kind of disappointed in the rest of the park because it was a lot of wait around for a show or attraction to start so we weren't able to get very much in. We did the Shrek show, which was 4D and the girls really enjoyed that. Then we tried to go to the The Terminator 2 one. Once you go in it had this computer talking to you explaining how the designers are the top technology company in the world and blah, blah, blah. Once it had almost gone through its little greeting a couple times it got old and they came over the speaker to tell us that they were having technical problems and we would have to come back. Go figure! So we didn't get to do that one. A little bit of shopping and it was already time to go. Dinner at the Hard Rock was really good and it was nice to cool off. Everyone was so exhausted from the day and once we got back to the hotel it was off to bed. One of my girls that had chosen to stay back ended up calling her staff and telling them that she couldn't go to Universal because she was too slow. Lol...the staff was kind of upset until she learned what really happened.
The next day was a trip to the Autry Museum. I was pretty excited about this. They were having a little farmer's market outside so we went there before we went in. Farmer's markets are so neat and I finally got a water fresca. That made my whole trip! It wasn't as good as back home and I still plan on getting one as soon as I get home but it was still great. Went through the museum with a tour guide and he was very knowledgeable and did great with our travelers. I had a really hard time staying with the group and kept getting distracted with everything to look at. After lunch our travelers went shopping and I got to go back in to look at the room with all the guns. We didn't get to it on our tour so I went back. Got lots of pics. We panned for "gold" and made a movie. It was a really fun time. That evening we were suppose to go on a tour of the Dolby theatre but did not get there early enough so we went on an open bus tour of the city. It was a little chilly sitting on the top deck, we could not hear the announcer, I stubbed my toe getting on, and it was a lot of the same stuff we had already seen. But we just sat back and chatted and enjoyed the fresh air. After the tour we went back to dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. Once again we saw the cast of Dance Mom's. This time they were waiting with us to be seated. I chatted with one of the mom's for a few minutes and found out they were there for a month and she was ready to go home...lol. I even got a pic with the dancers. It was pretty neat, but only to me since the other staff did not know who they were.
We got up a little early the next morning to go on the Dolby theatre tour. It was kind of neat to see where the Oscars are held. It is a really big deal. But we couldn't take any pics and we were in a rush to get back to the hotel to meet the bus to head to Venice Beach. I absolutely loved Venice Beach. We did not get to stay there nearly long enough and I could have stayed all day. The shops were neat, the beach was beautiful and the people watching was so much fun. There were the places of course that had the medical marijuana and I just had to laugh at them. All that hard work on our debate last semester a reality. They even wore green scrubs standing outside yelling for people to come in and "visit the doctor" LOL. We left there and went to Santa Monica Pier. There were a ton of people there. We ate at Bubba Gump. It was pretty neat. The view was great and the service was good but it was one of those places you go just to say you have been. We did not make it far on the pier because of all the people and the limited time but that was ok with me.
Monday was a really early morning to go to The Price is Right. They were really accommodating and let us in to sit instead of waiting in the long lines. Most everyone skipped the interview process but it was a lot of waiting around in lines. We were there about 6hrs and the tapping itself was only a couple of hours, if that. The studio was a lot smaller than I expected and they didn't even let anyone take in phones. It was a neat experience and there were some cool shirts and some crazy people. Some of our travelers were not very into it so I'm sure the cameras were trying to avoid us. But there was a guy in the row right in front of us that was called up. He was going crazy! He fell getting out of the isle, hit his arm on the lights on the stage running up to the front and was just funny the whole time. Drew Carey was really funny with him and it will be great on tv. This episode won't air until Nov. 15th, but who knows. Maybe we will be seen. Lots of people won some really great prizes and I knew that they had to pay the taxes on the prizes before they got them but I didn't know that they didn't get the prizes until after the air date but the taxes have to be paid within 30 days. Kind of crazy. That was the day that the song "Can't Have You" was sang every 5 minutes and was stuck in every one's head for the rest of the trip. That night was dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. Dinner was great and the service was pretty good. Lots of good conversation and a great way to end the trip.
