Awesome weekend, as you can probably tell from the pictures.  Sunday my team was invited to attend a Baptist Church shindig so we did that around 10am.  We were the only white people in the entire church it was pretty interesting to say the least.  I have only been to a Roman Catholic church which is pretty stringent about their ways... boy was I in for something else.  Not only did this church have a DJ booth in the back, it had 3 video cameras filming at all times, and a computer lab/media center to the right that was operating the 3 projection screens throughout the church. There was lots of singing and clapping and people randomly calling out "Praise the lord!" and "Amen."  Factoring all these variables together I nicknamed this church "Club God"  and was tempted to throw a fist pump up here and there but restrained myself.  After the service ended they were kind enough to feed us a home cooked southern meal which was amazing.  Southern cooking is something else. 

Today (Monday), my team volunteered at a mens shelter to catch up on some ISP hours where we did some closet demolition.  We also rearranged some items and did busy work until about 3pm.  Now comes the fun stuff...

Mac, our teams Service Learning Initiator (SLI) became buddy buddy with Nelson, one of the volunteers who works with us every Saturday at our Habitat for Humanity new construction site, and who just happens to be an active Coast Guard member.  So for a service learning project we were approved to spend the afternoon at the local Coast Guard Facility and get a tour around.  We were fortunate enough to go in all the helicopters and planes and try some flight simulators which was AWESOME.  We may also setup another ISP working with the Coast Guard because all their planes/choppers need to be washed daily and they would "love for us to do that for them."  I am so down to wash equipment ranging from 18-80 million dollars for volunteering hours haha.

It's always sunny somewhere in Alabama

Week 4 = completed, and my weekend officially begins right now. So what's on the weekend agenda you ask? You didn't? Well I will tell you anyways.  One of the church groups that volunteered with us last Saturday invited us to their Baptist church service and a lunch in afterward so we'll be checking that out tomorrow morning/afternoon.  Monday we'll be knocking out some Independent Service Hours (ISP's) at a local shelter for men @ 9:30am.

Today was cut short due to a massive thunderstorm that erupted after lunch, so we left the new construction site around 1:45 and got a few extra hours added to the weekend.  It's sunny and 85 now which is nice; storms usually don't last too long around here and the weather is very temperamental.  Alright weekend time, adios muchachos!

Lastly, couldn't get any new progress pics of the new construction due to the rain... just imagine there's a house with half a roof on it with windows now.

It's hammer time

Day 2 of our new rehab project.  Instead of painting we did demolition in the kitchen (finally got to use a sledgehammer) which was awesome.  Gary, our site supervisor (above) can be seen removing a hose from the washer before we tore it out of the kitchen.  Gary (or "Gair bear" as we call him) usually has some pretty humorous stories to tell us throughout the day to keep us entertained. For example, He informed us he bought multiple birds for the purpose of passing along information he teaches them to his children after he passes away.  His only fear of course is that they will live too long and may out last his children and teach outdated information to his grandchildren... Oh Gair bear!

So tomorrow we all get to work together on the new construction site, and Habitat expects around 45 volunteers from a church group and local high school to show up as well. Aside from getting to work together as a team, we only have to stop at one work site in the morning which is great because a morning commute between 3 work sites is horrific.  Physical training tomorrow 5:15 though, so I'll be up bright and early as per usual.  Looking forward to tomorrow night so I can not set my alarm but wake up at 6 anyways, curse you AmeriCorps!
 

Get 'er done

Another day of serving America is completed! *cue Star Spangled Banner* Today my mini-team (Sarah and Ashlyn) and I started a new adventures in a 1700 square foot rehab house.  We began the day by removing old cruddy carpeting along with the outer wood foundation holding the carpet in.  Here at AmeriCorps we like to pride ourselves on safety being our #1 priority, as you can see Ashlyn and Sarah (above) highly enthused to be sporting dust masks.  Removal of the carpet and foundation was a tedious task that escalated into an all day activity.  Needless to say, we prevailed and had the place spic and span before leaving, prepping us for a day of painting tomorrow. After work I ran with Mac and smoked my previous time of 11:20 coming in with a 10:50 1.5 mile time, Kaboom! 3 more weeks until transition, meaning the next officially timed 1.5 mile back at campus is under a month away.

Also please note my current sleeping arrangement above, not 1 but 2 mattresses; and not only that but the top is an air mattress essentially meaning I sleeping on a cloud every single night. However, there are drawbacks to this heavenly setup.. Last night my air mattress was staggered slight left on top of my bed mattress and when I rolled over at 3am I may have fallen off the bed as the air mattress dipped off to the side of the bed and flipped over onto the ground, sending my cell phone catapulting across the room attacking Cain and Mac.


