Saturday, August 21, 2010

Day 8 - Last day of work in Pascagoula

Last day...we slept in until 6:30 this morning.  Everyone was tired and moving slow this morning.

At the work site for 8am again, and it was over 100 degrees when we arrived.  Of course we have the roof to finish - the hardest part because the scaffolding wouldn't reach the far side of the house and there is a deck and porch that sticks out.  We had to assemble ladder jacks and rebuild 3 storeys of scaffolding on the other side of the house.  It was as safe as it could be considering the circumstances.  We lifted all the remaining bundles of shingles up onto the roof once it was tar papered and the drip tray installed.  Lots of breaks today and everyone wore gloves because the shingles were so hot that they would burn your fingers.  Basically, a crew rotated and worked at finishing the roof all day. 

Lisa and Lee went with Joe (a supervisor) to measure the joyces in a few houses - Lisa met a "spider-lizard" under one of the houses. 

Laura, Bre and Emily went with Mark/Ralph/Steve/Elmo to finish cleaning one of the other finished houses for the morning.  After Laura almost fell down the stairs, they called it quits and came back to the main work site to finish up the day with us.  These girls helped with moving shingles, and re-built the back porch and steps on the house.

Kerstie and Jodie ran 2x6 on the top of the inside walls so that the drywall would have something to butt up to.  A hot job as they were up in the rafters...

We finished the day at 4pm and had a sad good-bye circle.  We all really enjoyed working with our supervisors: Jamie, Mark, and Joe and with Michael (an Ameri-corps volunteer).  They made our experience really memorable and they were awesome to work with and for!  Jamie always started the day with a great devotional and prayer, which helped to remind us why we were there and what we were working for. 

We had little time to pack up and shower and evacuate Camp Victor.  We went for supper at The Mellow Mushroom as a farewell dinner - a great place for hoagies and pizza - probably the best pizza I have ever had!

We did get some driving in tonight, we are now just south of Montgomery Alabama - not where we intended to be, but everyone is so exhausted we can't push on any further.  So, nighty night and we will check in again tomorrow.

Good Work Team!
Juli

Friday, August 20, 2010

Day 7 - Work in Pascagoula

Hottest day yet!  115 degrees, and of all things to tackle on a day like today - we shingled 3/4 of the roof on a house that is built on stilts 14 feet off the ground!

Our day started again at 6am, and we were to the work site by 8am.  Because we did most of the "hidden" jobs yesterday, we got to tackle the stuff that is visible and makes it look like you had a productive day.  So we worked in groups to shingle the roof once everyone passed the "shingles test".  Doug, John and I did one side of the house.  Bill, Lisa, Pat did the front side of the house.  Lee was a seam cutter on the corners.  Kerstie and Jodie handed up all the shingles onto the roof. 

The cleaning crew; Laura, Emily and Breanna all went to clean 2 more houses with 2 local ladies who were finishing their "sweat equity" with today being their last shift.  Now that they have completed their 250 sweat hours, they have to take a few mandatory courses that Habitat offers.  For instance they might be courses on financial management, homeowners management and family planning.  Once they have completed all the set our requirements by Habitat they will be able to move into their home.  They were pretty excited, as they have been working for a year now to complete their required hours.

The afternoon, as it got up to 115 degrees, really got the better of a few of us.  We moved to shingle the front and side of the house we were on ladders and perched on the roof.  Both Doug and I got what we call the "black blink"  which happens right before you either passout or go down with heat exhaustion/dehydration.  It comes on really fast, and when it hits, you get to the ground as fast as you can.  Pat experienced it later in the day too.  Everyone was drinking oodles of water, but we sweat more than we were drinking for most of the day.  Needless to say, everyone couldn't wait to submerge in the ocean to help bring our body temperatures down to a normal range again.  Each person drank about a gallon of water today, and hardly anyone peed all day - that just shows you how much we each sweat!

We must have done more than what they were expecting us to accomplish this week as they had to order more supplies and matierals to have at the worksite for us for tomorrow so that we have something to do.  Everyone is working so well together as a team and really enjoying each others company and friendship.  We are all really lucky to have each other here...we have become quite a team and we work very effeciently together! 

Half of the group stayed and had dinner at Camp Victor (chili dogs and mac and cheese) and Bill-asaurus, Lis-asaurus, Doug-asaurus, John-asaurus and I all went to Aunt Jennies for supper.  This is an all-you-can-eat local shrimp and catfish restraunt.  Doug might have been fascinated with Bill's 8 plates of shrimp and catfish...the waitress couldn't wait to see us go!  I guess Canadian's don't have the oppertunity to eat like that anywhere at home!  Basically, we ate the place out of shrimp...and catfish...and hush puppies...and sweet potatos!  Now we are all so full and bloated we will have to roll into bed!

Go team!

