More Pictures!

Some random pictures from Round 2:

Moving in (spacious, huh?):



The view from my bed:

Hard to believe that this stage houses 8 girls and 6 boys:

Volunteering at the food bank:

Ameripyramid:

Chillin in the rafters:

The seawall in Galveston:

Statue on the seawall:

Water 3 on the seawall :)

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Thouse that I worked on on Monday and Tuesday of this week seems to attract disasters. Monday morning, I attempted to leap over the ditch in front of the house to avoid stepping in the mud, slipped, fell flat on my butt, and got my backside all wet. However, I'm not sure that this is really the house's fault. I think it was just karma for driving away and leaving Ashley in the rain only 5 minutes earlier. Lesson learned. Not too long after that, Ashley and I were painting the front doors on saw horses with blood red paint. We had the paint can sitting on the door and had about half of the door done when the saw horse breaks! The door hit the ground and the almost full can of red paint splattered all over the newly tiled floor. We rushed to clean it up, but unfortunately the paint stained the grout and so a small section has to be grinded out and redone. Tuesday morning we arrived at the same house only to discover that some kind of pipe had burst in the attic and three rooms were flooded. Hopefully things will start going a little better over there.

Now,we need to back it up to the Mardi Gras ball. Not a whole lot to say other than that it was really fun.

Here's the team before we left:

The view from the balcony:

The awesome band:

Monday through Thursday of last week was spent almost entirely on the roof. I, along with teammate Ashley, and intern John, were working with homeowner Lester to completely cover his roof in tin. I think I have officially overcome my fear of ladders :D

Friday was spent annihilating a fireplace:

This past weekend, I we had our first Service Learning trip planned by Beth and I. Service Learning is basically learning more about the poject we are working on. The goal of this trip was to learn more about Hurricane Ike since that is the reason we are here after all. We drove to Port Bolivar and took the ferry to Galveston:

and looked at different landmarks including the line on the First National Bank that marks the height of the flooding caused by the hurricane:

Well, that just about wraps it up for now. Things are going really well here. I can't believe it has almost been four weeks already. I don't want this project to go by so fast!

What is that big, bright, yellow thing?

It's Saturday morning and I am waiting for some members of my team to arrive with the rental car we will be taking to Baton Rouge today for a Mardi Gras Ball later tonight. Should be really fun. Unfortunately, I have a pretty bad sunglasses-shaped sunburn that I aquired yesterday while working on the roof. I'm hoping it will fade a little more by tonight, and then I can cover it up a bit with make-up. If not, well, let's just hope it's dark in there...

That's pretty much all the excitement for the week. We spent 3 days at a house using a hammer and chisel to scrape up the mortar that was left after pulling up tile. It was a bit torturous and very tedious. I never, ever want to do it again. I think I would rather lick a tarantula.

I will update you soon about the ball and hopefully post lots of pictures.
Until next time!

Orange, Texas

I don't know where to begin. I haven't written in over a month and there is much more to catch up on than I want to write. We finished up our project in Arkansas in very good graces with Jim and the rest of the trail crew. In the end we built nearly a mile of trail, which exceeded Jim's expectations so that was really pleasing.

At the end of every project we make a portfolio filled with lots of different information about the project, but it also includes a personal reflection from all of us. I decided to write a really corny poem:

When I first saw
Where I would be living
I could not wait
To leave for Thanksgiving
The showers were cold
The sewage was smelly
The trailers were cramped
And there was no telly
I was not excited
To have to reside there
But I soon realized
This opportunity is rare
How many people
Can actually remark
That they built a trail
In the Cossatot River State Park
I am very proud of
The work we completed
Even when it was raining
We never retreated
In spite of the conditions
You’d be impressed to see
How much butt gets kicked
By Water Three

After we left, we drove back to Denver and stayed there for about a day and a half before flying home for a two week winter vacation. It was a nice break from all the craziness of AmeriCorps, but it was really good to get back. We had a week long transition week where we debriefed the staff about our project, briefed about our new project, checked out all the tools we were going to need for the round, sat through yet another training, and actually just goofed around a lot. I feel like everything could have been squished into about three days, but oh well. Exactly a week ago, we departed for our new project which is working for the Fuller Center Disaster Rebuilders in Orange, Texas. Basically we are fixing up houses that sustained considerable damage from Hurricane Ike. The drive down took 3 days this time, but we had some fun along the way. Here's the boys posing as cowboys:

Here in Texas, we are staying in the Orange First Church of the Nazarene. We have an extremely small bunk room on the stage in the gymnasium (I will post pictures soon), but at least we have a place to play sports and a really big kitchen :)

Before we arrived, we were under the impression that we were all going to have a week of construction training, but our first day on Tuesday was basically, "here are some tools, and here's what your going to do with them." It's been really great though. The first day I went to 1 of 3 (or possibly 4?) house sites with Ashley and Nicole, and this is what we did on our first day:

Looks good huh? We're practically pros now :)

Anyway, there is probably a lot more I could write. I definitely gave you the condensed version, but I promise to write more often from now on so the details wont be lost.

Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Scabies & Animal Babies

I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed. It's been a long time since I have had enough time to blog and I have a lot I want to catch up on.

