Habitat in Retrospect (+ photos!)

I've finally had a chance to decompress, and I think it's time to write some final thoughts. (Plus I promised Mary, Susan, and Abby that I'd post pictures by Sunday. My bad!)

Overall, I think the week was a fantastic experience. The fact that we had such a small group actually made it much better. We spent most of the week hanging out - which could have been bad, if we all didn't ROCK - and that gave us the opportunity to bond and get to know each other. I think Tom appreciated it, too. I have no idea how our group compared with other weeks, but I do know that we had a good time, and I know you did too, Tom!

When I have the opportunity to do this again, I will do a couple things differently. First, I'll just drive. The money that I spent on the flight and rental car was definitely not worth saving the 13 or so hours longer that the drive would have taken me. Just suck it up and drive, you lazy ass! Actually, I can't think of a lot of other things I'd do differently. Sometimes I wish we had been in a larger group, because I think Mark and Tom may have been a little less motivated to keep us on task. We seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time chatting. Then again, maybe Tom is just as lazy as I am. (Just kidding Tom... sort of.)

I'm really looking forward to my next build. There are some houses under construction in our area, so Veronica and I will be looking into those. I think we may also schedule a 'working vacation' around a week at a Habitat build some time next summer. It'd be fun to get a cheap hotel room and have some slightly nicer digs (no disrespect to Lagniappe) to shower and sleep in. All in all, I'd definitely recommend this sort of thing to anyone, regardless of age and/or experience. We obviously weren't skilled, but there was still plenty of work for us to do. So get out there and volunteer!

(If you're actually interested, you can visit the Habitat for Humanity website. Just look for the volunteer link for information.)

But I digress. I promised pictures, and here they are!


A typical sight next to the water - just slabs and piles of rubble.


This is what's left of the Waveland City Hall. (Thanks to Pam for the correction!) Waveland is just a mile or so from Bay St. Louis. Both towns were right at eye of the hurricane when it made landfall.


Here are the homes. There were 8 (?) homes under construction at the time - all at various stages. Most of the frames were built during a recent "blitz", when a large church from the Chicago area sent over 200 volunteers for a week.


Abby hard at work with her favorite task - caulking!


Here's Mary sweeping up on the last day. She made me promise to mention that she didn't spend the whole week sweeping, and I can attest to the fact that I saw her doing a multitude of other tasks!


This is Tom in his typical "work" pose.


Susan and Tristan (an Americorps volunteer) on the scaffolding with me. Susan was a bit nervous at first, but we even got her using the nail gun by the end of the week - on the scaffolding!


This is Ted and Shea - Mary, Susan and I met them on our night out (Wednesday?). We started trying to get the dart board on the left to work, and they invited us to join them. 3 hours and 3 gin-and-tonics later, I realized that I needed a LOT of practice. It wasn't pretty. Not pretty at all...


Here we are hard at work again. That's Mark, the Habitat site coordinator in the back.


The crew and homeowners. Back row: Dawn, Niko, and Tom - Dawn and Niko are the future homeowners. Tom is Dawn's father. Front row: Abby, Jake (another Americorps volunteer?), Susan, Tom, Mary, and me.

Well, that's it! I hope you enjoyed the stories and photos. I definitely enjoyed the experiences in them!