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2/28/09 08:31 pm
Wednesday, February 25, 2009.
Today was exhausting. We legit did so much work. I actually worked the hardest I've worked all week. We got all of the walls up inside the house today! That's what Mish, Christin and I worked on for the majority of today. And we met a new friend, a doggie who we named Sampson. He's soo cute, he's black and he has an adooorable underbite. We toook so many pictures of and with him. Christin and I also made a really amusing discovery today also... we have the EXACT same laugh. It's so funny because we always laugh at most of the same things anyway, and it just makes everything ten times funnier. Mish, Christin and I got to know Mrs. Wing today also. She told us a story about Brent Armstrong, and "not quite a mountain but bigger than a hill". She's had so many different jobs and so many amazing life experiences also, I want to grow up to be like her. She's such a wonderful individual. We also toured the other side of the island, the west side, that we hadn't explored yet. There was destruction there, although it still wasn't as bad as I had imagined. One house was so completely eerie though, and when I saw it i felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body. It looked like a dollhouse: one whole wall was ripped off and you could see inside to the rooms. What shocked me the most, though, was one particular room in the house. It was a bedroom, probably for a girl or woman. The furniture was still intact- a bed and a vanity, and the sheets were still on the bed. Christin and I talked about it later, and we were just stunned. Someone got out of that bed every single morning, and went to school or work. Someone looked in that mirror to see if they looked "okay" for the day. Someone had too many memories to count in that house. And now all of that is just... gone. It's so hard to think about and to understand. For dinner we ate at a pizza place and we all ate WAY too much, as usual. Oh, and one last thing I forgot to add about Mrs. Wing: she used to be a singer, and has an absolutely GORGEOUS voice :)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009.
Today was so fun! We're really becoming a family already. In fact, I said something along those lines at circle this evening as well :) We got three walls up on the house today! But Christin, Michelle, and I had to tear down the shed we worked so hard on building yesterday today :( Well part of it anyway. We had to take the whole thing down though. The boards were apparently way too long in the walls, which screwed everything else up. We worked on that with Jim all day, but left the site early to go on a segway tour. Jim is such a sweetheart; I love working with all of the older gentlemen on the site. They're all just so friendly and genuinely appreciative of what we're doing, which is always nice. The segway tour was so much fun. It was run by a man named Darryl, who is related SOMEHOW to pretty much everyone on the island. Through marraige, through blood, through the a litter of dogs, who even knows!? It was ridiculous, but amusing nonetheless. He also had a parrot, which I got to hold at the end when we took a group picture. The tour was so interesting, though. I'm pretty good at those things too, I guess, which made it even more fun I thought. I didn't have a problem with stopping like Christin, oh boy :p it started out being funny, but as the tour went on it ended up becoming a problem when she fell. Granted, it wasn't her fault, but it was SO scary. My stomach dropped when I saw her on the ground. Thank goodness she's okay! :) And Mr. McQuilkin, who saw the accident but unfortunately had his head turned so that he crashed into a telephone pole... yeah. Not fun! Galveston has so much cool history, and it's not all old, boring stuff either. Like this one house we passed, it was used in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. I've never seen them since I'm not a fan of the whole blood and guts thing, but I thought that was fantastic. When we were done we went back to the Alamo, showered, changed and went to a Mardi Gras parade. Christin, Michelle and I were in the street before the parade calling up to people on the balcony across the street to throw us beads when this lady came over and started snapping pictures of us. We kept looking at each other like ...what? Turns out she's a local reporter for the Galveston Daily News, and she wants to put us in the paper! So we gave her our names and why we were there. So basically we might be in the paper tomorrow! Dinner was HILARIOUS, also, considering Canada has a huge obsession with all the beads he got (long story short, he convinced Darryl to let him ride a segway with him in the parade along with Mrs. Lessard). We ate at this all you can eat buffet place called the Golden Corral: they have the BEST macaroni and cheese. It was amazing :) I can't believe it's only Tuesday, because if it's been this good this far, I can't even begin to imagine what the rest of the week will hold.
Monday, February 23, 2009.
