Kari Goes To Mississippi

At a park for a cookout on Friday that our sponsors put on for us. I'm near the back in this pic. As of last Monday, I am officially a resident of New Orleans for the next 2 months. So far, getting to know the city has been a really neat experience. Where to start…hmmm. Well, for starters I live in the office of a non-profit organization called The Phoenix Project, or PNOLA. PNOLA’s focus is to help people rebuild their dilapidated homes when they aren’t able to afford it themselves. All labor is free for the home owner, but they put as much of their own money into the project as possible. For instance, if a homeowner is in desperate need of home repairs, and the materials alone are going to cost $20,000, and the homeowner has $10,000 to contribute, PNOLA will review their case, and if they find that it’s a project they can take on, they will direct the homeowner to government grants that they might be eligible for to cover the remaining $10,000, then PNOLA will do all of th...

Admiral Ackbar's warning concerning Judge Chewy. This week was spent back on campus in Vicksburg, and it went surprising quickly. It was so strange to go from working until you’re too tired to physically work anymore to hanging out in classrooms with friends again. During the days my time has been filled with preparation for and attendance of meetings, giving reports about our last project and preparing for our new one. One day we attended classes taught by corps members on random topics of interest, such as Yoga, origami, slam poetry, disc golf, digital painting, etc. We also did a fun activity where every team created a mascot, which we had to drive around Vicksburg and take pictures with in specific spots. My team’s mascot was Chewbacca, and we made outfits for every picture that related to the site we were at. He had a whole back story and everything that I wrote and we read when we presented him to the rest of the unit. It was pretty fun. Some of the evenings we were requ...

This week I only got to work on my rehab house one day, and I spent the whole time measuring and cutting shoe molding for various parts of the house. It was slightly dull up until the end, when I got to use a propane powered finish nail gun to put all the pieces in place, and that made everything else more than worthwhile. Our last workday in Mobile was a big community project where my team worked with 100 high school students to build 150 bird houses. A few of my teammates and I spent the entire day before the event prepping, which involved cutting a ton of wood and getting tables ready with wood pieces, wood glue, hammers, nails, etc. This event was our Project Outreach for our Mobile work round, and since this is my specialty role on my team, I was involved in setting it up and seeing it through. It went over really well, so I was very encouraged! The students nailed the blue bird houses together and primed them, and then in the spring, Habitat is going to take them to local VBS p...

Our last day at new build site. My regular site being closed on Tuesday, I started out the week at a different site that my friends Jacquie, Cain, and Danielle work at on a regular basis. I love working on my house, but it was a nice break to get to work with a different small group than usual. Jacquie and I were assigned to exterior painting for the entire day, so we got to talk as we went, and it turned out to be a very enjoyable work day. The following days were spent at my regular site, and I did a lot of work putting laminate wood floors together on top of concrete that used to accommodate pee carpet. Putting this stuff together for 3 days straight was more than a little warring, but the end result was well worth the bruised knees, bloody fingers, and heartfelt laments. And as always, we ended our week by working on our new build house, causing flooring to become a pleasantly distant memory. Almost all of the roof work has been completed, some of the wood siding has been nai...

Having Jacquie and I drive a helicopter was a poor choice on the Coast Guard's part... My white wale wall; this sucker almost got the better of me. This week blended into last since I never got a day off, but it was pretty great, so you’ll hear no complaints from me. Sunday we did an ISP (Independent Service Project) at a local men’s shelter, where we did some demolition work in a closet. It was rewarding and obviously pretty fun to be given a hammer and crowbar and told to destroy something, but I’ll tell you what, that sort of work takes its toll on your body. I was sore for days afterwards and had trouble reaching my arms above my head, but it was definitely for a good cause, and as Teddy Roosevelt once said, “The greatest reward life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” My exhausted team after the demo project waiting for a ride. We were fed a hardy meal of red beans, rice, and cornbread at the shelter too, so all in all, it was a g...