Friday, May 27 - Third Work Day

Okay the day has come............ I am proud to announce that not one Pacific Ridge student in the city of New Orleans has come into any contact with any f-channel. We were lucky enough to be doing some hefty  painting today. We each painted a room in a 1400 sq foot, 4-bed, 2-bath single story home. There was already primer on the walls, so we were basically just told to paint the interior of the house white-- excuse me, "eggshell".

We first went to the house where we had been working for the past few days, but when we got there, one of the staff members (Patrick) sent us across town to do a painting job.

The house where we arrived was a bit more pleasant. From what I was hearing, it seemed that people were happy to take a break from the constantly buzzing train engines. 

Ms. Grossman, Stephanie, Katie G, and Jenna painted the doors of the house. We removed them from the hinges and carried them outside. They each had a bucket, and took the day to triple coat each of the doors--just to be extra careful.

The rest of us were painting the inside of the house. The bedrooms were pretty small but it took the day for the six or so of us to paint the house. We split up into the first two bedrooms when we first got there. I was painting with Kevin, Basil and Katie C. and Andrea, Rachel and Alexa were across the hall.

Katie G., Stephanie, Ms. Grossman, and Jenna paint the doors outside.

We all got a little dirty, but it was good to take a day off from the heat by being inside painting all day (except for the door painters and Mr. Bray who were all outside doing work!--- great job guys!)

 Andrea painting the ceiling (Kevin didn't even need an extension pole to reach)

We painted that whole hallway...

 Mr. Bray doing his thing...

 and Colin doing his thing.

 Mr. Bray worked with another Habitat volunteer to put the railing spindles around the entire porch.

 Sometimes you make a permanent difference when you pat someone on the back...

One of the neighbors who came and chatted with everyone during lunch.  He gave some history of the area.  Following Katrina, this whole area was about 10 feet under water!  Everyone had to move away for quite a while.

We have been eating peanut butter and Jelly for lunch--but we also have ham and turkey. We found some shade during our lunch break. The past few days we had been eating UNDER the house in the dirt (that seemed to be the best place for shade) but this time we found an old driveway on an abandoned lot next to a tree.

While we were eating lunch some locals approached us and asked us about our work, and the Habitat organization.

After lunch we continued working on painting and one of the staff members, Andrew, invited us to see a house dedication on the other side of town. We quickly wrapped up a little before three and when we got there a guy who I had recognized from Wednesday was giving a prayer to the Habitat folks at the dedication. (The house was going to what looked like a single mother and a young child.)

 The little girl moving into the house that was dedicated today.

The dedication ceremony.  Seeing a house being handed over to its new owner, seeing that person's dream come true, and knowing the work that went into making that moment happen is a wonderful thing.

We got back to the room and a lot of us took a short nap. Everyone had an hour or so for there social time-- catching up with Facebook and emails and other relaxing things.

Dinner:

Mr. Bray cooked our food for dinner tonight. He ventured out to the grocery store while we were all in our rooms. He came back and grilled sausage, hot dogs, chicken, hamburgers, and corn and we had some Arnold Palmer with some watermelon and a few deserts. I mistakenly took the spicy sausage even though Mr. Bray told me that it was the one on the right... hahaha but it was still really good! After everyone ate, we put on some music and the girls took some pictures on the stairs of the hotel.


Consensus:

There seemed to be a lot of workers at the construction site the last few days, definitely more than you would normally see at a housing construction site. The conversation came up in the van about a surplus of workers. The issue that we talked about was that when your main resource is basically unlimited free labor than there is a tendency to have inefficiencies. As a Pacific Ridge economics student this year, I learned about the importance of efficiency and its impact. There have been a lot of questions over the last few days, like "why can't we just use a nail gun. A nail gun would probably take only 30 seconds to hang the f-channel, but instead I was told to us a hammer-- and it has taken me all day!" The answer to those types of questions I am learning is that if you have a surplus of free labor, then there is no reason to invest financially in more efficient ways of doing things. So I guess this is the long way of saying, I'm glad Patrick sent us to another house to work on.

(editors note:  the main reason we don't use the nail gun is that most people who volunteer don't know how to use them safely.  It's a bad day when someone goes home with a nail through the hand.  The reason we mixed concrete by hand is because they have to keep the volunteers busy.)

Blog posted by Colin McDuffie

Some more photos from the last couple of days...

 Katie C. encouraging everyone to read Zeitoun (it's the Upper School summer reading book!)

 On the streetcar heading to the French Quarter

 The St. Charles streetcar

 Andrea getting in touch with her inner tourist

 Only New Orleans would have a roving street band that was all brass!  They were absolutely incredible.

 Jazz on Bourbon St.