Oh my God, I love this place. Just everything is so perfect so far. I woke up at 6:30, no problems, and I had 3 texts. I don't remember who two were from, but one was from Madi. Our newspaper article made the front page! So that was a great way to start the day :) We laid around, contemplated showering, didn't shower, and went to breakfast and such. After, we packed and drove to the worksite. I absolutely LOVE my van. The work site is so cool. All of the houses in that neighborhood are Habitat Houses- all 52! My first job was painting the sheds with Christin, Megan, Natasha, and Michelle. More ended up coming and helping, including Ms. Aucoin! Haha, I was covered in paint and I even painted her arm a bit ;) Lunch was later, but oh my gooooodness. Christin was shingling on the roof and she sat in tar from the tar gun, so now we call her Tar Butt :) and this Chinese man who's name is Mitchell (and I think is the head of Habitat down here?) was like, "HAHAHA SHE'S OBSESSED WITH HER BUTT!" We were like noo... Michelle and I were cracking up :) We ate lunch and I traded painting for hammering, which was so cool! We put the beams for the roof up, and I was having a really good hammering day. We had to clean up and oh, I forgot! This black dog came wandering into the site. We named him Clark. We left the site sunburned and painted, and drove along the beach on the way home to see more of the destruction and sights. When we got back there was a kitten in the parking lot! Christin and I named him Muffin. After cleaning the showers as a kind gesture to the people in charge at Good News Galveston (they only have a staff of like, seven people!), Natasha and I came back to the room, ate a bit, then showered. Dinner was this spicy rice thing; no one ate much. After cleaning up the kitchen for forever, we finally went out for ice cream like Mrs. Seussing and the other adults had promised. AWe stopped at Target first, though. We all got SO much food... and music for our van! :) Christin and I jumped on the Lady Antebellum CD we saw, but Mrs. Seussing and Mrs. Lessard found a CD with our legit van song on it: I Will Survive! So we cranked it up on the way to ice cream, which was sooo much fun, especially with everyone singing. Unfortunately, Ben & Jerrys was closing, so we came back to our first group meeting. We reflected on the day, and Mrs. Lessard gave us chocolate panther pops. Christin, Michelle, Natasha and I played two rounds of spoon, then packed up for the night. And one last thing that was SO hilarious... last night Kayla Tyler tipped her cot! Hahaha, it was the funniest thing. She told us it was because she was trying to get her "cramp off"... which doesn't make sense so we laughed even harder about it :) Oh, and I introduced Christin to 'Never Alone' by Lady Antebellum. I love that song! This whole experience has been so amazing so far, and I can't wait until tomorrow!
Sunday, February 22, 2009.
We're on the plane! Now that all of this is a reality, I'm soso excited! Megan convinced me to eat Panda Express for lunch. It was so very delicioso! HA, Spanish. Poor Christin is so afraid of flying. I hope she can get over that fear! Anyway, I'll write more later :)
This place is so... trashy? It's not that bad I guess, just kinda dirty. And HOT. Oh my gosh, upstairs is where the girls are staying and it's sweltering up here. I love my 'van' though. When we landed in Houston we got our luggage and went to the rental car place where we picked up our vehicles for the week... five minivans!? That just goes to show that we're in for the ride of our lives this next week. Canada, Zach, Christin and I are the students in our van, and our chaperones are Mrs. Seussing and Mrs. Lessard. I'm kinda wondering how it'll be having the two major planners of this trip as the pilot and co-pilot of our van. We'll have to wait and see though! We drove for a half an hour or forty five minutes this evening before we stopped and ate at McDonalds for dinner. Then we got back in the car, drove a bit more and arrived in Galveston. It really doesn't look that bad here. I mean, I was expecting to see more of a disaster zone here. Given, it's been five months. Maybe I'm in the wrong part of the island to be seeing the bad. Maybe they've already cleaned up this part. Anyway, we're staying at the Alamo Elementary School which has been transformed into a shelter by Good News Galveston. Our room is an old classroom, our beds are cots and our closets are our suitcases. I'm not sure how this is going to work, but I'm sure we'll find a way to make it :) Overall I'm having an incredible time here so far, and I can't wait to get to know everyone more and get on the worksite tomorrow!
