Nevermind

So PJ's isn't closing afterall. I totally forgot about the new neighbors! They totally have the husband/ father locked up in the basement. Incidentally, I think that the whole "person locked in the basement" is kind of a stretch and is sort of a low plot point. Its a little too Goonies/ Psycho. We'll see what they do with it, though.

One of the best things about being evacuated is that we had lots of time to watch the first season DVDs. It was an excellent recap to get us ready for the finale last night. :)

Yes, I know

New DH was on last night, and I did not update. Sadly, we couldn't get internet in Alexandria, so I couldn't provide my minute recount on what happened. I'll try to comment on what I can remember, though. I continue to love Bree. Doug Savant (Matt Fielding!) has made it into the opening credits. Jesse Metcalfe is no longer in the opening credits, which makes me think that the baby will be Carlos' and John will be saying goodbye to Wisteria Lane. Lynette going back to work will be super interesting and probably uberhilarious.

Fuck. Apparently all businesses in Alexandria have to shut down right now because there is a water issue, so I'm going to have to go. Alexandria got the tail end of the hurricane and we lost power for a while, including some of the water pumps in the city. I guess the situation is such that PJ's must close, taking their free wireless internet with them. Fuck me hard.

I hate this

Okay, so yesterday morning, Celeste and I packed up all of our worldly possessions and left our brand new apartment in Houston to try to outrun Rita. We left at 6:45 in the morning to go back to Alexandria, which normally takes about four and a half hours. Things were okay for a little bit, but we soon hit traffic on I-10. Bad traffic. Traffic that didn't let up for a long, long time. We created our own lanes on the shoulder and even drove over a couple of medians, but it still took 9 hours to go 70 miles. Yeah, it was wretched. When we got to Beaumont we had had enough and pulled off the road to rest for a little bit. We managed to find a restaurant that was in the process of being boarded up, so we asked the owners if we could use their bathrooms. Luckily, they were agreeable. Even more luckily for us, they were generous and gave us diet coke and a roll, which was easily the greatest meal I had had in a long time. By the time we left, nothing was open in Houston so we didn't really have much in the way of food. I had a box of Banana Nut Crunch cereal and Celeste had some chips and salsa, but we were famished. If anyone has a chance to visit the Cheddars off of I-10 in Beaumont (if it still exists after the storm hits) just know that it is owned by good people.

And we were off again. We got off of I-10 at 109, which took us into back rural Louisiana roads. I really hate rural LA. 109 was okay, but then we had to switch to some other road, which was not moving at all. As horrible as bumper to bumper traffic on the interstate is, its way worse on poorly lit back roads in rural LA. Oh yeah, and my cell phone lost service at around this point, so it was just me in the car, completely alone. It took us a few more hours to get to the first "big" town, which was Deridder. We pulled over into the parking lot of a Taco Bell, where we rested and I used Celeste's cell phone to call my parents and assure them I was still alive. And then we were back on the road. I played around with my cell phone settings so i could get a roaming signal, so I at least was able to talk to people. I called Rebecca and burst into tears. Then I talked to my dad and stepmother and burst into tears. Then I talked to Celeste, who was driving her car in front of me, and burst into tears. It was a bad situation. We finally made it to Celeste's mom's house at 11:45 pm. I have never been so happy to see Alexandria in my life. I love my new car, but I don't want to sit in it again for a very long time.

Oh, and now that we're here in Alexandria, Rita has changed course, and now it looks like Alexandria will actually get hit worse than Houston.

Seriously, this could completely be God's way of telling me to stay in New York.

Hurricane magnet?

Yes, so I know its been a while since I've updated. Very quick recap of my life: Celeste and Kathriel came to New York, we had a rockin good time, we drove to DC, spent over four hours getting through Jersey, drove to Virginia to get Kathriel's car, drove to West Virginia to get Ben, drove from West Virginia to Birmingham, drove from Birmingham to Alexandria, drove from Alexandria to Houston, got to Houston, signed the lease on our apartment (super cute, ps!), bought a tv and some floor pillows, woke up this morning to discover that WE HAVE TO EVACUATE AGAIN! Its like almost funny at this point. We're not really sure exactly whats going to happen, but its looking like we're going to go back to Alexandria. Who ever thought I'd be spending this much time in Central Louisiana?

