Week 20

One nail in every square foot of the floor? Gladly...

The countdown to Winter Break is at an end as my bags lay packed at the foot of my bed on this the eve of my departure for home. I’ll be coming back to Vicksburg in a couple of weeks, but this break marks the halfway point in my 10-month journey. So far, it’s been pretty life altering…in a good way.

Last week was extremely bitter sweet as I finished my last week of work with PNOLA and left New Orleans, which had become my temporary home. The people I met there were kind and unique, and I’m grateful for the 2 months I got to live amongst them.

Monday through Thursday was spent sheet rocking a second house with a new group of volunteers. This time I knew what I was doing, and everything went smoothly. We got a good amount of the place finished before leaving town, and it was nice to leave on a high note. PNOLA gave us a dinner send off party on Thursday evening, and then it was back to Vicksburg for debriefing and such on Friday.

Though we’ve been having chilly weather down here, it hadn’t quite felt like Christmas until this weekend. My team and I work a 10 ½ hour day doing Toys for Tots in Jackson on Saturday, and it was really great. I’ve never participated in any kind of toy drive or anything before, so this was completely new to me. I spent the day walking individuals around a giant room in a convention center, leading them to age/gender specific tables where they could choose 2 toys for each of their children. I’d put the toys in a garbage bag, walk them to the door and take the next parent waiting in line to start the process over again. It was a long day, and my feet hurt terribly by the end, but after that, I knew Christmas was on its way! On Sunday, some of the girls in a dorm just down from mine made sugar cookies, which they invited everyone to come and decorate. It was quite a festive party, and everyone had a good time.

Today was spent debriefing on our projects and in various other meetings, after which we had a big Holiday party dinner. We also cleaned our van and had a “mini project” where we went to a 12-acre cemetery built on hilly terrain and cleaned out a bunch of dead fallen trees and the like.

Now, to bed I must go, as I have a full day of Ameri-stuff tomorrow, followed by the long drive to Kentucky. Jacquie and I are renting a car for the occasion, and according to GoogleMaps, it should be about a 10 ½ hour drive, putting us in the driveway at about 5am.

May you all have a very Merry Christmas as I am planning to do, and I’ll let you know what’s happening in the New Year.

Crocheting event.

Week 19

PNOLA + Union College volunteers + Me, Ruth & John.

I can sheetrock!!! I’ve wanted to learn for a while now, and at long last, I know how. It all started on Monday…

PNOLA had a volunteer group from a college in New York come and work this week (the project is part of a Sociology class they’re taking), and first thing Monday, we began sheetrocking a house that was nothing more than a room full of studs. When sheetrocking, it seems that you work from top to bottom, therefore, the first day we worked on ceilings. It was pretty brutal from the get go.  Have you ever worked in a group with two other people, none of you having done a particular task, which requires two of you to lift and hold 54 lbs of cement over your head until the third person drills at least 4 screws into strategic places across the board (Lord only knows where these places are), making sure to hit a stud and sink the screw exactly flush with the board in question? It’s not a party, I can tell you. There weren’t even that many things to stand on that would greatly increase your height, so a lot of this was done while standing atop a plastic crate on tip toes to reach. The guy on my crew that was sinking the screws never really caught onto the delicate balance that must be maintained in this process, and much of the day went like this:

Me: “Hey, this is super heavy. Just put a few in.”

Screw guy: “I know. Sorry. Where should it go? Oh wait, this is the perfect spot. Does anyone have a screw?”

Me: “There’s some in my pocket. Hurry up!!”

Screw guy: “Sorry. Sorry. Hold on.”

Get’s a screw out of my pocket and carefully positions it.

Me (In a pained voice): “There’s no stud there, man.”

Screw guy: “What? What’d you say?”

Me (Impatiently): “There’s no board underneath.  Find a spot with a board underneath.”

Screw guy: “Oh crap, sorry. Oh man, I forgot.”

Me: “It’s cool, but seriously, hurry up. We’re dying here.”

Other girl holding board begins to whimper.

Screw guy: “Okay, right. Sorry. Okay, here we go. Just a second.”

Positions screw, inserts drill, pulls the pressure trigger down all the way. Screw goes flying.

Screw guy: “Oh man. Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh my gosh…”

Me (yelling): “Grab another screw!”

Screw guy: “Right, yeah. Does anyone have a screw?”

Me (slightly hysterical): “My pocket!!”

Screw guy: “Right. Oh yeah. Oh crap. Sorry. Sorry.”