 Where we had our yummy dinner on Thursday night.

 Bourbon St.

So, girls, what do you think of installing F-channel?

Second Work Day - 5/26

"Do you believe in life after floods? I can feel something inside me say, I really think we can be strong enough. Do you believe in life after floods? I can feel a hammer inside my heart, together we'll build these walls back up."

           --our rendition of Cher's  "Believe" (credit to Andrea Watson and Katie Glockner)

Cheers from stormy New Orleans! Rising out of bed this morning was a bit difficult as we were all worn out from yesterday's work, but after a rousing breakfast of fruit, cereal, pop-tarts, muffins, and juice we packed ourselves up and headed off to the job site. Kevin, Basil, and Katie C spent the morning preparing a wooden frame for a cement patio at an almost completed red house towards the end of the row. Rachel and Alexa used some sledgehammers to bang out stakes from around the sidewalk and patios. Andrea and Colin worked on caulking together while Ms. Grossman, Jenna, and Stephanie struggled (and, boy, was it a struggle!!!!!) to nail in the much-dreaded f-channel (Mr. Bray didn't know what it was called since he managed to avoid putting it in!). Meanwhile, Katie G and Mr. Bray got straight back to work with the siding, and after about an hour's hard work we finished up the house! Once the boards were up, Andrea, Colin, Rachel, and Katie G grabbed some brushes and coated the newly-nailed siding (and their clothes) with a layer of teal paint.

 Katie was a beast today.  She carried 20 bags of concrete by herself (each one weighed 80 lbs!)  This is how she looked at the end of the day.

  Our lunch and break room.

 "Watch out, F-channel!"

 Andrea and Katie G. painting in the sky.  Katie & Mr. Bray finished siding that wall earlier in the day.

 More ladder work.

 Colin joins in the painting fun.  Mr. Bray made sure Andrea didn't paint above Colin...

 Rachel working on the side of the house.  The gents working in the background were a group of US Navy men there for the day.

 Katie G. and Colin tackle more F-channel while Jenna and Ms. G keep the ladders stable (we had some high winds today and the ladders occasionally felt a little "wobbly"- which only adds to the joy).  It was at this point that Mr. Bray told Katie G not to dance on the ladders.

As the day got hotter, we stopped for a lunch break around 11:30. We clambered aboard our van in search of a change of scenery, but our efforts to find a local park were unsuccessful. Determined to make the most of our off-site experience anyway, we decided to stop at a gas station to buy cold drinks, or in Colin's case Cajun fried chicken. While waiting for Mr. Bray to return to the van, we made a new friend. If you ask Andrea, she'd call him the wolf-seller (due to the wolf picture in his hand). Any of the rest of us might refer to him as the Spanish Jesus man: he greeted us with "Hola" and, after a round of high fives from only Katie G, Andrea, and Alexa, he politely informed us that "only tres girls are looking for Jesus." After our interesting encounter, we drove back to the site. We made sandwiches using the back of a van as a kitchen and hid in the shade using the space beneath the house as a dining room. 

Shade is a wonderful thing, no matter where you find it.

Stephanie mixes up some concrete for the stair landing.

Shoveling the concrete under the stairs.  The group mixed, shoveled, and carried over 4000 lbs of concrete today!

Basil showing his form on the hoe.

After lunch, Andrea, Alexa, and Rachel finished painting the long side of the teal house. Katie G, Jenna, Colin, and Ms. Grossman spent 2 hours hammering only 10 nails into the quickly-becoming-infamous f-channel (All the others have given up already...who will be next? dun dun dun. Read tomorrow for breaking news!). Kevin, Basil, Katie C, and Stephanie got to work on mixing cement, a challenging task when you fill the wheelbarrow with water BEFORE adding the cement dust! We had a brief burst of rain, but it subsided quickly (only to return later tonight). As the day came to a close, all of us joined together to finish mixing cement and to set it into the patio frame. We completed our task just as the clock hit 4 and the time to close the site had arrived.

The end of the work day, after finishing the concrete job.  Everyone did a tremendous amount of work today.

After going swimming and relaxing in our rooms, we took a trolley down to Bourbon Street. We ate dinner at a seafood restaurant (which also had non seafood options for our anti-pescatarians), enjoying everything from classic appetizers like hushpuppies, baked brie, and fondue to traditional entrees like Cajun king crab legs, seafood gumbo, and red beans with rice. Katie C enjoyed not only her delicious but furiously spicy crab, but also the remainders of everyone else's meals (sometimes willingly given, other times willfully taken). After our well-deserved meal, we walked around the street, window shopping, listening to the street jazz musicians, and drinking in all the sights, sounds and smells of New Orleans. A storm rolled in as we got ready to return to our inn, and we were treated first to rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning and then (fortunately not until AFTER we'd boarded the trolley) a downpour. What a day!