Flying home the next day was a really long short day. We were at the airport by 8am to get everyone to the right terminals and on their flights in time. I took my 4 travelers through security and it went well except there was a bottle of sunscreen in one of their bags and we had to stop and get it rescanned. One of the other girls freaked out about it taking so long but overall not too bad. We got on our first flight and found out that one of the other flights that had 9 flying out was cancelled and 8 of the 9 ended up staying another night in LA. Both of our flights were smooth and everyone was picked up relatively quickly. We ended up getting into the hotel about 1am. Losing 3hrs made that day really long. But I got a nice quiet night in a room to myself. It was great to relax and have some time to myself before returning to the shore house the next day.
It has now taken 3 days to get this blog done and I will have to do another one soon to catch up on the craziness going one since I got home. But in short, I passed my roommate on my way in as she was heading out for her Orlando trip, we lost our nurse this week (not a big loss), and we have a 1 on 1. So this makes staff pretty stretched. I am in the process of moving down onto the travelers floor into the nurse's room. It is a nice, cosy room but it will be different being down there since I am now used to my view and having a big bed and a roommate. But it will be good.
Oh...I forgot about the rash that I had the whole trip. I noticed my chest was itching the day I left for Philly but just thought it was from a sunburn since I had been out in the sun a lot the previous couple of days. But by the time we landed in LA I was miserable. One of the other staff had some benadryl and anti-itch cream and I used it like crazy but by the next morning it was on my arms as well. I took the benadryl all week and it finally went away the day we left to come home. I am still not sure what caused it.
The next day, thursday I think, I started out with 2 of my girls waking up super early and deciding to leave their room to go sit outside, or wonder the halls, or wake up everyone else. It was great! We headed to breakfast at I-Hop. It was nice, service was good and we walked down to the strip. We noticed a guy running across the street with a camera. We think that he has to be running to catch photos of someone famous...we are in Hollywood. We see him a few minutes later on our side of the street running through everyone. It was the Amazing Race people. There was a team right there running in the middle of us looking for a specific star on the Walk of Fame. Who knows, maybe we will be in the background when it shows on tv. A pretty cool way to start off our trip. We went on a city tour of all the famous Hollywood home. I took lots of pics but now don't remember who's house was which one. But oh well. It was pretty interesting but got a little boring in the end. 2hrs of looking at houses that you can't really see because of the gates and shrubs is only so entertaining. After the city bus tour we went to the wax museum. That was really cool and I got a lot of pictures. It was interesting to see how these figures are made and they are so accurate. It is crazy how short most famous people are. The only one that I was disappointed in was Jennifer Aniston. It did not really look like her and I had to read the board to figure out who it was. The travelers had lots of fun posing with the figures. That night for dinner we went to California Pizza Kitchen. The service was great and the food was amazing. I was surprised at how many choices they had and it was all really good.
The next day was Universal Studios. I ended up only having 2 travelers with me that day since it was a lot of walking and rides and a couple of my people did not want to do it. It worked out well to have such a small group. We ended up getting to do more that they wanted to do. We took a train down to Universal and we had one traveler get scared on the train. Then it was a short shuttle up to the gates. It was mass craziness trying to get everyone into the park and our passes to not have to stand in line but once that was done it was perfect timing for the show of Waterworld. One of my girls wanted to sit in the splash zone so we did but we didn't get wet. It was a neat show and a good way to start the day. Next we all went on the ride through the movie sets. That was really neat. There was a 3D park with King Kong that was pretty cool, although a few travelers got really scared. Then we got to sit through the earthquake set that was used in Bones, again a few travelers were scared. But my girls loved it. I was kind of disappointed in the rest of the park because it was a lot of wait around for a show or attraction to start so we weren't able to get very much in. We did the Shrek show, which was 4D and the girls really enjoyed that. Then we tried to go to the The Terminator 2 one. Once you go in it had this computer talking to you explaining how the designers are the top technology company in the world and blah, blah, blah. Once it had almost gone through its little greeting a couple times it got old and they came over the speaker to tell us that they were having technical problems and we would have to come back. Go figure! So we didn't get to do that one. A little bit of shopping and it was already time to go. Dinner at the Hard Rock was really good and it was nice to cool off. Everyone was so exhausted from the day and once we got back to the hotel it was off to bed. One of my girls that had chosen to stay back ended up calling her staff and telling them that she couldn't go to Universal because she was too slow. Lol...the staff was kind of upset until she learned what really happened.