My will to live begins to fade, as my arms begin to tremble under the weight of the cement and it feels as if I’ve been holding it forever. Like Frodo Baggins in Mordor, I can't recall the taste of food... nor the sound of water... nor the touch of grass.

Screw guy: “Okay, this time I got it.”

Pulls trigger all the way, screw goes flying.

Screw guy: “Oh man. Oh geez. I’m so sorry. Crap! Why does it keep doing that??”

Me (almost completely defeated): “Just pull the trigger lightly. Hurry up. Take a couple screws this time.”

Nothing exists accept the pain. The girl next to me is almost crying.

Screw guy: “Okay, almost there. Hold on.”

He takes my advice about the trigger and finally sinks a screw, albeit sinking it through the 

paper that holds the cement board intact, thus rendering the feat almost useless.

And that was ceilings. Screw guy never really caught on, making each piece agony. Also, it didn't help that when the other girl gave measurements for cutting pieces, she couldn't read a tape measure, and kept saying things like, "it's 56 and 3/4 inches and 3 marks." When you look around the house, there are still various walls with penciled measurements formatted exactly like this, and everyones says, "that must have been Kari's group." You have to pick your battles sometimes. My little group did get quite a bit of sheetrock up though, and finally graduated to walls, which were cake in comparison.

Have you ever heard of a RotoZip? I hadn’t before this week when one of them turned harmless sheetrock into supremely evil dust, which filled my eyes, my throat, and my lungs. I took off work on Friday because I couldn’t get out of bed, and I didn’t eat anything but pretzels for a couple of days because the dust made me feel so nauseous and drainage-y.

The house I’m working on, as well as another house that other members of my team are working on, are being funded by two Saint’s football players, Roman Harper and Darren Sharper, and yesterday we had to work on what would normally be our day off, because the players were coming by the houses. I got to meet Darren, who was there for just a couple of minutes, but there was a whole big to-do at the other house, and players and news people were there for hours. It was really good publicity for PNOLA, which is cool, because they are a small, not very well known organization, but they’re doing a lot of good in the community. Check them out if you get a chance: pnola.org.

Besides sheetrocking, I also learned how to mud and put up corner bead. It was a pretty cool week, and I’m excited to put my new skills into practice.

For entertainment this week, Ruth, Cain, Taylor, and I went to Rock ‘n’ Bowl with the volunteer group we worked with, who are really cool. The place itself was fun too, because it’s a live music dance place with bowling on one end. I danced. I bowled. I had a great time.

Lastly, my team found out where we’re going on our next project. It’s going to be a split round, which is exactly what it sounds like. Half of our time will be spend in Charlottesville, VA at a nature conservancy. The other half will be in Hattiesburg, MS, where we will be restoring a historical building. Pretty exciting stuff! But first, Christmas! 5 more days in NOLA, then back to Vicksburg for debriefing, and home in 10 days!!

Ho, ho, ho!

 k

Week 18

The mathmatics of digging holes...

I laughed. I bled. I concentrated. I was bored. I failed. I succeeded. This week involved a little bit of a lot of things. Now it’s Sunday, and sitting here with my mug of coffee, listening to music as I reflect on the week’s events, I find that it was a pretty productive one. Funny how when there’s a lot of work to do, you don’t always feel like you’re getting much done while you’re doing it, yet upon reflection, you wonder how you accomplished so much.

Indoor framing was the highlight of my week, because I learned a ton of new stuff, and I now feel pretty confident to create a doorway, or a window, or a wall where something else existed before. When it comes to learning this sort of thing, I ask a million questions so that I can feel comfortable to do the task alone if I have to at some point down the road. My supervisor Chris is super patient and answers all my questions and then some. I’m learning so much from him.

Next on my list was putting up vinyl siding. This is kind of funny, because Mom and Dad just had their new house encased in this stuff, and when I was home over Thanksgiving we had a lot of questions about sealing this type of siding. Now I have the answers, but it’s a week too late! Having now cut and applied vinyl siding, I have only one thing to say about it: it’s evil!!! Granted, it probably wouldn’t have been too much trouble were we allowed to use a chop saw to cut the pieces, but for whatever unknown reason, we were given metal snips and told to proceed. My hands are a mess from the cuts on top of cuts that snips on siding produce. Disgustingly, there still remain some bloody thumbprints that bear witness to my work there that day.

