Day 6: Mud on Mud on Mud
Quotes of today
"'Hey, are you using this?' 'Hey, can I have this?' 'Hey, can I break something?' 'Hey, do you have sledgehammers?' And then we find them in the backyard, breaking the stuff we gave them with sledgehammers..."
- Faith, AmeriCorps volunteer at the worksite on high school Habitat-ers
"I FREAKING LOVE TAYLOR. She is MY GIRL!!!"
- Josh, AmeriCorps volunteer at the worksite on Taylor Swift
- Josh, AmeriCorps volunteer at the worksite on Taylor Swift
"I don't like surprises. And I hate when people say, 'I have a surprise but I can't tell you.' Tell me now. It'll be a surprise now."
- Joe, AmeriCorps volunteer at the worksite on surprises
"I LOVE surprises."
- Kayla Fuller on surprises
"I just tell people."
- Mollie Gleason on surprises
"Why are you talking about surprises?"
- Andrew Dittmar on surprises
"It's raining."
- Josh, AmeriCorps volunteer at the worksite on surprises
So we started today with the threat of rain. Again. Except it was sunny out. So it rained. And the sun was still shining in the sky. It was all very confusing.
Once again, we were at our construction site for the day, and once again, we all divied up jobs as were necessary.
One group continued soffiting. (If you don't know what soffit is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soffit) This group dealt a lot with very tall ladders and some painful injuries (aka wimpiness).
Groups continued working on the steps to the house, and learned that the phrase third time is the charm might be a lie. Try five. Or six. Regardless, we can get into the house sans ladders.
Air conditioners shafts have been completed. They look really cool and it's a really awesome idea for New Orleanineans, but we can't help thinking, "Thank goodness we don't have to repair these air conditioning units." They stand 15 '' off the ground. I [Andrew] can't go more than 3 rings up on a ladder, and that's not with tools for air conditioning, so I'd be out of luck. (This fear has proven at times challenging on this trip. I got up 7 rungs once and thought I was going to pass out. It wasn't great. But on the plus side, I got to work on the porches. That was nice.)
A few days ago, we reported that Mollie Gleason had broken a jigsaw blade and continued using it. Today I [Andrew] broke her replacement blade. Like, badly. And I'm oddly proud of this. So I may wear it on an article of clothing or something. Like a badge of incompetency. It's okay, though. I cut a bunch of wood with nothing but a small chisel.
Today was a very muddy day. With the rain, the lack of evaporation, the continued rain, and our continuous mucking around in the now very damp ground, the site is essentially a mud minefield. People wipe out regularly. It's a site. (Haha very punny.)
We encountered some additional volunteers. There's a married couple celebrating their wedding anniversary by volunteering on the site for two days. (AWWW!!!) There were some Australian couples there, as well, who kept commenting on our vast knowledge of the music that was playing on the radio.
SPEAKING OF MUSIC, today marked the first time that our site played a '90s music Pandora radio station. Of course, this means the golden oldies of our childhood, like Chumbawumba and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync and Alanis Morissette all came rushing back to us. And not only us. Hank Highfill, friend of Chaplain Paul Henrickson, one of the coolest guys you will ever meet and a constant staple of RoCo Habitat trips, killed it with a rousing rendition of "I Want It That Way". Trip = made.
This evening, we went to one of New Orleans' finest po-boy establishments for some ginormous po-boys. Now a po-boy is basically an overstuffed sandwich on French bread. And these things were monsters. (food babies all around) so delicious. And the people who work there were so friendly and gave us gifts and hats.
A note: driving in New Orleans is beyond frightening. There are no traffic patterns. And Ryan Feather is a scary driver. Be warned.
Then we came back to Prince of Peace and played four-square. We're so cool that we're going to be starting a Four-Square Club on campus. No, really. Watch for it. It's intense.
Tomorrow one of the lovely neighbors of our site is cooking us LUNCH. SO EXCITED. We've been drooling over this smell for the last four days. NOLA cooking is TOP SHELF.
So, until the mud grows grass and we can actually walk around without wiping out and taking out everything in our path because we are JUST THAT GRACEFUL,
Mollie Gleason and Andrew Dittmar
RoCo Serve staff
Special contibutors: Kayla Fuller, the AmeriCorps program as a whole
#RoCoNOLA2013
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