Still trying to catch up on sleep from Nawlins last weekend so I'm really looking forward to snoozing this weekend away... 2 more days until Sunday...

Halfway through Spike... Already?

So as I arose for another action packed work week with Habitat I realized that we are already 3+ weeks in and it will not be long before we are heading back to campus.  Ironic how training seemed like forever ago yet this initial Spike is flying by.  My life in the Ameri-bubble has truly limited my knowledge about what is going on elsewhere despite checking the news daily I still feel like so much is missing.. Perhaps the lack of T.V for CNN and ESPN could have something to do with it. On a side note I refuse to change my laptop time from east-coast (I'm bad at change what can I say) as it reminds me of home! Today was the first day of fall and you could not tell at all down here, apparently the seasons go from summer to winter without an intermediary which means no leaves changing colors for me this year. On a further side note, I'm pretty sure I could live off of eggs, turkey, peanut butter, and goldfish which I may end up going once our Habitat lunch budget expires and we move onto our next spike.  Anyways today our new rehab house lost electricity so we went back to the previous rehab house to do more touch-ups.  Gary, our site supervisor told me to paint all day which was awesome considering I'm still recouping from  New Orleans.  So I was able to listen to music all day (Played "Life is a highway" by on repeat for about 75% of that) and get into the painting zone!  Tomorrow I'm fortunate enough to sleep until 6:15 (hooray!) as we did physical training martial arts this morning at 5:15am, which means my abs workout/running PT will be on Thursday @ 5:15.  No fun pictures today, sorry folks!  

Back to Bama

What a weekend.  Always a good time in New Orleans and finally getting to see my fellow Corps members again! Also we found out what the next round spike projects consist of (Click to download - excel document) so looks like I will end up somewhere in Mississippi, New Orleans, or in Alabama.  I'm just glad there's no camping projects for next round, whew.  We're driving back in our rental car now back to Mobile which is a nice 2 hour drive.  Yes I am blogging while Cain is driving, isn't technology amazing these days?  Ended up going to the Mall instead of site seeing but I got some pretty sweet pics which I'm going to throw up. Alright I'm way too tired to write anymore so I'll let the pics do all the talking.

Weekend Vaca

Good morning from the Best Western hotel on Magazine street in New Orleans.  After a long week of new construction and gutting/revamping rehab houses, 8 members of my team including myself rented 2 compact cars from the local hertz and booked it to New Orleans for the weekend.  Here of course is River 5, 2, and some delta corps members of whom I was reunited with for the first time in weeks!  New Orleans is awesome. I cannot stress that enough, the city is beautiful and there is so much to do.  Today I plan on checking out the local scenery and doing a little site seeing in the French Quarter (hopefully some awesome pics to come).  It's been a few days since the last post so i'll recap the end of the week for "y'all"... Friday Sarah, Ashlyn, and myself finished up our habitat rehab project at an older house which felt pretty rewarding, and it looked pretty good after cleaning it up which was pretty sweet.  Saturday (which is my new favorite work day) we worked at the new construction site... see above picture for progress pic.  Saturday's are enjoyable because we work with local volunteers which generally consist of church groups, college kids, and local community members.  Working with church groups I have learned to look forward to because 9 times out of 10 they will supply us with sandwiches and snacks for lunch, and what better way is there to end the week than that? Another amazing way to end the week was listening to the Alabama football game on the radio which came on @ 2:30, they rolled over Duke pretty easily (surprise, surprise) and our site supervisor was loving every minute of it.

Roll Tide Roll

Just got back from walmart (sorry ma) and bought some sweet Alabama gear! As most of you all know I am an avid collector of college sweatshirts/sweatpants/shirts/shorts and this AmeriCorps experience should certainly enable me to expand my vastly growing assortment of college attire.  My choices were between Alabama and Auburn so it was really a no brainer... *hops on Bama bandwagon*. Prices down here are so cheap I decided to pick up a long sleeve Alabama Crimson Tide shirt as well, I'm such a baller.  Already thinking of picking up some Ole Miss gear when I head back to Mississippi on transition, Miss State still sucks at football right? Anyways, what I did today to serve America... well simply put I primed, painted, spackled, and sanded.  The rehab house I'm working in is getting finished tomorrow so when Sarah, Ashlyn and I head there tomorrow we will probably have to just do a lot of cleaning and make the house look all fresh and clean before we vacate it. 1.5 mile time is down to 11:30 (steven I want a rematch in tennis asap) and hopefully will continue to steadily decline throughout the spike.  Ideally I would like to get under 10 minutes by the end of the year but one day at a time...  Here's an idea of what my teams nightly activities include... 3 of the guys (Mac, Taylor, Cain) are playing magic cards with the team leader (C-Money) See photo above, the girls are scattered throughout the house, some on the phone, some on their Kindle's, and some are crocheting.  We are a bunch of nerds.