My other two hand injuries came about as I prepared old studs for sheetrock, which we’ll be putting up next week. Having gotten a sturdy grip on a tricky shim that was sticking out too far, I yanked with more force than was required and caught the side of my pinky on an old, rusty nail sticking out from the wall. Thankfully, they gave us tetanus shots before we left campus, but it still hurt, and I ended up bleeding on some other stuff. I’m pretty sure that at this point, there’s a trail of my blood all around New Orleans that you could follow to get to each of our work sites. My last injury occurred as I was helping my supervisor put up wood soffit that had been pulled down to install new electrical wires. The last piece was tricky to wedge in place, and not having a hammer on me, I accepted a tomahawk type tool  - not quite a hammer, not quite a hatchet – and began to hit the soffit above my head with the square hammer end, all the time staring at the hatchet aimed at my face. So concerned was I that I might accidentally split my face open (the tool was quite heavy), I neglected to take proper aim at the soffit and ended up smashing my left index finger from nail to closest joint. Blood, bruising, throbbing. Fortunately, none of the injuries of the week were serious, just uncomfortable, so no worries.

I was rewarded on Friday when I got to nail down all of the OSB for the floors in a big house we’re working on. Give me a nail gun and a task that involves almost nonstop shooting, and I’m a happy camper. After I finished, I moved onto cutting cement board for the floors that are going to be tiled, and let’s just say it’s not nearly as enjoyable as shooting nails into things. The cutting itself isn’t bad, it’s the mask you have to wear so you don’t get cancer that’s really terrible. Never before have I had so little circulation in my face. Not the most pleasant sensation, I can tell you. By the way, the house where this work is being done is being funded by Saint’s football players, which is kind of neat.

Saturday was our big POL event for the round. In case you don’t remember, POL stands for Project Outreach Liason, which is my specialty roll on the team. Ashlyn (my partner in POL crime) and I have to plan one community event in each place we serve. Last round we built birdhouses with high school kids. This time we did a crocheting event in the New Orleans Museum of Art Sculpture Garden. We called it ‘Crochet for a Cause’, and the goal was to get people to come crochet hats with us that we could donate to a local homeless shelter. It was unsuccessful in that our team and Jacquie’s two brothers who are in town for a visit were the only ones crocheting, but we did have a lot of people who were walking by ask us about the project and encourage us in what we were doing. The whole point of the event was to bring awareness to the fact that even though the city is being rebuilt, there are more homeless than ever, and they still need help. So by speaking about why we were doing what we were doing, I suppose we could call our event successful even if we didn’t achieve exactly what we meant to.

This morning I’m going over to work at the Sculpture Garden, but first, I have more crocheting to do! Yesterday I made three hats, and I’ve already got another one started. I intend to Crochet for a Cause!!

Weeks 16 & 17

Mac insisted that I throw mulch at him
for a picture idea he had...

As the creaky flatbed slowly made its way down the narrow street, my hope of ending the day with a light workload turned to incredulity at the sheer volume of sheetrock my eyes had focused on, which then turned to despair when the notion set in that I would be carrying each piece into the house. Friday afternoon, 10 people, 37,000 lbs of oversized sheetrock going into a house with stairs. The task seemed impossible as I stared at the two massive piles of 150 lb floppy, easy to damage white boards, but like most things, a difficult task does not automatically translate into an impossible task; what must be done can be done.

Once of the three benches my KaBoom group built.

So heavy awkward piece by heavy awkward piece, our strained and tired bodies carried every single board into the house. I’ll tell you what, there was quite a sense of accomplishment that came along with the muscle strain, but humbleness was in the mix as well. There are many things you simply couldn’t do without a team of folks to back you up, and even then, it’s not always easy.

They make Build Captains wear
pretty ridiculous garb.

Another KaBoom build was in line for us the day after “the sheetrock incident”, and since we had to be up by 5:30am for that, everyone fell into bed pretty early. Ashlyn, Ruth and I decided to walk to Café du Monde for coffee and beignets before bed since I was leaving after KaBoom the next day and heading home for Thanksgiving. This turned into a frightening experience when we heard nearby gunshots just after leaving the house. Being a small town girl, I assumed the sound was issued by fireworks of sorts, and turned around to look. When I turned back a second or two later, Ashlyn and Ruth had already run halfway down the street. Needless to say, I’m still alive and have learned that when in doubt about loud noises, assume gunfire.

My trip home was great and I got to spend quite a bit of time with my family since I got to be there for a little more than a week. Mom and Dad’s house is nearing completion and I got to help them do some finish work, so that was kind of fun. I even got to see some snow while I was home, so it was a well rounded visit. The babies are getting so big, but I’d recognize them anywhere. They’ve got an Evelyness about them that cannot be overlooked.

