Keepin It Cajun: Settling In & Getting To Work

We got in yesterday (Sunday) at about 4pm and met Derek, who showed us around The Church of the Holy Comforter (HC), who is our host for the week. The church is located right on the outskirts of Downtown Sumter, next to the library, and a block away from the police station.

As far as living arrangements, we are a step above last year's single meeting room, as we have 4 classrooms - one for myself, Johnathan, and Ian (the only two male students on the trip), and then we split the girls up into groups of 6, 6, and 5. While we have a little more space to spread out, we gave the ladies the bonus of the classrooms that have couches. We've got a really nice kitchen to use, along with a game room, dining area, and somewhat of a general meeting space...basically we've got plenty of area to occupy.

Derek gave us a quick orientation about how things work in the building, and after we got settled, we made our way over to St. Anne Church (where I was 2.5 years ago for my brother Joe's wedding...crazy). Some of the church's youth group members put in some time and effort to make us dinner, which we enjoyed in the school cafeteria (where my sister-in-law, Lauren, went to grade school...crazy again!). The menu items for the evening were salad, chili (some with venison, if you wanted), brownies, cookies, and German chocolate cupcakes - not a bad meal. While there, we got to meet some of the Habitat staff, including Bob and Andrew, our two construction foremen. After stuffing our faces, we returned to the HC, and called it a night pretty early in preparation for hitting the work site early in the AM.

We hit the road at 7:30am this morning for the work site, where we met with Bob and Drew, who showed us where they were at with the two houses we'd be working on. Both houses were on the same plot, but were in different stages of construction. We were joined on the work site and at HC by a group of students from Moravian College, located in eastern Pennsylvania. They arrived late Sunday evening, so we got to greet them briefly, but didn't really get to chat until this morning at the site. Use this link to see the approximate location of our work site - I can't be positive which house is ours, I'll make sure to check tomorrow. That said, if you use "satellite view," you should be able to see all of the constructions trailers that are on various Habitat properties.

Unbelievably, our day started with 29 degree temperatures, that lasted for the better part of the morning. All joking aside, this was a particular struggle for me, with previous locations of Hilton Head, New Orleans, and Flagler Beach, I've never really had to work in the cold before. Now having spent 20 years in either New York or Pittsburgh, I'm plenty acquainted with the cold...but working on a house and having the weather catch me off guard definitely ruffled my feathers a little. It was a good reality check though - it made me appreciate some of the deeper meanings of the Habitat experience; in this case, the understanding of sacrifice. Living in a church, packing lite on food, and a long day of manual labor don't necessarily tax me that much, while it may for others. Meanwhile, my kryptonite this morning was the cold, and it almost made me feel a little bit better deep down...as if I was paying my due toward the purpose of the organization.

On to the work - so one house was pretty far along with the roofing being installed, while the other house had been framed, but now needed doors and windows cut, interior structure built, and the extension for the front porch started. I started off by working with one of the CNU students, Abby (or as I call her, "Abatar") on cutting the holes for doors and windows. It was fun to work with Abatar because she had never used a circular saw off of a table before, and I got to watch her learn on the fly and blossom like a pro. Sawing didn't come without it's price to pay though; by mid-day Abby and I both had sawdust all over our heads, in our mouths, and somehow throughout the inner workings of our clothes. Not too mention, despite that I've developed pretty good comfort with a circ-saw over the last few years (particularly after cutting down a tree piece-by-piece in NOLA), I was fairly concerned. Due to the cold, I literally couldn't feel my fingers, which makes it a little more difficult to know for sure that they're not about to get cut off. We managed though, and brought Maddie into our group along the way, teaching her to saw as well...naturally welcoming her to the sawdust club.

Throughout the other parts of the day, I got to interact with all of the CNU students in different capacities, which I really enjoyed considering I only know about half of them on a strong basis, while the others are still very new relationships to me. I also got to chat with some of the Moravian students and look forward to getting to know them over the course of the week as well.

We called it quits around 3:30pm, went to the local YMCA to clean up, and then headed home to rest up before dinner. For tonight's meal we were so kindly catered to by the members of Holy Comforter Church. They fed us some type of spaghetti-chicken casserole, along with salad, garlic bread, and peanut butter cookies...just as filling a dish as last night's chili. It was nice to chat with the church members about their experiences with other Habitat groups, and hear they're passion for chipping in through keeping the volunteers "fueled."

Following dinner, we made our way back to our quarters, where our group had some "minute to win it" teambuilding activities, followed by a nice reflective debrief of our day. At this point, everything is winding down - students are reading/chatting/playing games/getting ready for bed - which gave me some time to catch any readers out there up to speed.

That's all for now - back at it in the AM. Enjoy the pics below.