Ababama 2010

After a nice relaxing weekend which flew by (as they always do) River 7 and I are heading back to our work sites and doing a variety of projects on different houses.  Currently we have the new construction site which we all work on every weekend, and 2 rehab houses which need painting, demolition, and other touch ups.  My group of Sarah, Ashlyn and I did some hardcore painting today.  Fortunately, upon arrival the wood walls were already primed with an oil based primer which made 2 coats of semigloss go on real easily.  Nothing like a nice relaxing day of painting, I could literally do this for the next 10 months daily and love every minute of it! Yesterday (Tuesday.. which is essentially our Monday) we had to turn the trusses around on the roof as they were mistakenly on the wrong way... So I spent the entire day up on the roof doing the same thing all over again (it was a lot easier this time) and got some quality color while I was up there as well! Man do I drink a lot of water throughout the day when I'm workout outside... I already drink a lot of water as it is, but literally probably go through about 2 gallons when I'm working outside in this humidity and heat.  Also on Tuesday we started our day at 5am with some marital arts physical training provided by our team leader Chris Money.  He's a brown belt and bought some sweet striking pads from walmart and taught us how to jab, upper cut, and other random punches which we did for about 45 minutes... Tomorrow I get to lead us in some running and ab routine again.  I think our team is slowly improving.. as it is taking them longer and longer to give up on my intense ab exercises each week now haha.  I tell them by the time the year is over they will all have chiseled abs and be super flexible thanks to Cains Yoga and my Ab routine. Speaking of which, Cain made an awesome physical training T-shirt that say's "Ababama 2010" which I will get a picture of up asap. That's all for now folks, oh and shout out to my twin sister for working 2 years for the EPA, congrats Kaitlin 1 more year and the government will officially lock you into those golden chains.

Nailed it!

Good morning, good morning, Sunday is upon us alas! The last two days have been pure craziness with working at the construction site. I'll throw some pics up top to show you the progress we've made so far. The first one is essentially what we started with, just a basic structure with a whole lot of dirt/clay around it.  Now this is not my main service site for during the week, I usually only work here Fridays and Saturdays however a few of my team members (Malcom, C-Money, Ruth) do work here regularly.  Construction days are pretty awesome because we get to work outside and everything that is done is what we accomplished so you can really take some pride in that. Also the rehabilitated house I'm working on during the week is frustrating at times because so many measurements were not correct when the house was built to begin with which makes our "Habitat Home Makeover" that much more challenging.  Fortunately my site project director at the rehab house is a really really mellow and chill southern guy who just makes you feel at ease about anything (Mike). I told you about the upside down hammering in the last post which he is pro at, and his advice to me about it was "Slow down... you're from the north aint ya?"  Oh Mike you can read me like a book! He said he's been to New York once and it was way to fast paced for him. But I digress, Friday when we went to the construction site I was basically hammering nails in all day and commenting "nailed it!" everything I saw somebody successfully hammer a nail in... needless to say it got funnier and funnier to everybody as the day went on... well not really, but to me anyways. As much fun as nailing in plywood was, the real fun didn't start until later in the day when we got to the put up the trusses on the house. The pics where you see me standing on the wood planks up top on the house is when the trusses were coming up. Basically myself, Kari, Justin, and Gary (Justin and Gary work for Habitat and are the build masters who tell everybody what to do) were standing on the roof type structure while others were lifting the trusses up to us where we would put them into place and hammer them in. Shout out to Kari who did not want to be up there at all however I'm glad she stayed up there and conquered her fear of unstable wood beams and heights! By the next day when we had to finish putting the rest of the trusses up she was so eager to get back on the roof! Which nicely transitions me into construction day 2... which was yesterday. Saturday was September 11th and a National Service day so we had some volunteers from church groups and other local organizations help us out.  It was more nailing and putting up trusses which I cannot get enough of.  Being scared of heights and roller coasters for most of my life really makes me enjoy them that much more now ironically. The church group we worked with was mighty kind to us and offered us their lunch sandwiches (mmmm turkey) and then gave us their number to come by their place next week to eat lunch and swim in their pool! I've gotta say I'm still pretty taken back by the southern hospitality it's amazing. After working hard all day we had a delicious sheppards pie type dinner made by Kari (she's just awesome) and then a few of us went downtown Mobile to check out the nightlife. Alabama was playing Penn state who they slaughtered and Oregon massacred Tennessee as well.. Alright time to make some eggs and start the day, miss everybody!! Oh and I was astounded that JMU beat VT at home yesterday being a 33 point underdog!! I had to text Scott I was in utter disbelief.