Well, I’ve only got 2 ½ weeks left in NOLA and it still feels like I just got here. The only thing that marks the passing of time is the Christmas music that has begun to play all around me.

Where we're from.

Week 15

Working in the lumberyard at The Green Project.

How many hours are in the day? Not enough. My time here in NOLA is flying by, and I can’t seem to slow it down. Things are going really well on my project, but it’s difficult to find time to do the things I usually do, like posting this blog for instance. Thanks for your patience.

Last week I started working on a duplex for a lady who is going to be living in one side with her invalid aunt that she cares for, and the other side she plans to rent to another relative. She’s a really nice lady and because she is currently renting a place across the street, I get to see her every day. We had some volunteers from an Episcopal church in Virginia come help us do some painting. They also donated a large sum of money to PNOLA, and it was nice getting to know them, and getting to show them what sorts of things their money goes towards and who exactly they’re helping.

Quarter round
completed.

Quite a lot of this project so far has involved painting, but I got to spend an afternoon last week installing quarter round in the house. I absolutely love doing this sort of finish work, and it was nice to be given this task and trusted to do it without anyone breathing down my neck and second guessing my methods. All of the molding came out great, and I got several compliments on it, being told it’s a very professional looking job. Hurray for gaining new skills!

Friday was dedicated to preparing for a Kaboom! build, which for me meant priming a bunch of little squares of plywood. Then Saturday my team was on the Kaboom! site from 6:15am until around 5pm. It was a very long day, but it was also one of the most rewarding days I’ve ever had. If you’re not familiar with Kaboom!, they’re a non-profit that builds playgrounds nationwide with volunteer labor. Their mission statement is “to create great playspaces through the participation and leadership of communities. Ultimately, [they] envision a place to play within walking distance of every child in America.” They are an incredibly organized group, and they set it up so that with the help of between 100 and 200 volunteers, an entire playground/park can be built in a single day. (Kaboom.org)

For this project, I got to be a team captain, and I led a group of 11 young adults in building 3 wooden Mendocino Benches. I have to say, it wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done, but at the end of the day, I had a group of kids who couldn’t believe they had built a sturdy bench with their own two hands. There was one group of high school guys in my group that were there for some sort of correctional community service hours. You could tell that when we started, they thought they’d sit back, not lift a finger, and get some easy hours. Of course, I wasn’t going to let that slide, so I had them working on a bench together. Over the course of the day, they went from being standoffish kids that didn’t know how to use a drill to confident, organized young men that took great pride in their finished product. It took a LOT of encouragement and instruction on my part, but it really paid off. When they finished, I had them all sit on their bench and Mac took a picture of them. Those “too cool for school” attitude kids are absolutely beaming in the photo. I don’t have the pictures yet from this event, but I’ll try and post them next week.

I then worked at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Sunday, which brought my ISP total to 21 hours for the weekend. I’m up to almost 50 hours now, and my overall goal is 100 before the end of the program in May, so I’m pretty much on track.

Cris & Ellie

In other news, I get to go home for Thanksgiving next week, so I’ll be floating in joyful anticipation until then. I can’t wait to see my family and to cover my nieces in kisses. Cris sent me the cutest picture of him and Ellie last week, and I’d like to think that the reason she looks so big is that the camera adds ten pounds, but I suppose it’s because she’s grown a ton since I last saw her. Soon I’ll be able to cuddle with her and Allison though. Hurray!!

Week 14

Jacquie, me, Ashlyn, and Ruth - downtown.
Jacquie almost got beatup for wearing a Redskins jersey.

Sunday morning, and I’m so thankful for the quiet. I love every single member of my team dearly, but it can become a little wearing when you sleep, eat, work, and hangout with the same 10 people every single day of every single week. It’s difficult to find a moment to yourself, because no room goes unoccupied, and we’re not allowed to leave the house unless we have at least one buddy. Because I crave and cannot function without a little alone time each day, I’ve discovered that my best option is waking up earlier than need be. Our work days don’t begin until 9am and no one else wakes up before 8am, so if I’m up by 7am, I have an entire hour to myself to drink my coffee and read my book in peace. I guess the functionality of difficult living situations depends on adaptability.

My temporary home.

This is one of those weeks with no days off due to ISPs (Independent Service Projects), but I don’t really mind. Yesterday we worked with a non-profit called The Green Project. It’s a really neat program that recycles building materials. They take in and resell anything from wood to bathtubs, to paint. I spent most of the day in the “lumberyard” where I helped organize by moving hundreds of pounds of wood and metal from one rack to another. I’m sore as all get out today, but we got a lot accomplished, and it was such beautiful, cool weather yesterday, I was thrilled to be working outside.

