illinois

found out monday we'd be leaving for illinois. left work almost immediately, drove back to long island, packed within 45 minutes, and crammed back into the van to move to our next location. we said goodbye to new york and two days later found ourselves living in the chicago suburbs. 

after arriving on wednesday, we were able to settle in (somewhat) and gather our bearings before beginning work at 8am sharp the next morning (which is a half hour later than when we reported to work in new york, not to mention our commute here is seven minutes versus an hour and a half when we were living in long island...needless to say, although our long island traffic friends may be missing the presence of our large silver van every morning, the mornings have become much more pleasant and traffic-less for us corps members).

we started work immediately thursday. we were deployed to illinois three days after several counties were declared by the president. the recent flooding (occurred one month ago) has wiped out several neighborhoods, villages, and towns across the state. thursday through saturday we have been going door to door in communities and checking in on residents to see if they have registered with FEMA yet. being registered benefits the residents because they will then be able to see what they may or may not be eligible for, assistance wise. FEMA works with several voluntary agencies (ex the red cross) and by being registered, the disaster survivors have the opportunity to get in touch not only with FEMA, but with all of the voluntary agencies that FEMA works with.

not only have I fallen in love with the slow pace and lush greenness of illinois, but I'm thoroughly enjoying this deployment thus far because we have had a lot of personal interactions with people who were affected (either severely or not so severely) by the flooding. this flood has been said by a few to be the worst illinois has seen. my team and I have been out in neighborhoods that, after the flooding, were only accessible by boat. several residents had firemen come save them from their homes on boats and rafts. 

I enjoyed new york and the unique work we did there, but I'm also very excited about being here and in involved in the disaster survivor assistance aspect of FEMA (ex registering people and helping to answer their disaster-related questions).