Today was exhausting. We legit did so much work. I actually worked the hardest I've worked all week. We got all of the walls up inside the house today! That's what Mish, Christin and I worked on for the majority of today. And we met a new friend, a doggie who we named Sampson. He's soo cute, he's black and he has an adooorable underbite. We toook so many pictures of and with him. Christin and I also made a really amusing discovery today also... we have the EXACT same laugh. It's so funny because we always laugh at most of the same things anyway, and it just makes everything ten times funnier. Mish, Christin and I got to know Mrs. Wing today also. She told us a story about Brent Armstrong, and "not quite a mountain but bigger than a hill". She's had so many different jobs and so many amazing life experiences also, I want to grow up to be like her. She's such a wonderful individual. We also toured the other side of the island, the west side, that we hadn't explored yet. There was destruction there, although it still wasn't as bad as I had imagined. One house was so completely eerie though, and when I saw it i felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body. It looked like a dollhouse: one whole wall was ripped off and you could see inside to the rooms. What shocked me the most, though, was one particular room in the house. It was a bedroom, probably for a girl or woman. The furniture was still intact- a bed and a vanity, and the sheets were still on the bed. Christin and I talked about it later, and we were just stunned. Someone got out of that bed every single morning, and went to school or work. Someone looked in that mirror to see if they looked "okay" for the day. Someone had too many memories to count in that house. And now all of that is just... gone. It's so hard to think about and to understand. For dinner we ate at a pizza place and we all ate WAY too much, as usual. Oh, and one last thing I forgot to add about Mrs. Wing: she used to be a singer, and has an absolutely GORGEOUS voice :)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009.
Today was so fun! We're really becoming a family already. In fact, I said something along those lines at circle this evening as well :) We got three walls up on the house today! But Christin, Michelle, and I had to tear down the shed we worked so hard on building yesterday today :( Well part of it anyway. We had to take the whole thing down though. The boards were apparently way too long in the walls, which screwed everything else up. We worked on that with Jim all day, but left the site early to go on a segway tour. Jim is such a sweetheart; I love working with all of the older gentlemen on the site. They're all just so friendly and genuinely appreciative of what we're doing, which is always nice. The segway tour was so much fun. It was run by a man named Darryl, who is related SOMEHOW to pretty much everyone on the island. Through marraige, through blood, through the a litter of dogs, who even knows!? It was ridiculous, but amusing nonetheless. He also had a parrot, which I got to hold at the end when we took a group picture. The tour was so interesting, though. I'm pretty good at those things too, I guess, which made it even more fun I thought. I didn't have a problem with stopping like Christin, oh boy :p it started out being funny, but as the tour went on it ended up becoming a problem when she fell. Granted, it wasn't her fault, but it was SO scary. My stomach dropped when I saw her on the ground. Thank goodness she's okay! :) And Mr. McQuilkin, who saw the accident but unfortunately had his head turned so that he crashed into a telephone pole... yeah. Not fun! Galveston has so much cool history, and it's not all old, boring stuff either. Like this one house we passed, it was used in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. I've never seen them since I'm not a fan of the whole blood and guts thing, but I thought that was fantastic. When we were done we went back to the Alamo, showered, changed and went to a Mardi Gras parade. Christin, Michelle and I were in the street before the parade calling up to people on the balcony across the street to throw us beads when this lady came over and started snapping pictures of us. We kept looking at each other like ...what? Turns out she's a local reporter for the Galveston Daily News, and she wants to put us in the paper! So we gave her our names and why we were there. So basically we might be in the paper tomorrow! Dinner was HILARIOUS, also, considering Canada has a huge obsession with all the beads he got (long story short, he convinced Darryl to let him ride a segway with him in the parade along with Mrs. Lessard). We ate at this all you can eat buffet place called the Golden Corral: they have the BEST macaroni and cheese. It was amazing :) I can't believe it's only Tuesday, because if it's been this good this far, I can't even begin to imagine what the rest of the week will hold.
Monday, February 23, 2009.