I’m writing this later in the day, having just gotten back from the New Orleans Museum of Art Sculpture garden, where I worked picking up trash, weeding, and sweeping pathways. Another beautiful day here in NOLA, and working in the sculpture garden was a joy. We have to clean the house today, and then this evening we’re going to eat free vegan Indian food at Hare Krishna, so I’m looking forward to that.

One of the many doors I stripped and sanded.

Me and Jacquie on the "disaster tour." You can see a flood
wall in the background if you squint.

Things I did earlier in the week involve stripping and sanding old doors, peeling old wallpaper, priming walls and ceilings, de-nailing a bunch of boards, knocking in wire protection wall plates, reinforcing floors, and rebuilding large holes in wood floors with old floor boards. 




As you can see, I’m doing a little bit of everything here, and getting a good feel for how to rebuild old houses out of old parts. There’s not much money to go around, but what this organization lacks in funds it makes up for in creativity. That’s one of the cool things about NOLA in general. Reusing old things is more fashionable than buying new ones, so everything has a very creative feel to it.

On Friday, the director of PNOLA took us on a “Disaster Tour”, showing us how different parts of the city were affected by Katrina, and educating us on the city in general. It was very interesting, and I feel like I have a much better notion of why the culture is what it is down here.

That’s all for now.

Love from NOLA,

 k

Taylor, Sarah, Cain, Ashlyn, me, Jacquie,
and Ruth at the zoo in Jackson.

Week 13

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 the labor for free. For the most part, their permanent staff members (there are less than 10) are employed directly through state AmeriCorps programs, and then they supplement the labor with volunteers and NCCC teams when they can get them. It’s a really cool program, and I’m excited to be a part of it. The guy that runs the program and all of the sight supervisors are very nice, and they seem to really know what they’re doing.

Last week at the art gallery party.

As far as the living situation goes, it’s as unique as any I could try and imagine. Two blocks off of Canal St., on the corner of Bienville and Niro, there sits a small, two story brick building with a PNOLA sign by the front door. There are bars on the windows of both stories, and each doorway contains two doors, each holding two heavy locks. The neighborhood is not really that dangerous, I’m told, but to a girl who was raised in Wilmore, KY, a Mayberry type town, where locking your front door before going to bed is a superfluous action, four locks in conjunction with barred windows is slightly intimidating.

This building houses the PNOLA office in the bottom story and bedrooms in the second. The upstairs living space has three bedrooms and two bathrooms: one bedroom designated for boys, one for our TL, and the largest is for us girls, of which there are now 5 in total after losing one of our female teammates last week for reasons I don’t wish to discuss. One of the bathrooms is part of the girl’s room, and PNOLA went above and beyond their sponsor responsibilities by buying us a bunch of things that girls need in bathrooms and fixing it up really nice. The bedroom itself is a little crowded with army style bunks, but they are surprisingly comfortable once you figure out how to sleep in them ie stick to the middle, and don’t flail about too much.

Were we told to stay in our rooms during our free time in the evenings, it’s quite likely we’d kill each other due to the close proximity. However, after the office folks go home, which happens at about the same time we get home from work (our work week is now 9-5, Mon-Fri), all of the downstairs is ours to utilize however we want. Not only does this give us plenty of space, we also have access to a wall projector and speakers that we can hook up to laptops and watch shows from Hulu or DVDs. It’s like having our own personal movie theater, which needless to say, is a giant luxury.

Another perk is that we are only about a mile from downtown. For PT on Friday, we jogged along the Canal street car line, so that was pretty cool. Yesterday morning some of the other girls and I walked down and got coffee at a shop on Canal, and then went to Jackson Square in the French Quarter and watched the world go by. There are street performers everywhere you go, and really neat artwork to boot. Sitting in the square, I felt like I was in some faraway European town. Everything around me is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. People are friendly everywhere you go, making it easy to start a conversation, or just say hello. I’m excited to spend time getting to know this city better.

Love,

My team in front of our house in Mobile just before we left.

 k   

Week 12

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 required to attend certain functions, but they were all really fun. There was a fish fry put on for us by community members, a party at an art gallery with live music (The gallery is a part of the artist’s home, and she invited us in, gave us food, entertainment, and a floor to dance on, all because she really appreciates us and has a great deal of respect for the program. She said that after Katrina, she was in New Orleans helping and painting, and everywhere she looked there was an AmeriCorps crew working as hard as they could. She said she is honored to host our members.), and Open Mic night, which wasn’t actually mandatory, but it was incredibly fun.

