I have been completely occupied by the responsibility as the official
head-of-household. My aunt left for conference last week. When she is
gone, I would have to take care of two younger cousins and a dog. The
feeling that I had to be attentive to both the physical and
psychological well-being of three other living creatures made me
nervous at first. When I talked about my concerns with a friend, he
suggested that I should give my cousins full autonomy since even the
youngest one is almost 18 years old. I took the suggestions and held
back as much as possible. However, since both of my cousins don't
drive, I would have to take them somewhere when necessary. As for
meals, I realized that it was challenging to satisfy the appetite of
both of them, especially the 17-year-old boy who is a complete meat
lover. So I'd rather take them out. The other night, one cousin and me
had pizza out. The boy opted to have McDonald's. Per his request, I
got him FIVE double cheese burgers and a super-size French fries. When
I was ordering this meal at the drive through window, I felt like a
totally irresponsible cousin. Anyhow, he won't have this every night,
at least.

I had my official orientation at work just this Monday. It was a whole
day orientation. The way they arrange it was kind of fun. So I was
only bored for a brief time. We even played a company jeopardy and my
group won:-) Although, at the end, everyone got to choose a prize of a
highlighter, a pen, or a mouse pad.

The predicted one month of "honeymoon" at work has been completely
over by now. It turns out that there are some major tasks that our
group needs to complete by the end of next month. So everyone is fully
geared up. At the group meeting today, our manager went through each
individual project and the assignment of personnel. Although I am only
officially in one of the twenty some projects, it happens to be the
most urgent one. So a co-worker said, "She just got here and you get
her on xxx (the name of project)!" Then my manager talked about how
lucky I am to come at the time of crisis since it is the time that
people become heroes.

In a brief summary, life is challenging but fun at the moment.