The next day was a trip to the Autry Museum. I was pretty excited about this. They were having a little farmer's market outside so we went there before we went in. Farmer's markets are so neat and I finally got a water fresca. That made my whole trip! It wasn't as good as back home and I still plan on getting one as soon as I get home but it was still great. Went through the museum with a tour guide and he was very knowledgeable and did great with our travelers. I had a really hard time staying with the group and kept getting distracted with everything to look at. After lunch our travelers went shopping and I got to go back in to look at the room with all the guns. We didn't get to it on our tour so I went back. Got lots of pics. We panned for "gold" and made a movie. It was a really fun time. That evening we were suppose to go on a tour of the Dolby theatre but did not get there early enough so we went on an open bus tour of the city. It was a little chilly sitting on the top deck, we could not hear the announcer, I stubbed my toe getting on, and it was a lot of the same stuff we had already seen. But we just sat back and chatted and enjoyed the fresh air. After the tour we went back to dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. Once again we saw the cast of Dance Mom's. This time they were waiting with us to be seated. I chatted with one of the mom's for a few minutes and found out they were there for a month and she was ready to go home...lol. I even got a pic with the dancers. It was pretty neat, but only to me since the other staff did not know who they were.
We got up a little early the next morning to go on the Dolby theatre tour. It was kind of neat to see where the Oscars are held. It is a really big deal. But we couldn't take any pics and we were in a rush to get back to the hotel to meet the bus to head to Venice Beach. I absolutely loved Venice Beach. We did not get to stay there nearly long enough and I could have stayed all day. The shops were neat, the beach was beautiful and the people watching was so much fun. There were the places of course that had the medical marijuana and I just had to laugh at them. All that hard work on our debate last semester a reality. They even wore green scrubs standing outside yelling for people to come in and "visit the doctor" LOL. We left there and went to Santa Monica Pier. There were a ton of people there. We ate at Bubba Gump. It was pretty neat. The view was great and the service was good but it was one of those places you go just to say you have been. We did not make it far on the pier because of all the people and the limited time but that was ok with me.
Monday was a really early morning to go to The Price is Right. They were really accommodating and let us in to sit instead of waiting in the long lines. Most everyone skipped the interview process but it was a lot of waiting around in lines. We were there about 6hrs and the tapping itself was only a couple of hours, if that. The studio was a lot smaller than I expected and they didn't even let anyone take in phones. It was a neat experience and there were some cool shirts and some crazy people. Some of our travelers were not very into it so I'm sure the cameras were trying to avoid us. But there was a guy in the row right in front of us that was called up. He was going crazy! He fell getting out of the isle, hit his arm on the lights on the stage running up to the front and was just funny the whole time. Drew Carey was really funny with him and it will be great on tv. This episode won't air until Nov. 15th, but who knows. Maybe we will be seen. Lots of people won some really great prizes and I knew that they had to pay the taxes on the prizes before they got them but I didn't know that they didn't get the prizes until after the air date but the taxes have to be paid within 30 days. Kind of crazy. That was the day that the song "Can't Have You" was sang every 5 minutes and was stuck in every one's head for the rest of the trip. That night was dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. Dinner was great and the service was pretty good. Lots of good conversation and a great way to end the trip.
Flying home the next day was a really long short day. We were at the airport by 8am to get everyone to the right terminals and on their flights in time. I took my 4 travelers through security and it went well except there was a bottle of sunscreen in one of their bags and we had to stop and get it rescanned. One of the other girls freaked out about it taking so long but overall not too bad. We got on our first flight and found out that one of the other flights that had 9 flying out was cancelled and 8 of the 9 ended up staying another night in LA. Both of our flights were smooth and everyone was picked up relatively quickly. We ended up getting into the hotel about 1am. Losing 3hrs made that day really long. But I got a nice quiet night in a room to myself. It was great to relax and have some time to myself before returning to the shore house the next day.