Saturday was National Make A Difference Day, and our entire Corps left campus at 6am and headed to Jackson. We worked with a bunch of local volunteers (mostly young people, which was cool to see) to help clean up a run down forest park that is part of a zoo. Some groups painted buildings, but mostly we did tree and brush clearing to try and make the forest usable. I got use a chain saw for the first time since training (hurray!), but soon after I began, the chain malfunctioned, and we couldn’t use it anymore. Cain and I were able to do a lot with a bow saw though, and overall, our team in conjunction with volunteers got a lot accomplished. Sack lunches were provided for us, and then in the afternoon we got to visit the zoo for free. One thing I’d like to note is the size and quantity of the poison ivy here in Mississippi. At home I’ve been taught to look for three leafed plants on the ground, but here it’s not only on the ground, but it also takes the form of a thick hairy vine that grows up trees. Considering these vines are absolutely everywhere, large buckets of water with Technu were available for everyone to wash themselves with after our project had been completed.

We’re now getting ready to head off to New Orleans and begin our next project, so stayed tuned for updates.

Love,

 k

Last week's birdhouse event.

Week 11

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 programs and have kids decoratively paint them. They’re going to talk to the kids about how Habitat is a program that builds houses for people to live in, just like how the blue bird houses give the birds a place to live. It seems like a neat idea, and I was glad that my first community project was such a fun one.

We went out for a team dinner on Thursday night and then cleaned our house, packed our stuff, and headed back to Vicksburg. As soon as we pulled onto campus, we immediately unloaded our stuff, cleaned our van and had a debrief meeting, one right after another. I wrote a little song for the creative closure they encourage at our debrief, took my guitar in and played and sang it, having the whole team sing the chorus. It was really fun, and everybody really liked it.

After that, we had pretty much the entire weekend off, and it’s been so nice to be able to get a ton of sleep and rest and reunion time. It’s so strange to think that I’ve only known these people for only a couple months, and yet, they’re some of my best friends. Getting to come back and see everyone and catch up on everything from the past 6 weeks has been incredibly fun and refreshing.

Now it’s Monday, and we were up at 5am for Baseline, which is our exercise progress check held out at the Military Park. I did 17 more push-ups than last time, so that was kind of cool. It’s now just after 8am, and I’m getting ready to leave for the first event of the day, which is setting up for a fish fry to take place this evening for the whole corps. Huzzah!

As always, I love and miss all of you guys desperately, and though I’m really enjoying myself, I’m counting the weeks until I’m back in good ol’ KY for Christmas. I can’t wait to eat some of the new batch of applesauce, so make sure you save some for me.

Week 10

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 nailed in place, and the soffit is up. This house has been my team’s baby, and it was definitely a blow to leave it on Saturday, knowing we’d never get to complete the work we’d begun, or even see it again for that matter. I suppose it’s just one of those things where you have let go and trust that someone else will carry on your work after you’ve moved on to something else.

The weather has been so incredible, I’ve spent most of my free time before and after work on the porch, swinging away with my guitar, or a book, or in a group of friends talking, crocheting, and drinking hot tea. Two of my teammates, Ruth and Mac, are anxious to learn guitar, so I spend a lot of time fielding questions of, Does this sound right? It’s fun to share what you know.

Cain, one of the guys on my team, is a music fanatic just like me, so we’ve spent quite a few evenings on the porch passing the guitar back and forth, seeing how many songs we can remember well enough to play, and then pulling out our iPod’s and DJing new music for each other. I love these nights, because I almost feel like I’m home, sharing music back and forth with Dad on the front porch in Wilmore.

On another note (Get it? Like a music “note”!), I’m getting used to 5am PT, and I actually kind of like it, because it makes the regular days when I don’t have to be up until 6:15am feel like sleep-in days. Everything really is completely relative I suppose…

Week 9

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 great experience. After we finished our demo work, we got to go on an SLI (Service Learning Initiative) to a Coast Guard training base located about 25 minutes from where we live. We have to get a certain amount of SLI hours in each community we go to in order to immerse ourselves in the culture of our temporary homes. One of the guys who volunteers at our Habitat projects every Saturday is currently in training at the base, and said he’d be glad to have us come out and observe the goings on. It was really neat, because he gave us our own personal tour, allowing us not only to get inside the jets and helicopters while he told us about them, but we got to go inside of and operate a helicopter simulator as well. After the tour, we ate in the cafeteria where we paid $4.25 for an all-you-can-eat buffet that offered platefuls of deliciousness to my companions and I.