Juli

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Day 6 - Work in Pascagoula

Today was stifiling hot!  It was pushing 110 degrees - and when you are working up in the rafters it was certain to be over 120 degrees!  We wore bandanas to keeep the sweat from dripping into our eyes.

Again we started our day at 6am and were to the work site by 8am and ready to go.  Today was a lot of finishing jobs that were hard to see progress with.  Doug and John worked with re-aligning the fascia along the roof and putting up the finishing fascia for most of the day. 

Laura, Breanna and Emily went to 2 finished homes are were the clean up crew.  They are working with Mark -  a real southern comedian! 

Pat worked on hammering the rest of the roof down and getting the tar paper on it and ready for shingles tomorrow.  Kerstie and Jodie framed in an interior wall.  Lee finished the blocking on the inside roof trusses.  Bill worked on the roof and perfected the roof line angles - we had a roof inspection today - so it was all hands on deck to get the roof ready to pass inspection so we can continue with shingling tomorrow. 

Lisa and I built a "rat run" on the inside roof trusses and reinforced the trusses the full length of the house with a "v" on both sides...a very tedious and HOT task.  For a couple of girls we did a great job...all but one seam, which got the better of us and where only 2 nails should have been 6 now reside!  It was pretty funny...but exhaustion does crazy things to you!!!

Doug says "It was a very rewarding day today...we got a lot of work work done, and accomplished so much.  It is great to have a full day of work in, hurt at the end of it, and feel like you have accomplished something.  This is definately a 'young mans' job!  And I am feeling it, in my arms, my hands, my legs and my fingers!!!"

We did finally get our van fixed - we have 2 new tires - and an alignment...good to go!  Bill took the van into the shop today and while it was getting fixed he got a Mississippi haircut...which as he tells the story, sounds like quite an experience! 

Since we have been here, I think 6 pairs of sunglasses have gotten broken - Bill has broke 3 himself, one of mine, one of Lisa's and one of Tim's (who isn't even here with us)...so he also picked up new sunglasses for himself ...only to return to the work site and both Lisa and I broke ours today!  This is not a good trip for sunglasses!!!

Work finished slightly early today, as all the contractors had a staff meeting, so in our wet, sweaty and stinking clothes we went to the Gator Ranch and everyone held an aligator, hiked the bayou, and went on an airboat tour through the swamp.  It was pretty amazing, and a once in a lifetime oppertunity for most of us.

We had supper at the infamous "The Shed", who boasts the best ribs in all of the USA.  We all tend to agree that they have the best "rack" in the world!  We had 2 friends from Baton Rouge come to meet us for supper - they drove over 2 hours to come and see us.  Kara and Courtney worked with us last year when our team came to work with Habitat, and we have stayed in touch over the last year.  It was so great to see them!  Also, one of the supervisors that we have been working with, Mark/Ralph/Steve (no one knows his real name) came along too to show is thanks for us coming so far to help his community.  It was a great night...and we all over ate for sure!


Juli

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Day 5 - Work in Pascagoula Mississippi

Wake up call at 6am, breakfast, packed lunch, loaded the van and on the road by 7:30am.  We were on the worksite and rearing to go by 8am.  Today was a big work day - we had to make up for lost time yesterday!  It was sunny, and hot today 92 degrees plus humidity - was well over 100 degrees today!

We started off completing the third story of scaffolding, so that a team could nail the sheets of pressed board onto the roof.  In the hot, direct sun - Doug, Jodie, Lisa, and Kerstie hammered for the entire morning. Pat worked on the inside of the roof line putting in center supports at the peak.  John and Bill tied the new structure and the old structure of roofing together - in a small tight space.  Lee and Laura went to work with Joe and they went to 3 finished homes (where people are already living) and crawled under the homes into the crawl spaces to take measurements to see if the beams were bowing or not.  It was a post construction inspection of some kind.  Lee blocked all afternoon - reinforcing each truss on the inside roof - a very tedious job where he had to hang like a monkey to hammer the blocks in place.  I was the cutter today did all cuts on the chop saw and the circular saw for all the different projects that were taking place. 

Laura, Emily, Breanna went with Mark/Steve/Ralph (he won't tell anyone his real name) and went to a finished home that is almost ready for a family to move into, and they cleaned it - washed baseboards, cabinetry, vaccuumed and cleaned the house of all dust so that it will be ready for a family to move in.  Breanna and Emily finished putting all the strapping on the inside walls to the trusses - I think each girl probably put in a couple hundred nails each today!  And guess what????  EMILY SWEATS!!!  For someone who has never sweat before - she was just as shocked as we were when she discovered that her shins were sweating!!!