It has now taken 3 days to get this blog done and I will have to do another one soon to catch up on the craziness going one since I got home. But in short, I passed my roommate on my way in as she was heading out for her Orlando trip, we lost our nurse this week (not a big loss), and we have a 1 on 1. So this makes staff pretty stretched. I am in the process of moving down onto the travelers floor into the nurse's room. It is a nice, cosy room but it will be different being down there since I am now used to my view and having a big bed and a roommate. But it will be good.
Oh...I forgot about the rash that I had the whole trip. I noticed my chest was itching the day I left for Philly but just thought it was from a sunburn since I had been out in the sun a lot the previous couple of days. But by the time we landed in LA I was miserable. One of the other staff had some benadryl and anti-itch cream and I used it like crazy but by the next morning it was on my arms as well. I took the benadryl all week and it finally went away the day we left to come home. I am still not sure what caused it.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
7.8.12
Well we have made it through week 3 of travelers. This week was one full of excitement, fun and frustration. We had a couple travelers that liked to test our patience and at times succeeded in having to have joint efforts from the staff. But the group was a lot of fun. They loved the dancing in the park Friday night and the talent show last night. Me and my roommate joined into the fun last night with two travelers and a little Grease music that we could not hear so we totally messed it up. Hopefully that video will never make it out anywhere! Some of our saying from the week that will always be remembered..."ok sweetheart, I sorry honey" "won't that be the chance of a lifetime" "cheeeeese buurger" "I can't find it" "I want an ice cream sundae with 3 toppings" Oh yes...fun times.
Today we have gotten things done and have a little time to relax before a hectic week. We are about to head down to the beach even though it is cloudy. Then tonight we are going to go into the city and maybe try the beach bar. I will be off tomorrow and need to get all my packing done for my LA trip. Then Tuesday it will be off to Philly to get ready for a 4:30am meet up on Wednesday morning. I am really excited about my 7 day trip and we have a big group which should be a lot of fun. It will be nice to change things up a bit. It will all be down hill when I get back. Crazy how quickly the summer is flying by. I am not sure if I will get a chance to blog while I am in LA or not but I will see what I can do. Otherwise it will be after the 18th. :)
Today we have gotten things done and have a little time to relax before a hectic week. We are about to head down to the beach even though it is cloudy. Then tonight we are going to go into the city and maybe try the beach bar. I will be off tomorrow and need to get all my packing done for my LA trip. Then Tuesday it will be off to Philly to get ready for a 4:30am meet up on Wednesday morning. I am really excited about my 7 day trip and we have a big group which should be a lot of fun. It will be nice to change things up a bit. It will all be down hill when I get back. Crazy how quickly the summer is flying by. I am not sure if I will get a chance to blog while I am in LA or not but I will see what I can do. Otherwise it will be after the 18th. :)
Thursday, July 5, 2012
7.5.12
It has been a great few days. This 4th of July will definitely be one to be remembered. We stayed up late one the 3rd and decorated the house for the travelers. We made a big flag to hang up, put up streamers, decorated the tables and made a patriotic cd. We woke the travelers (most were already awake) with the music and a big deal about it being the 4th. Started the day with blueberry pancakes and red, white and blue crafts. Everyone got a patriotic bracelet that we had made and a red, white and blue lei. I think we had more fun with it then the travelers. I did learn that I need to go back to junior high history...lol. All these British co-workers were asking details about the history of the 4th and the flag and I knew very little and the flag was not exactly perfect but we were pretty close...lol. I'm not sure that really counts but it was late and we were exhausted. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it :) We took hamburgers down on the beach and had a cookout and danced and watched fireworks. It was really neat. I kept thinking that I could not believe that I was sitting on the beach watching fireworks for the 4th of July. Amazing. The firework shows lasted a long time, the weather was perfect. The music they had to go with the show was terrible. There was only one patriotic song, it was very disappointing! Luckily we had our own cd!