Let's go back. Way back. To Thanksgiving weekend. Just wanted to share this picture I found of Christine and I paddleboating across the lake:

Now we can skip to Friday the 4th. The pipes running to our trailers froze, and we had no water all day. We couldn't shower, wash our hands, brush our teeth, etc. Not very fun, but things got better that night when we went to the Polk County Christmas Parade. It was definitely entertaining. I have never seen so many ATVs and ORVs in a holiday parade:

Later that night, or possibly the early morning, the county hit a record low temperature of 15 degrees and of course, my trailer also ran out of propane. So we had absolutely no heat during the night. One of my roommates, Michelle, went outside at 4 in the morning to try to switch the valve over to the backup propane tank, however the valve was frozen. It was an all-around miserable night, but we got everything fixed the next day.

Saturday, the whole team went to the Animal Control Center in Mena for ISP (Independent Service Project). Every Corps Member has to complete 80 hours of ISP by the end of the year. That was a lot of fun. The woman that owned the shelter, Tammy, was incredible and all the animals were awesome. We spent the day cleaning cages, grooming animals, organizing nicknacks, and building a roof over some outdoor cages. I found the scruffiest, most adorable kitten who refused to be held, and instead insisted on climbing up my sweatshirt and standing on my shoulders. Since she spent a significant amount of time acting as my own personal parrot while I worked, I decided to call her JJ, short for Jessica Jr. :)

And here's Ashley with her favorite cat:

Ben and Bear:

Kelly and Beans:

Beth and Sally:

We ended up getting 9 hours of service for the day. I now have 16. I have quite a ways to go, but I expect I will also have plenty of opportunity to do more.

After work on Monday, Beth and Nicole went to the doctor's office because Beth has had a rash for weeks and Nicole and seriously inflamed tonsils. The diagnosis? Nicole has strep throat and Beth has Poison Ivy AND a very high chance of scabies. Got that? Need me to repeat it? SCABIES! For those of you who don't know, scabies is a very contagious skin infection caused by a mite. We asked Jim if we could have the day off on Tuesday and work Saturday instead. He said yes, so when we woke up on Tuesday we packed up all of our clothes, sheets, and sleeping bags and headed for the laundromat. We washed everything, which cost an estimated 140 dollars, and put them into plastic bags. When we got home, we scrubbed down our trailers, sprayed all of our mattresses with lice spray, and covered our bodies with this treatment cream that we had prescribed to us. The morning after, we all had to wake up extra early to wash it off in the shower.

Today, shortly after we got to work, I went to pick up a bucket full of tools, and as I did so, the metal square swung back and the corner nailed me right above the lip. It hurt. I bled for about 10 minutes. I came into town today to find some kind of scar-prevention cream because at the moment I have a slight hole in my face. Needless to say I have not been having the best time lately. Things have been stressful and exhausting, but hey, we only have a week left. And tomorrow we get off work early to go to a potluck at the park's Visitor's Center. That should be fun. Or tasty at the very least.

So...that's what I've been up to lately. Cross your fingers that we avoid getting any more diseases, infections, or injuries.

Toodles!

Pictures!

Back again. Found some pictures. Decided to post a bunch from the last few weeks so you can get a better idea of what I have been up to.




A game of cards with some unusual consequences for losing. You will notice that I have both my mouth and my wrists taped:



My first game of ultimate frisbee. I shall have you know that I knocked one of those boys to the ground:

Birthday cards that I found taped to my door the morning of my 19th:



Christina and I monkeying around in our onesies:



Learning how to use a chainsaw:

The team:

One morning, instead of going to work right away, Jim decided that we should make smores:

The ladies of Water 3:

It may not look like much, but this tree was so ridiculously hard to get out of the ground, we just had to get a picture of it. Ashley has bruises to serve as evidence of our struggle:

Thanksgiving in Little Rock

It's Thanksgiving! I am sitting at the breakfast table with a few early risers here at the Water 2 house in Little Rock. We drove here last night to spend turkey day with one of the other teams from our unit that we haven't seen in a couple weeks. I expect this will be a good time, but possibly a little hectic.

It's been a long time since I have written. I don't even know what I need to catch up on. I guess all there is to do is talk about the project. We leave our trailers at 6:30 every morning and drive about a half hour on the bumpiest road imaginable to get to our worksite. Then, we get to work cutting down trees, pulling up stumps and boulders, and picking and raking the ground into a two-foot wide hiking trail. For the most part, it's a lot of fun, when it's not killing my back. We bury our tools at around 2:00 and arrive back home at about 3:00, then most people pass out until dinner.

Pros and Cons of the project:

Pros:
-Jim, our project sponser, is awesome. He looks like an older, more adorable George Bush. He fought in Vietnam, survived a plane crash, and listens to Kanye West.
-Our team, for the most part, is getting along with eachother very well.
-We have toilets. (One team got stuck camping and has to poop in bags.)

Cons:
-Our trailer does not have a very big water heater, which means that the showers are cold more often than not.
-Our dining table is in the garage and fits about half of the team.
-I have to wake up at 5:30 A.M.
-Cell phone service is not good enough to actually have a vocal conversation with anybody.
-While working, we have to wear bright orange vests to avoid being shot at by hunters. (The vests aren't really a con, I just wanted to throw it in to further divulge to you exactly what kind of town we are living in.)
-Anything worth going to, like the grocery store, laundromat, movie theater, etc. is in the next town over, which is 45 mintues away.

Well, that's all I can think of to talk about right now. I'm sure there's more, but I don't really feel like writing any longer.
Also, I know that many people on my team have taken post-worthy pictures, but until they unpload them onto Facebook or something, I have no way of getting them. But I will do my best to get them soon. I know I haven't put any up here in a while.

Happy Turkey Day!