I'm running out of good Blog Titles already... uh oh

Another day of working with Habitat.  Today did some more painting and chalking with Sarah and Ashlyn and then worked with the site supervisor (Mike) and did a little metal bending! Yay for learning new things. It seemed pretty intricate at first but made a great deal of sense after getting some hands on training. I always thought I was pretty decent at hammering nails in, however today I learned how spoiled I've been using steel nails and not hammering upside down.  Talk about a challenge, if I can somehow manage to acquire this upside down hammering aluminum nails without bending or breaking them by the end of this program I will be a happy camper (of course Mike makes it look like child's play).  As much as I would love to continue working on this skill tomorrow with Mike, I will instead be working with the rest of my team at a fresh build site prepping for Saturdays build when most of the public volunteers come.  It will be good to work with my whole team once again for the next 2 days but I am also looking forward to attempting that upside down hammering again... And some other members of my team and other teams got to use automatic and semi-automatic nail guns today which is just awesome, hopefully I will stumble across one or two of those bad-boys in the near future! After "work" my team headed down to the local YMCA and we were given free memberships as long as we volunteer there 1 hour a week which is pretty sweet.  Finally get to head back to the gym, all this cardio is really skimming me down.  Oh I posted a picture I finally got my hands on of me and Anderson Cooper from the news program which you can also see at the top of this post... also reminding me I just figured out how to add pictures to each post and not just at the bottom so I'll have to start taking advantage of that so you guys don't have to scroll down everytime! Alright I get to "sleep in" until 6:30 tomorrow which is nice however its almost 12 so i'm passing out! 2 more days until the weekend for me...

Working for a cause

Good evening my fellow Americans. I would like to begin this blog with a fun link of Anderson Coopers podcast in cased you missed me on his 360 news show Anderson Coopers Katrina Special. I am strategically located behind the drummer repping the A! In more recent events, I have been working with Habitat the last 2 days strenuously working outside and inside.  Yesterday (Tuesday) I wheel-barreled dirt/clay with Taylor for about 6 hours and then raked for the remaining 2 hours.  Needless to say it was quite the shoulder workout, really got a good burn in the deltoids... oh yea. Today was more my cup of tea as I was able to paint yet again (hooray!) with Sarah and Ashlyn.  Our team has been broken up into 3 groups which has its pros and cons... It's good because working with fewer people is less confusing and you get to know the people better, however we have to go to 3 different work sites in the morning and after work; meaning we leave @ 7am and don't get home til about 5:15.  Oh and to top that off we had our early morning workout @ 5am so we would have time to shower before we left to the job site (parents I might be joining your sleep schedule).  Aside from the morning PT I ran 1.5 miles after service today and have cut down my time by almost 3 minutes (down to 11:40). Im exhausted after being up all day and having another entertaining skyping session with river 5 haha, alright gnite all!

Alabama loves football

Another exciting weekend has come and gone, and this one was something special.  For Labor day weekend we were privileged with saturday, sunday, and monday off (normally just sunday and monday) and boy did we take advantage. In order to graduate from AmeriCorps you need 80 Independent volunteer hours aside from the ones assigned to you during the week. So River 7 was on top of things and banged out 7 hours on saturday as we volunteered at South Alabama Cares which is an aids testing facility.  Fortunately we had the honor of painting more, which has been a good and bad thing.  It's good for me because I love painting and  know what I'm doing; the only bad part is I'm a pretty messy painter and we didn't bring our coveralls to the job so I got paint all over my uniform and I'm only 1 week into the year, uh oh! Anyways after that some of the locals I met in a local bar called the daily double gave me a call and invited myself and a few of my team members over for a southern cookout.  I had no idea what I was in for but was pretty excited to head on over there with Danielle, Cain, and Mac. We were fortunate enough to get picked up by them from our housing and luckily didn't have to travel more than 2 miles to their house. Going to this cookout has been one of the best decisions of my entire life.  Not only were the people beyond hospitable but the food was beyond amazing.  Now I pass up on quality food all the time for its lack of nutritional value... but on Sunday... I did not hold back for anything (and you'll see why when you look at the pictures). What an amazing time I had getting to know some locals in Mobile, Alabama and the stories they had to share with us. After spending about 5 hours there we headed back home and made the rest of our team jealous when they had beans and rice for dinner while we had ribs and much much more! Just as I thought the weekend couldn't get any better, on Monday the whole team went to Dauphin Island which is on the Gulf Coast in Alabama. The beaches were beautiful here and we got to spend all day in the sun (bye bye farmers tan!). My team polished off a full bottle of sunscreen (thanks ma) and I even used some of the aftersun aloe. Overall an amazing weekend in Alabama and tomorrow we start working with Habitat possibly putting up a new house, who knows though they constantly change what we do... Alright I want to get some of these awesome pics from the cookout and beach up so you can see where Ive been at all weekend...oh and the sky was amazing tonight, I was on the phone with Brittany from River 5 and saw a shooting star from the driveway which was pretty cool. still trying to find a nice area that doesn't have much light around it, but for now I'm pretty happy with what I got!