Today was my day off and it was much needed! I slept in a little bit and we headed straight down to the beach. We played in the ocean for a little while and tried to lay out but the sand flies were really bad and we had to leave pretty quickly. (I was off with one of the girls from England). So we went into Atlantic City and did some shopping. I found some good deals and was pretty successful. Then we went down to the Taj Mahal and played some slots. About the time was going to give up I ended up winning $290! So my day was really successful, I came out way ahead. It will be going towards my LA spending :) We went and had mexican food tonight and I was a little disappointed. I wanted it so bad and the service was terrible and the food was only ok. But oh well. We decided we needed to go back out to the ocean so we did a little evening swimming and it was awesome. It was a great day. I am almost halfway through the summer and I can't believe how fast it is going by.
Monday, July 2, 2012
7.2.12
It is hard to get caught up when I get behind on my posts. It almost becomes overwhelming to get everything caught back up. But I will keep working at it and hopefully I will get better about it. Friday ended up being a crazy day. We went and saw Lucy the Elephant. Kinda neat I guess. Just a big elephant that used to be a hotel (really a brothel but they won't tell you that). I took one of my guys up on the tour of it. It was kind of boring but really, what can you expect froma big elephant. Next was the lighthouse. Again...kinda boring. But friday night we went to a concert in the park. That was a lot of fun and everyone was so funny to dance with and watch them get into the music. It was still a little hot and really humid but worth the trip. Of course we lost our nurse, with a car full of staff, on the way home. I don't really understand why communication with the house manager is so difficult for her. But it is improving and hopefully by the end of summer it will all run smooth. Then comes friday night. Everyone is in bed nice and sleeping and we get woken up tp a terrible storm! The house was shaking the lighting and thunder were crazy and we lost electricity. None of us realized exactly how bad the storm had been but luckily we did not get the worst of it. When we got up for the day the next morning we noticed that there was a huge tree down in the street down from us and we thought that had to of been why we lost power but it turned out that in all 3 million people lost power and last I heard there were 15 dead. It was terrible. They are saying that some will be without power for up to 3 weeks! There are still strret lights out some here but for the most part we have recovered.
Because nobody had power all of our plans for Sat were cancelled. We couldn't go shopping in Smithville, we tried the mall and the movies but it was out everywhere. We hung around the house and most people did some arts and crafts. We tried to get everyone down to the beach but only one of my guys wanted to go so the house manager and I took him. It was so much fun. He loved the water and his laugh and smile were contagious. We played in the water for a few hours and it was one of the best times of the summer so far. I was so happy we had that chance. Sat night was taco night and we jsut couldn't get everyone into it. They were all really tired from being up most the night. So we got everyone packed and off to bed.
Sunday ended up being a hectic day. Everyone was up and ready to go. The travelers floor was cleaned super fast and we had a plan for everyone's pick-ups...except the van was gone longer than we expected. We thought it would be ok since we called the train station and they said that they were having 45min delays due to the power outages (yes we were still dealing with those). So we got there right about the time the train was suppose to leave. I dropped off the 2 staff with the traveler and they were on their way to Philly to the airport...I thought. When I got back to the house I was told they missed their train. Our only option was for me to go pick them back up and drive them the Philly myself. But first I had to find a gas station that was open and preferrably one without an hour line. We got gas, the traveler and the staff and we were on our way to the Philly airport. Only took about an hr and half to get there and we had no issues until I dropped them off and went to go park...One thing to always remember when driving a van into a parking garage, you are tall! Opps...luckily this nice little worker reminded me that I am not in my little car and directed me to where I needed to go to park. I met a little man waiting for me, she had radioed him and told him I was coming, and he told me all these directions to get to where I needed to go. Now, I am not real sure what happened. I can only guess that I missed a turn I was suppose to take, but I ended up back at the nice lady who just laughed at me. I explained to here that I was clueless and we tried again. The guy laughed as well when I got back to him and he gave me directions once again. I made it this time...yea! As I was parking I see the guy walking towards me. I'm thinking "crap, what did I do now???" He just came to check on how I was parking and to tell me that I had plenty of room." Thanks guy...I'm not completely incompetant!" I waited around the airport for a couple of hours until the girls got the traveler boarded on him plane. We were trying to hurry and get back to the house because we had our farewell dinner for our staff from South Carolina. But we couldn't get the GPS to work right and we had disagreements about which way to go...I was right of course :) We finally made it back about 730pm...we left the house thinking it was a short trip to the train station at 1230pm. This made for a long day. We ran in, got changed and were back out the door, in the van in about 10 min. Dinner was pretty nice and we had cake and ice cream when we got home.