Yippee! Hooray!

Celeste and Kathriel are coming to New York today!

New DH!

Season premiere of DH is Sept. 25 - the day before we start classes in Houston. Do they even get DH in Houston?

Baylor, here we come

So it seems as though its pretty certain that we're going to be at Baylor for at least the semester. The administration has finally given us some concrete information. We're supposed to report for orientation in Houston at 8 am on Sept. 24 (why do they always insist upon having us be places at 8 am?! Come on, is it really necessary?!) and classes start on Sept. 26. Not everythign is certain, like housing and parking. They did say that we'll be using their facilities to do a modified Tulane curriculum, but we're going to share cadavers with Baylor students, which really sucks. As much as it sucks for us, it really sucks for them. I'd be super pissed off if they had told us to share Glen Coco with random students. Plus, I think I'll actually really miss group D5. Even though we had some problems, overall, I really liked all the members of our group. Everyone was able to positively contribute.

Still, I suppose I can't really complain too much. Over the past two weeks, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how lucky I am. Even though it sucks that we have to move to Houston and have a scrambled semester (possibly year), in the long run, I'm pretty much okay. I know from the forum that a lot of people are really upset about the Houston move and the potential shitty housing situation, but I'm kind of having a hard time feeling sorry for myself. I think going to the mall and spending exorbitant amounts of money on new clothes and discussing buying a new car has effectively quelled any feelings of self pity.

i feel pretty.

Auto response from gxxxxxxxgxxxxxxxs (1:22:52 AM): rachel is, quite, possibly, the most fabulous person i know

i heart my friends.

Gah!

Shady bastards. They haven't posted anything yet. All they said was that we're going to be spread over a bunch of schools. I would be so sad if i was separated from all of my friends. I might cry. I mean, with friends like this:

nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx5 (11:30:38 PM): i want to kiss you

how could i not want to go to school with them? of course, it was immediately followed by:

nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx5 (11:30:45 PM): oh wow
nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx5 (11:30:50 PM): i wasnt supposed to type that to you

which kind of crushed me a bit. however, my confidence in my overwhelming sexiness was restored.

nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx5 (11:58:30 PM): lol bite me
nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx5 (11:58:34 PM): sooner rather than later

maybe all isn't lost.

The Day

Well, it seems as though today is the day when they are going to announce what Tulane Med is going to do for the year. I'm definitely a little apprehensive. What if they come out and say that they can't keep us together, and we should all find other schools to go to for the year? That would be awful, and really disappointing after the past week and a half of talks of cruise ships and tex mex.

I have to go shopping today. This whole having three shirts thing is like, not working out well. I feel like I'm just going to walk into Express and find someone and say, "clothe me" and will walk out having spent $500. I suppose thats not an overly terrible thing. I also want to get the car washed, so I can hypothetically go to car dealerships and like, look into getting a new car.

Back on LI

Beach was good. It was a perfect day. Not too hot, a little windy, no clouds. Amanda even got me to go into the ocean, which happens about once every other year. I got a Catalina from Corner Kitchen, which was amazing. Too bad its the last day of the season. Bruce said that you can still get on at Plaza, so I may have to check it out, if I'm still here after buying a new wardrobe and car.

There is this part of me that is so relieved to be back in New York. I hung out with my best friends from high school last night, which was awesome for various (herbal?) reasons. ;) I had dinner with my family tonight. After so long in the South, where being obnoxious and Jewish is somewhat of an anomaly, I definitely felt as though I belonged here. Dinner with the family tonight was great. I wish I had taped it. It was like, a totally classic dinner conversation with my family, but it would probably help explain how I got to be the special person that I apparently am.