In the afternoon  a problem arose with the fascia board on the end of the house - for some reason it didn't align with the roof line, so Pat, Lisa, Kerstie and Jodie had to take off the fascia board and raise it up and re-tack it so that the roof line could be attached to the house.  Everyone had a job for the whole day - there wasn't any down time - as as we got to clean up time it started to sprinkle and then we had a torrential downpour - so everyone got soaked on top of their sweat and dirt! 

We did get the van into the shop and the tires have been ordered - we will be having them installed tomorrow while we are at work - thank goodness!

The rain doesn't last long here but it is scattered all the time and you never know when it will come again - we went to the beach right after work (since we were wet anyway) - Pascagoula has just finished their re-furbish of their waterfront since Katrina, so we went to check it out.  A quick swim, with the crabs...and a very entertaining faceplant by Kerstie and we headed home to clean up for the night.

Dinner tonight was red beans and rice and carrots with a garden salad.  A typical southern dinner.  Everyone is exhausted and is sure to have an early night!  Another big day tomorrow!

Thanks for reading!

Juli

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Day 4 - Ocean Springs to Pascagoula Mississippi

Early morning wake up call - 6am ... breakfast was grits, biscuits and gravy - we had to pack our own lunches for the day and were on the road to our work site by 7:30.

We are working on a site that is about 3 blocks from the ocean.  There are quite a few homes that are missing (you can see where they once were as the footings are still there), there are some that are still damaged and probably won't be fixed unless a program like Habitat steps in to help.
We are working on a relatively new kind of project that Habitat has started here that is custom to this area.  They take mobile homes that were sent down here after Katrina and are raising them up, above Katrina's flood level to meet the new building codes.  Then they put additions onto them.  The house in Pascagoula that we are working on is built on 14 foot stilts, it was about the size of a single wide trailer, and is now about 1200 square feet.  The shell of the house is complete, framed, trusses are in place and there are sheets of wood on the roof.  There is a large set of stairs going to the house and a porch (but no railing yet). 

When we arrived, we began with safety procedures, the list of things to accomplish this week, prayer and devotional.  Laura, Emily and Breanna were assigned the clean up of inside the house.  There have been large amounts of rain the last week, so they had to sweep and squeegee out all the water inside the house.  Then they had to hand hammer in all the strapping for the trusses on the inside of the house.  Bill and John worked on finishing the roof and getting all the sheets up there secured.  Pat worked with an Americorps volunteer named Michael (who we worked with last year) to reinforce the trusses.  Doug, Lee, Lisa, Jodie, Kerstie and I disassembled the scaffolding on one side of the house and reassembled it on the other side of the house.  Now this scaffolding is 3 storeys high - remember that the base of the house doesn't start until it is 14 feet in the air...it means that everything we will be doing this week will be up a ladder or on scaffolding!

Unfortunately, the heavens opened up and we had torrential down pouring mid morning.  We actually had so much rain, that our supervisor, Jamie called it a day and sent us all home.  Talk about being disappointed!  We just drove 23 hours to work, and we only worked for 2 hours!!!  Well, what do you do when mother nature isn't in your corner...wouldn't you know it?  God is!  Our van has been making a terrible whirling sound and we thought that maybe a wheel bearing was going, so having a free afternoon turned out to be a blessing in that we could take it into the shop.  Turns out that it isn't a wheel bearing, but the tires on the front are cupped.  So new tires have been ordered, and we will be having them installed before we head home!  Thank goodness!

We did go to the outlet mall this afternoon too and did a little shopping - always a fun experience - and a great way to support the local economy!  We also took a drive out past our work site last year to see what the community looks like finished.  People have moved into the homes that we were helping build last year and it looked completely different from when we left here last year.  Pretty rewarding to see a community built by Habitat volunteers!

Tonight, we participated in a Memorial Service as today marks the 31st anniversary of Hurricane Camille.  We met up with Rev. Harold Roberts (Kelly Monkman's uncle) who gave us his story and account of Hurricane Katrina following the service.  It is 10 days shy of the 5 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and it is amazing to me how many people are still so emotional when they tell us their story.  I can't imagine leaving your house in perfect condition when you are evacuated and returning a few hours later to absolutely nothing.  The ocean literally washed everything away! 

We visited the Hurricane Katrina Memorial and were hoping (odd, I know) that this year we would see the names of those who perished in Katrina posted on the wall, as the wall was intended when it was built by Extreme Home Makeover.  Unfortunately, those names have not yet been etched into the beautiful memorial.  Nevertheless, it was a very moving experience.  The wall of the memorial is as tall as the water line when Katrina hit. 

Today was a long day, and I was really hoping to post a picture of our house for you to see, but the pictures for today were taken on Doug's camera, which are really good, BUT we don't have a cable to get them onto the computer...so tomorrow we will use another camera that we can transfer pictures onto the computer.

Please pray for the rain to stop, so we can work tomorrow!!!