Today our 3rd group of travelers arrived and it is amazing how different they are from the last group. Last week most everyone was quiet, really low functioning and hard to get to interact. This group in loud and friendly and just love life. This is a great group to have for 4th of July week. I can't believe that it is already July. Where is my summer going? It was confirmed today that I am going on the LA trip next week. I will be gone for propably 9 days. I hadn't heard anything since the first time it was mentioned before I ever got here. But it is a go and I am super excited! I still can't believe all I am getting to do this summer!
Because nobody had power all of our plans for Sat were cancelled. We couldn't go shopping in Smithville, we tried the mall and the movies but it was out everywhere. We hung around the house and most people did some arts and crafts. We tried to get everyone down to the beach but only one of my guys wanted to go so the house manager and I took him. It was so much fun. He loved the water and his laugh and smile were contagious. We played in the water for a few hours and it was one of the best times of the summer so far. I was so happy we had that chance. Sat night was taco night and we jsut couldn't get everyone into it. They were all really tired from being up most the night. So we got everyone packed and off to bed.
Sunday ended up being a hectic day. Everyone was up and ready to go. The travelers floor was cleaned super fast and we had a plan for everyone's pick-ups...except the van was gone longer than we expected. We thought it would be ok since we called the train station and they said that they were having 45min delays due to the power outages (yes we were still dealing with those). So we got there right about the time the train was suppose to leave. I dropped off the 2 staff with the traveler and they were on their way to Philly to the airport...I thought. When I got back to the house I was told they missed their train. Our only option was for me to go pick them back up and drive them the Philly myself. But first I had to find a gas station that was open and preferrably one without an hour line. We got gas, the traveler and the staff and we were on our way to the Philly airport. Only took about an hr and half to get there and we had no issues until I dropped them off and went to go park...One thing to always remember when driving a van into a parking garage, you are tall! Opps...luckily this nice little worker reminded me that I am not in my little car and directed me to where I needed to go to park. I met a little man waiting for me, she had radioed him and told him I was coming, and he told me all these directions to get to where I needed to go. Now, I am not real sure what happened. I can only guess that I missed a turn I was suppose to take, but I ended up back at the nice lady who just laughed at me. I explained to here that I was clueless and we tried again. The guy laughed as well when I got back to him and he gave me directions once again. I made it this time...yea! As I was parking I see the guy walking towards me. I'm thinking "crap, what did I do now???" He just came to check on how I was parking and to tell me that I had plenty of room." Thanks guy...I'm not completely incompetant!" I waited around the airport for a couple of hours until the girls got the traveler boarded on him plane. We were trying to hurry and get back to the house because we had our farewell dinner for our staff from South Carolina. But we couldn't get the GPS to work right and we had disagreements about which way to go...I was right of course :) We finally made it back about 730pm...we left the house thinking it was a short trip to the train station at 1230pm. This made for a long day. We ran in, got changed and were back out the door, in the van in about 10 min. Dinner was pretty nice and we had cake and ice cream when we got home.
Today our 3rd group of travelers arrived and it is amazing how different they are from the last group. Last week most everyone was quiet, really low functioning and hard to get to interact. This group in loud and friendly and just love life. This is a great group to have for 4th of July week. I can't believe that it is already July. Where is my summer going? It was confirmed today that I am going on the LA trip next week. I will be gone for propably 9 days. I hadn't heard anything since the first time it was mentioned before I ever got here. But it is a go and I am super excited! I still can't believe all I am getting to do this summer!
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