Start of our first project

Our first full official day of work in Mobile, and work is what we did.  The day started with some physical training led by yours truly @ 6:30am. We ran to a local church about .3 miles away and did a nasty ab workout that my team loved me for, obviously. Came back, showered, and headed to Habitat for Humanity headquarters.  We were briefed about our project and met some important people, although we were eager to get started so headed out to the job site pretty quickly.  Myself and 3 other team members (Sarah, Ruth, and Karie) were chosen to stay and finish a house habitat was building.  I specifically requested this because there was painting, spackling, and caulking involved which I have plenty of experience doing via Damons Painting!  It was fun to work with my team and teach them stuff I learned, they seemed like they genuinely wanted to learn the painting tricks of the trade.  It was weird from my work experience where everything had to be perfect, going to a volunteer site where everything was...not so perfect.  The house site leader acknowledged my awesome painting and spackling capabilities and were happy to tell me I would be coming back tomorrow to finish up there.  So that's what I'll be doing tomorrow! Although I already got white paint on my uniform and I'm only 1 day in! That can't be good foresight for whats to come... So far this project in Mobile has been spoiling me... first the legit housing with 3 bathrooms and ample space for our team, then I still have internet access via my droid, then the excess food budget money that habitat is providing for us, and to top it off on my first day we do the one thing I'm actually experienced with (painting). Don't think I could have asked for a better start to this project! Also for this project we will be working during the week and have off sunday and monday, however for labor day they are giving us a 3 day weekend starting saturday so monday our team is heading to the ocean and hitting up the beach! Hopefully no oil is there so we can get our swim on... we shall see. Alright I'm exhausted from today, waking up and working 8-4 tomorrow and trying to get the rest of that painting done... Throwing up some random pics as well. Oh and shout-outs to River 5 making the ABC local news for their disaster relief project!! KABOOM!

edit: ran again for over 2 miles today, this cardio thing is getting easier... hopefully something can be done about a gym come this weekend.

Mobile, Alabama

Greetings from Mobile, Alabama! This is day 1 of my first Spike Project and I'm pretty pumped.  After a nice little 5 hourish drive the scene here in Mobile is not that different from Mississippi, although it is more industrialized and there seems to be a lot more to do (saw a laser tag place on the way in). Once we arrived we decided to venture into town and see what the community was all about. We hoped around from the Hobby Lobby, to the Home Depot, and then to Target and had a classy dinner at Wendys, mmm mmm good.  Tomorrow we have physical training which will be ran by Cain and myself @ 6:30am.  I'm pretty excited because we finally get to come up with our own activities for our group! Tomorrow we will probably run and do a sweet ab routine, and then run again, woo hoo!  Alright so I'm chilling outside on the porch right now from our Spike housing and this place is pretty chill.  I've been excited to finally catch a good glimpse of the sky at night and see some shooting stars, the view is awesome from the porch but eventually I'd like to find an open field to relax in and truly enjoy the night sky.  Good thing I have a solid month and a half to do so! Oh and in other good news, Habitat for Humanity is gracious enough to give us a lunch allowance of 5 dollars a day each! Yes, Habitat is giving us more money for lunch than AmeriCorps gives us for an entire day to eat.  So hopefully as long as the budget allows it, we will be eating like Kings for the next month and a half. Alright I'm going to head in early as I have to be up early to run tomorrow... I went for a 1.5-2 mile run tonight with Mac and Taylor around the block just to check out the area, so many dogs around here! Gnite!