Oh my God, I love this place. Just everything is so perfect so far. I woke up at 6:30, no problems, and I had 3 texts. I don't remember who two were from, but one was from Madi. Our newspaper article made the front page! So that was a great way to start the day :) We laid around, contemplated showering, didn't shower, and went to breakfast and such. After, we packed and drove to the worksite. I absolutely LOVE my van. The work site is so cool. All of the houses in that neighborhood are Habitat Houses- all 52! My first job was painting the sheds with Christin, Megan, Natasha, and Michelle. More ended up coming and helping, including Ms. Aucoin! Haha, I was covered in paint and I even painted her arm a bit ;) Lunch was later, but oh my gooooodness. Christin was shingling on the roof and she sat in tar from the tar gun, so now we call her Tar Butt :) and this Chinese man who's name is Mitchell (and I think is the head of Habitat down here?) was like, "HAHAHA SHE'S OBSESSED WITH HER BUTT!" We were like noo... Michelle and I were cracking up :) We ate lunch and I traded painting for hammering, which was so cool! We put the beams for the roof up, and I was having a really good hammering day. We had to clean up and oh, I forgot! This black dog came wandering into the site. We named him Clark. We left the site sunburned and painted, and drove along the beach on the way home to see more of the destruction and sights. When we got back there was a kitten in the parking lot! Christin and I named him Muffin. After cleaning the showers as a kind gesture to the people in charge at Good News Galveston (they only have a staff of like, seven people!), Natasha and I came back to the room, ate a bit, then showered. Dinner was this spicy rice thing; no one ate much. After cleaning up the kitchen for forever, we finally went out for ice cream like Mrs. Seussing and the other adults had promised. AWe stopped at Target first, though. We all got SO much food... and music for our van! :) Christin and I jumped on the Lady Antebellum CD we saw, but Mrs. Seussing and Mrs. Lessard found a CD with our legit van song on it: I Will Survive! So we cranked it up on the way to ice cream, which was sooo much fun, especially with everyone singing. Unfortunately, Ben & Jerrys was closing, so we came back to our first group meeting. We reflected on the day, and Mrs. Lessard gave us chocolate panther pops. Christin, Michelle, Natasha and I played two rounds of spoon, then packed up for the night. And one last thing that was SO hilarious... last night Kayla Tyler tipped her cot! Hahaha, it was the funniest thing. She told us it was because she was trying to get her "cramp off"... which doesn't make sense so we laughed even harder about it :) Oh, and I introduced Christin to 'Never Alone' by Lady Antebellum. I love that song! This whole experience has been so amazing so far, and I can't wait until tomorrow!
Sunday, February 22, 2009.
We're on the plane! Now that all of this is a reality, I'm soso excited! Megan convinced me to eat Panda Express for lunch. It was so very delicioso! HA, Spanish. Poor Christin is so afraid of flying. I hope she can get over that fear! Anyway, I'll write more later :)
This place is so... trashy? It's not that bad I guess, just kinda dirty. And HOT. Oh my gosh, upstairs is where the girls are staying and it's sweltering up here. I love my 'van' though. When we landed in Houston we got our luggage and went to the rental car place where we picked up our vehicles for the week... five minivans!? That just goes to show that we're in for the ride of our lives this next week. Canada, Zach, Christin and I are the students in our van, and our chaperones are Mrs. Seussing and Mrs. Lessard. I'm kinda wondering how it'll be having the two major planners of this trip as the pilot and co-pilot of our van. We'll have to wait and see though! We drove for a half an hour or forty five minutes this evening before we stopped and ate at McDonalds for dinner. Then we got back in the car, drove a bit more and arrived in Galveston. It really doesn't look that bad here. I mean, I was expecting to see more of a disaster zone here. Given, it's been five months. Maybe I'm in the wrong part of the island to be seeing the bad. Maybe they've already cleaned up this part. Anyway, we're staying at the Alamo Elementary School which has been transformed into a shelter by Good News Galveston. Our room is an old classroom, our beds are cots and our closets are our suitcases. I'm not sure how this is going to work, but I'm sure we'll find a way to make it :) Overall I'm having an incredible time here so far, and I can't wait to get to know everyone more and get on the worksite tomorrow!