Kari Goes To Mississippi

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...

Reunion in NOLA. Hurray for productive weeks! My shoes are filthy and my clothes should really be burned, but I had a lot of fun. Sometimes I feel like a little kid again, playing in dirt and coming home with a sunbur, and a big appetite, excited to do it all over again tomorrow. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday I worked at our new building site where we did more truss work and started decking. Thursday and Friday I worked in two houses that are almost finished and are going to be dedicated next Friday. The indoor work was great, and I learned a lot about tiling, grouting, and caulking, but my true passion is working outdoors on new construction. I came up with a few sayings relating to my tasks this week, and my teammates tell me I should write them down, keep adding to them, and call them Kari’s Construction Philosophies. I have three so far. Life is like grouting a tile floor; to fill the gaps of inexperience, one must first make a mess and then clean it up. If a neat finis...

Crazed with joy on the construction site My first full week of working construction is complete, and I can’t even begin to tell you all that I learned. The main thing I’d like to convey is that as it turns out, I love construction! Give me a hard hat, a hammer, some power tools, and a hot day and I’m happy as a clam. Ruth and I popping lines at the beginning of the week. We started popping chalk lines on Tuesday for the new house, and I can’t believe how much work we’ve gotten done on it in the last 5 days. After chalking the wall lines, I got to saw the top and bottom boards for them. Some other people on my team sawed and knocked together window and door frames, and sawed studs for the walls. We had volunteers come on Thursday and Saturday, so we pre-made some things like that to simplify things when we had enough man power to do what we could not do with a small group.  You Hotwork people might be interested to know that I worked with a bunch of volunteers from BASF Chem...

I got to help chop Jacquie's hair off. Fun!! Sinking into bed as I write this is such a relief. I cannot recall the last time I was this tired and sore. Between working hard on site and getting my butt kicked with PT exercises of all types, it’s a little hard to move sometimes. I know I’ve been neglectful of you all who read this, but I’ve honestly been so busy the last few weeks, I haven’t had time to catch my breath, let alone write an update. Also, internet access is hard to come by at this point, so bare with me. My teammates and I built this fence. I finished my corps member training last Thursday after a solid month of lectures. That same day my team, along with five others, drove to New Orleans to take part in our first service project. August 29 th was the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and since AmeriCorps NCCC has been very involved in rebuilding after this disaster, and even established the Vicksburg campus to specifically address this issue, about ...

The gigantic bag I had to carry for a simple overnight trip. This week was quite an adventure. By 6:30 Monday morning, my team was already loaded in our van and on our way to a YMCA campground, which was about a 40 minute drive from campus. When we got there, the camp director gave a brief orientation, after which my entire unit set off for work at rotating stations. My team started off the day with trail building, which was similar to what I had done the previous Saturday with my chainsaw group, only this time we didn’t have chainsaws, only hand held trail weapons. We spent two hours creating a trail head for a bike path at the camp and we got a lot done before we headed to our next station. My team after some serious trail building. There was a broken down old pool house at the camp, so our goal was to fix it up while learning building and maintenance skills at the same time. So in shifts of two hours per team, we were involved in using power tools, painting, and roofing. It ...

Chapel, which has been deconsecrated and is now the campus auditorium. This week is kind of a blur of activity in my head. In hindsight, I should have written daily notes so as to be able to inform you properly what all is going on down here in Vicksburg. I guess I’m learning as I go.  Physical Training (PT) started this week, which means that I had to be up and on the practice field by 6:30am Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On those days, I would get back to the dorm around 7:20 at which point my roommate, two sweet mates, and I would take turns showering so as to be at our first training session by 8 or 8:30. Four girls, one shower, one hour: you do the math. IL monument at military park. Training this week was based in all kinds of areas. Everything from learning about the project acceptance procedure and what qualifies as a priority job, to diversity training, to creating child friendly spaces in a disaster shelter, to chainsaw training (I now know how to disassembl...

Well, my first week of training is complete, and so far I feel confident that this is where I’m supposed to be. Never before have I felt so comfortable with a group of my peers. People don’t look at you funny when you say you like to read, they interestedly ask, “what are you reading?” and then we have an educated discussion on it. Nothing you do is weird to the other people here, it’s interesting, and everyone is excited to learn new things from others. There are 140 members on campus, and we’re from all over the country. It’s fun trying to figure out where people are from by their accents, and to compare things like food chains and who has what. First day in uniform. During training hours, typically 8 – 6 on weekdays, everyone has to wear the same kaki pant, gray logo t-shirt uniform, which makes it easy to get ready in the morning, but difficult to distinguish individuals from a distance. This week our training consisted of ground rules for the campus, AmeriCorps history and pol...