Juli

Monday, August 16, 2010

Day 3 - Montgomery Alabama to Biloxi Mississippi

After a wakeup and a quick breakfast at the hotel (with a waffle machine that was way more complicated than it needed to be), we were well on our way on the road again.  We made good time only stopping once at the state line of Mississippi for a washroom break and a picture at the "Welcome to Mississippi" sign.  And finaly after the last 4 hours of our 23 hour drive, we arrived at Camp Victor.  After a quick tour of Camp Victor we made our way to the beach for a quick swim, and managed to make it out with only 3 jelly-fish stings and a bit of unexpected rain.  Lisa got into a fight with a jelly fish and we all know what happens when you get stung by a jelly fish!  Bill was the lucky guy!!!  And it worked!  Other than a few red whelts, the swelling and sting is gone!

All in all it has been a good day!  Oriantation will be at 5 o'clock, and dinner shortly after that-- I think we're having Pasta.  Then to bed soon, becuase it's our first 6am wakeup call of the week tomorrow. 

We will be working in Pascagola, about 1/2 hour from here, where we will be working on a re-furbishing program and rebuilding existing homes according to the new building code.  Will have pictures and an update tomorrow.

Thanks!
Lee and Juli

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Day 2 - Cave City Kentucy to Montgomery Alabama

Today started with a cool dip in the pool for Bill and Lisa ... continental breakfast for everyone - Kentucky apparently boasts the best mushroom-gravy for breakfast, yummy on biscuits.   After that we went off on our adventure to find a Save-a-Lot, but we ended up going to Family Dollar (They had ‘Big League’ chew, we got some) to restock on water and snacks for the ride. 

Soon we were off to our 4 1/2 miles/hours tour 300 ft underground at Mammoth Caves National Park.  It was pretty incredible and a lot of walking.  Originally Mammoth Caves, founed in the early 1800's was named after the man who found it, “Flatt”—but the news paper reporting on it decided that ‘Flatt Caves’ wasn’t a good enough name for the size and scope of these caves, so they used the name ‘Mammoth Caves’ instead. And so the name stuck. There are 392 miles of tunnels and caves explored and charted, with another estimated 600 lying undiscovered under the earth—thus making it the longest known and charted cave system in the world. On our trip though the tunnels we saw many amazing sites, such as the “Frozen Niagara” of Stalactites and Stalagmites, flowering crystal formations of Gypsm covering the walls and ceiling, and the “Grand Canyon” a giant dip approximately 100 ft deep along the path that we had to walk down...and back up.

 The tour guides were great, aside from the terrible geography jokes, but we did learn from talking to one of the guides that the caves used to be used as burial grounds—and that the staff working there claim that it’s haunted after lights out. Most of us have never experienced underground hiking before - we even had lunch in Snowball Cavern!  It was 62 degrees down there, and when we came back out our cameras, glasses and bodies went into shock with the heat!  Around 90degrees today.

Then came the 6 hour "party bus" ride to our next hotel.  We stopped at Shoney's and had all you can eat buffet for supper and back on the road - final destination for the day - Montgomery Alabama.  Only 6 more hours of driving until we reach Biloxi - orientation is tomorrow afternoon and everyone is getting excited to get to work!

Thanks for your prayers and support!

Lee Garrett, Bill Conard, Laura Pelletier, Juli Conard-Myers

Day 1 - Home to Cave City, KY

So the day started out exciting with everyone anticipating an awesome trip - we were on the road around 8:30 in our 12 passenger "party bus".  The drive is gonna be tight - but we will definately all know each other by the end of the trip!

We ran into a huge delay at the border where we were crossing in Sarnia.  The wait was over 1 1/2 hours to get over the bridge and to customs.  Long story short, we were detained at customs until after 5pm last night. After much delay and a re-route and a plan hatched by the team that was a little in the grey area, we crossed the border shortly after 6pm - some 6 hours after we arrived at the border.  Nevertheless, we have a story and an experience that will stay with all of us forever.  Thankfully, the good Lord knows that our intentions are good and our Mission is important!  Needless to say, it was a very stressful experience for everyone, but a HUGE celebration broke out in the "party bus" once we were granted entry into the US.

Our hotel arrangements were cancelled - as we didn't know how far we would make it - but we are troopers and drove until 2:30am (your time) to Cave City, Kentucky where today we will be visiting Mammoth Caves National Park as our "free day" activity.  We have crossed a one hour time difference and are on central time now for the rest of our trip.  Everyone crashed - and was thankful for a safe and eventful day!

The members of our GS Mission Team for Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Gulf Coast are:
Emily Anderson-Brodie
John Yeaman
Laura Pelletier
Lisa Mantifel
Doug Watson
Lee Garrett
Pat Wattman-Mackie
Breanna Piney
Jodie Schuyler
Kerstie Millar
Bill Conard
Juli Conard-Myers

Thank you for your continued prayers, and support (apparently we really need it!)...

Juli