Posted by Katie Glockner (with help from Steph, Alexa, Andrea, and Rachel)

QUOTABLE MOMENTS:

Mr. Bray: "Katie [Glockner], no dancing on the ladders!"

Andrea (to a man we'd just met): "Wait, is that a wolf?? Are you selling it?"

Ms. Grossman: "So, what did you think of Hemingway?"

Stephanie: "It's too flat. It's like reading a pancake."

Habitat - May 25 - First Work Day

Wow!  What a start to our work.  It was, of course, hot.  And sunny.  And humid.  But there was a pleasant wind all day long which kept things reasonable.  We went through the five gallons of water we brought (plus many of us were filling our bottles on the site), so everyone did a good job of staying hydrated.  And, let me tell you - we're tired tonight.  No one wanted to do anything interesting tonight.  But I'm getting ahead of things.

We started the morning with a quick breakfast and got on the road only 10 minutes later than I wanted.  Not bad for 10 teenagers working with jet lag.  We were even on time to the job site (having only gotten lost once - apparently there aren't any street signs in New Orleans.  Who knew?).  We're working in the St. Claude area, which was badly hit by the Hurricane Katrina flooding.  Habitat for Humanity is working on numerous houses in the area, and has done a lot to transform the neighborhood.  Here are a few images of the houses on which we're working and what is being replaced.

Can you guess which ones are the new ones?

We mostly worked on two houses today, cleaning up the area, installing siding, caulking the siding, and putting in a little strip that is integral to making the eaves of the houses be finished.  There was A LOT of ladder work, as you can see below.

 Jenna and Kevin are installing the fancy little plastic strip (F-bar?) necessary for the finished eaves.

 Kevin, Basil, and Katie C. putting in more of the plastic strip.

 Katie G. & Mr. Bray on the ladders installing siding while Stephanie and Jenna melt in the heat.

Stephanie and Mr. Bray nailing up siding.

All of the ladder work definitely took it's toll (at least on the chaperons!)  Everyone is tired and a little sore tonight.  But we got a lot done.  In addition to installing the siding and plastic strip, the kids also caulked the siding and cleaned out the big metal container used as a storage unit.

One of the joys of the day was when the ice cream truck came by!  We told him to come every day.

 Cleaning out the storage container and making full use of Kevin's height.  It was really unpleasant in the back of that unit.  Colin, Alexa, Katie G. and Rachel did a great job of organizing what was a huge mess in there.

 Cleaning up the work area!  Between our group and the other one putting up the siding, we used up most of that pile.

 Colin made sure no one messed with the dumpster!

 Stephanie cutting the siding.  Count those fingers!

 Rachel and Andrea filling the gaps in in the siding.  The stuff installed by earlier groups had much bigger gaps than the boards we put in today!  Our siding looked great!

 Watch out!  Rachel has a gun (a caulking one, that is...)

 Colin and Ms. Grossman in the "hot box."

After a long work day (7:45-4:00), we loaded back in our (highly air conditioned) van and managed to figure out how to get back to our home.  The kids took advantage of the pool, and we grabbed some quick dinner, but it was mostly a "hang out" weary evening.

Tomorrow we'll have one of the students do the write up and get you some more pictures.
That's all for tonight.

The Hammer & Nail Club

Tuesday 5/24, Night of Arrival

Hello from New Orleans!  In case this is news to anyone, New Orleans is HOT and MUGGY in late May.  The kids definitely experienced the temperature transitions between the outside heat & humidity, and the interior refrigeration.  We start working tomorrow at 7:45 in the morning, and it's supposed to be around 90 degrees and sunny.  I expect the five gallons of water we bought today to be gone by lunch.

Everybody was on-time for the 5:30 a.m. meeting time at the airport, and we had two very uneventful flights (other than Steph having to go through security twice and Andrea almost leaving her carry on bag on the tarmac in LA).  Everybody is making good progress through Zeitoune (what a great book!  I finished it on the plane - impossible to put down after a while).

We all managed to squish into our van (made for twelve people, not twelve people with their baggage!) and get to the guest house in a reasonable amount of time.  The place is funky but comfortable.  It reminds me of the guest houses I used to stay in while travelling around the world in my twenties - comfortable, safe, and low on the amenities.  We had a nice dinner at a pizza joint on Charles St. (just around the corner), got a sense of where  we are and how to get places, got food and water for tomorrow, and are going to bed fairly early tonight.

Tomorrow we'll get pictures posted and I'll get the kids to start posting on this blog.