Even though I'm super happy to be back in New York (I almost cried when I saw the financial district from the plane), there's this part of me that feels really bad for leaving my fellow evacuees and Louisiana in general. I think that while I'm here, it will be very easy for me to move on from Tulane and seriously consider going to other schools, which is something that I completely don't want to do. I'm also very removed from the situation, which is probably a good thing, but doesn't necessarily feel like it. I don't know. I think I've just become ridiculously codependent on my med school friends and am suffering from separation anxiety.

City tomorrow. Seeing Karen. Will get Jamba Juice. May do karaoke. Am excited.

Intriguing

I haven't watched AMC in a while. Its not even because of the hurricane. Going into the hurricane, I was already about a week behind. Have I finally moved on or is it just too boring?

Okay, lets see if I can actually write a post

So what happened next? Emily and Kris left Alexandria on Tuesday... and then there were four. Josh left on Thursday, leaving just three. We picked up someone new on Friday, when Ben's car broke down. And yes, I gave up and returned to New York yesterday.

So what else happened that week? Fun stuff - we dyed my hair, spent ridiculous amounts of time at Wal-Mart, Kathriel bought a digital camera, we watched lots of movies, we got ourselves free gym memberships, we took Celeste's dad and stepmother out to dinner as a thank you for putting up with us. Not so fun stuff - I got hair dye on the shower curtain, Kathriel flooded the washing machine. I think the low point (for me at least) was probably going to volunteer at a local Alexandria hospital on Thursday night. We arrived at the hospital at about 7 pm, and basically showed our Tulane ID badges and asked if we could help out. They were pretty excited to have us there, because they had just gotten a call saying that 8 buses of Superdome refugees were supposed to arrive in 30 minutes. They had called in the entire hospital staff, but could still use the extra hands. They got us set up in scrubs and gave us the tour and the quick run down of how to use their machines, etc. Four hours later, not a single refugee had arrived, and no one knew where they were. By 11, we were hungry, tired, and fidgity from sitting around doing nothing, so we left. The whole thing was really depressing, because I think its kind of indicative of how the entire evacutation/ recovery mission has been going. There's no communication and no one knows whats going on. The whole thing was profoundly depressing. I think it was Thursday night that I really decided it was time for me to return to New York.

Okay, time to go to the beach. For some reason, its really hard to like, write these entries. I think its because so much has happened and there have been so many emotions that its really difficult to write them down in compartmentalized chunks.

An Update

So yeah, its been a while since i've updated. Well, Katrina was clearly way worse than anyone ever expected. I'm still in Alexandria, staying at Celeste's parents house. We've been here since last Saturday, but it feels like a lot longer than that. Its amazingly surreal to think that a little over a week ago, my biggest problem was studying for my cell bio test. I watch the pictures on CNN, and its hard to even believe thats where I lived. It doesn't look at all like New Orleans, and I'd only been there for a month.

Hmm, so how to even tell this story? So much has happened since my last post, I don't even know where to begin. Well, Celeste, Kathriel, Josh, Emily, Kris and I all arrived at Celeste's dad's house on Saturday night. They have been super accomodating. On Sunday we tried to pretend we were still at school, and went to the local PJ's to study. It was really tough to concentrate, though, and tensions ran a bit high. Everyone was edgy about the hurricane and we all started to get kind of snippy with each other... I was probably a bit whinier than usual. We went to the movies on Sunday night, though, and that was good for relieving some of the tension and we all made up and hugged in the car.

So Monday was the day the hurricane actually hit. It didn't even rain here in Alexandria. At this point, I can't even remember what we did that night. I think that was the night that we got pedicures and played trivial pursuit. I do remember watching CNN that afternoon, though, and looking at the damage in the city, and thinking that we would be able to go back in a couple of days.

And then the levee broke.

And it all went downhill from there, as anyone with access to the news can tell. First one levee broke, and then another, and then the city was underwater and here we are.

Fuck, time to go again. I'll post more when I can.