Coast Guard fun.

The start of my Habitat work week brought a new house to work on. It’s a really nice place, but it needs quite a lot of restoration work before it’s fit for anyone to move into. We pulled out the carpets and insulation, which were completely soaked through with animal urine, then carefully pulled out the kitchen cupboards, which will be resold at ReStore. Ruth and I knocked out a closet ceiling that had water damage, but it’s not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. Loose fiberglass insulation got everywhere and we had to clean it up. Not having any masks to speak of besides our t-shirts which we pulled up over our noses, and considering we both have asthma issues, it was not a pleasant task, and after we finished we ended up outside for a while hacking stuff up and taking puffs on our inhalers.

Tearing up pee carpet.

We also painted the three bedrooms this week, which was quite fun since Ruth, Mac, and I worked together, talking and listening to music as we went. I was thinking about a saying Mom always used to bring up when we’d do group work: “Many hands make light work.” So much of the work I’ve been doing would be completely daunting were it not for my teammates.

We went to a different house one day and did pressure washing and backyard tree/bush cutting and cleanup. The weather here has been absolutely beautiful and Fall-ish all week, so it was great to get to work outdoors. Most of my teammates are from Northern states, so we’re all pleased with the cool temperatures and low humidity. Fall is my absolute, hands down, favorite season, and for a while I thought I might not experience it here in the South, but luckily Fall makes an appearance here too. Every day after work I’ve been laying on one of our porch swings at the house and reading until dark with my headphones on. In those moments, I’m completely content. When autumn hits, I get severe hankerings that cannot be ignored to read classics. I started To Kill a Mockingbird the other day after Mom was talking about rereading it. I’ve read it before, but it’s kind of neat to read it now, because the setting is South Alabama, and some of the characters travel to and from Mobile. When Harper Lee discusses weather and traditions, I feel like I have a better idea of what she’s talking about now that I’ve experienced some of that. But to get back on topic…

Operation asthma attack.

My team cut out of work a little early on Friday in order to attend a Habitat home dedication. It wasn’t for a house we had worked on, but other NCCC teams had in the past, so we were representing them. It was so incredibly cool to participate in this event, because we were able to see the end product of what we work towards every day. A large family of Sudanese refugees was moving into the house, and they were really excited to begin the next chapter in their lives.

Since moving to the United States, they have been subject to the mercy (or lack thereof) of a slumlord for their housing. Besides being far too small a space to accommodate their familial needs, raw sewage leaked from the kitchen ceiling on a daily basis, just to name a couple of the problems. It’s difficult to put myself in their shoes and attempt to comprehend the hardships they must have faced in their own country, then the struggles to gain access into this one, only to be mistreated again upon their arrival. How unfair that their lives are so much more difficult than my own and the people around me simply because they happened to be born into a different family within a different country. I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to help improve the lives of people who until now have not been able to catch a break.

My scariest roof task so far: felting.

Saturday was fun, because we got to work on our new build and we had about 50 volunteers, most of whom were from a local college. I worked on the roof all day leading a group of them, and we got a lot of felting done.

Only two weeks left in Mobile, and I’m kind of sad when I think about leaving. I’ve gotten so attached to my projects and supervisors; I want to continue on for a while longer. However, we did find out our next project this week, and I’m excited about moving onto it. It’s in New Orleans working on more houses! Right up my alley J

Ruth and I contemplating world issues in our pee carpet living room.

Week 8

Cutting floor tile on a wet saw.

Comparatively speaking, this was a fairly slow week. I worked with four of my teammates on finishing up two new builds. They’re going to be dedicated this coming Friday, so we’ve been cleaning, installing major appliances, touching up paint, changing locks, tending to sod, and the like. I got to level out water pipes and the meter in the sidewalk for one of the houses. That sort of stuff has to be perfect, and getting things where they should be was long, tedious work. I perked up when we got to mix and pour the cement though, and we passed inspection, so I felt pretty proud of myself.

My finished sidewalk.

My other big accomplishment was reversing the swing and handles on a refrigerator. Honestly, before being asked to do this, I didn’t realize it was possible. I guess I just figured you bought a fridge that swung to suite your kitchen. Some of the stuff I’m learning is pretty random.

Our new build house is progressing quite nicely.

