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?