We also got to see what a Rater does, and helped prepare three houses for energy conservation testing. This is to check the seals and insulation for the houses, the purpose being that if they are properly made, they will get a rating that qualifies them to be stamped Energy Star Efficient. This is a pretty big deal in this day and age, and though we don’t know the results yet, our site supervisor said Habitat houses are usually rated far below what they need to qualify (low ratings are a good thing), so there’s nothing to worry about. They go out of their way to get materials and use procedures that make the houses extremely energy efficient.

Yesterday was our big volunteer day and it was the only day for the whole week that we got to work on our new house. There were a lot of high school student volunteers, and we got quite a bit finished in the morning, and I got to be on saw duty the whole time, which is always fun, but we were rained out in the afternoon. That was a bit frustrating since new construction is my favorite part of the week, but it wasn’t all bad since they let us go home early and I was able to take a substantial nap after participating in team Yoga.

Having just discovered the
existence of grouting bags.

This morning we went to a Black Southern Baptist church, so that was a new experience. We had been invited by a member of the church who works for a non-profit organization in Mobile called South Alabama Cares, whose focus is on AIDS/HIV testing, education, and support. We did some work there a few weekends ago, and the lady invited us to attend her church and then have lunch afterwards. Two of the church ladies prepared a feast for us and it was so good, I almost felt like I was home eating Mom’s cooking.

The pastor had us stand up in the service and gave us a microphone to introduce ourselves and say where we’re from. His sermon was on stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something for the good of your fellow man, and he kept holding us up as examples. He told us afterwards that we are truly an inspiration, and he believes that if young people like us are willing to leave our families and do something to make our country better, then there’s hope for our society.

Everyone at the church made us feel incredibly welcome, and people kept coming up and encouraging us and giving us hugs. The church is quite big, and we found out they have, among other things, a homeless outreach program where they go into the streets and areas they know homeless folks preside and they help them by providing basic health care, dentistry, optometry, etc. I mentioned to the pastor that we’d be glad to get involved if we could help further this program in any way. He said they’d love to have us.

At the church that welcomed us with open arms.

Most of the people on my team are not “religious”, but everyone was impressed by the kindness, caring, and love we were shown. What a great example of what a church should be. Though we all have differing beliefs, we can all agree that serving men in a practical form is the most worthwhile thing a person can do with their life.

Earlier this week I worked with a soon to be Habitat for Humanity home owner. She has 30 more hours of service to complete and then she’ll be finished with all of her requirements for getting a house. Right now she’s living in a holey, rat infested house, and she’s really excited about moving into her new house. It’s so neat to spend some time with people who will be getting the houses we’re working on, and seeing the bigger picture. Some days are boring, and the jobs we have to do are disgusting, or make you sore, or they smell bad, but what it comes down to is that there are good, hardworking people who would be living in horrible conditions for the rest of the their lives if other people didn’t complete these uncomfortable tasks. Thinking about it in this way makes it all worthwhile and even the grossest jobs don’t seem so bad.

The girls with Gary, one of our beloved site supervisors.

Did you ever read that book when you were little called “If Everybody Did”? It was just a short sketched, picture book type deal, and it had all these funny scenarios about every day things and how they would be different if everybody did them. I remember one of them was about stepping on Daddy’s toes, and what if everybody did, and there was a picture of a little kid standing on her father’s toes and him not really caring, and then a picture of hundreds of people standing on his toes, and his face showed great pain, and his toes were stretched to a grotesque length.

Anyway, I was thinking about that book this week, and wondering what our world would be like if everybody did something seemingly small. Like, what if everybody donated a few hours of their time to building houses for people who don’t have a lot of money? Or what if everybody picked up a piece of trash from the ground as they walked down the sidewalk? Or what if everybody bought a second a lunch every once in a while and gave it to a homeless person that they passed on the street? Or what if everybody just took the time to smile at other people as they passed them at work, or in the grocery store?

Showing a volunteer something about decking.

These things aren’t very inconvenient for each individual to accomplish, and yet if everybody did, think of the giant impact it would have on our world. Perhaps that’s a silly notion: just a dream. “But there’s were things have to start—with a dream. Of course, if you just go on dreaming, then it stays a dream and becomes stale and dead. But first to dream and then to do—isn’t that the way to make a dream come true?” (The Wheel on the School by: Meindert DeJong) Changing things for the better doesn’t have to mean leaving home, or changing your routine, or getting up earlier. Just start by smiling at a stranger and take it from there…

How many AmeriCorps members does it
take to screw in a vent cover?