Ellis has informed me that the van is not the most luxurious, but alas function trumps quality in the long run. The van has over 175,000 miles on it (what's another 1,000+ to add to it, right?) and there's little room for cargo. I guess the kids will have to cram into the van like sardines... Or pack light...? Probably the former.
Today has been pretty sporadic. I made a dry foods run, drove the RAV-4 back to NY, and packed in the minimalist traveler style that I am notorious for. I'm expecting that the RAV-4 will probably be packed with student luggage so I can imagine the mental game of Tetris that will result from packing in what little space remains.
As of now, I'm getting the anxieties of potential catastrophic events out of my mind, like leaving a student at a rest stop, or leaving a student back in VA... As much as my subconscious would love to... I won't finish that thought, I'm sure you get the idea. :)
On the whole, there's a bit of excitement and anxiety the day before the trip. I'm not too sure how I will deal with a car-full of students or how Ellis and Sydney will deal with 11-12 students in a van for several hours.
I get the impression that I'll be saying this a lot this week, "This should be interesting..."
Day 1 - The Odyssey
Ellis got lost along the way to Trinity UMC. He used the Google maps directions which recommended the use of a ferry to cross between New Jersey and Maryland. The ferry costs lots of money and runs inconsistently throughout the day so he was back tracked by 2 hours (since he had to zig-zag across NJ to get back on the turnpike and drive through Delaware).
Lee, on the other hand, used the GPS the whole way and took the turnpike instead of the parkway (just think of the GPS as "guidance from above"). So in the meantime, Lee's car (Brandon, Javain, and Jermaine) went to a local shopping center (The Food Lion) and stocked up on groceries prior to Ellis's inevitable arrival.
This wouldn't be the last time we stop by this place for groceries as you will see in future photos and video.
One of the things that really caught students off guard was how buildings in this part of Virginia were really spread out from each other. There were times when the most frequently seen buildings were either chicken houses or churches/cemeteries. We counted only 2 or 3 schools. Essentially, what we observed was one main road with gas stations every couple of miles and large green fields in between.
Once we arrived at Trinity (which was a bit confusing at first since there are 3 or 4 churches within a quarter mile of each other), we unloaded and unpacked our things. We met the pastor, Elizabeth Lutz who took us on the dime tour of the place. The church itself is divided into several sections: an area of worship, a school area, a series of carpeted rooms used as nurseries or meeting areas, and the kitchen. We quarreled over the carpeted rooms for areas to sleep and wandered the area surrounding the church.
There's a local beach about a third of a mile hike with a fishing pier along the Chesapeake. Great group photo opportunities as you can see from the student pictures.
Once we settled in at Trinity, we played a few games together as a group. At one point, we decided to play a game of hide and seek with all the lights turned off, kind of creepy and lots of screaming (out of 14 students, 10 are girls). Each evening, students rotated using their iPods on speakers we brought with us. So dancing was a requirement prior to bed (this became the evening ritual of the week).
Day 2 - The Art of Dry Walling
Waking up was an interesting adjustment. Ellis used the speakers we brought to start blasting some Michael Jackson throughout the hallways. It brought back traumatic memories of when my parents would blast marching band music on weekends to wake me up for morning chores... At least this time, it was Michael Jackson.
We made some breakfast for the students, namely bagels, cereal, and some scrambled eggs. Since the milk wasn't to the liking to the students and we ran through the orange juice in a single morning, another grocery run was required before the next day... It was unexpected that students would not consume 1% or 2% milk. I grew up drinking skim or non-fat milk, but I'd reserve whole milk only for coffee.
After we made our lunches, we drove about 25-30 minutes to the house under construction in Exmore, VA. We came upon a single story home that appeared finished from the outside, but contained no walls on the inside. It was chilly and it was raining. Good thing we were inside most of the time. The backyard had a clothesline and an empty dog house... We didn't see any dog there all week. The water created a large puddle that would take a day or two to drain.
Our job on the first day of work was to learn to dry wall by cutting the gypsum boards the proper size and by either nailing them or by screwing them onto the wooden framework of the house. There was a learning curve to deal with and the students were a bit nervous to screw up but after the initial anxiety passes, the real productivity turned us into groups of well-oiled dry-walling machines. Lee, Taylor, and Vivian tackled the kitchen while Ellis, Imani, Leesage, Ashlie, Javain, Jermaine, and Estephanie, Nalisha, Brianda, and Carrie split into two groups to work on the bedrooms. A separate group of 4 (Natalya, Jessica, Brandon, and Sydney) went to another house to help put up some blinds in another house that had been completed by other Habitat groups.
After we had finished our first day at work, we drove 15-20 minutes to the "local" YMCA, where we were to take our showers. Some of the male students were shocked at the open nature that some men demonstrate in the changing rooms... Let's not relive that...
After we all took our showers, we returned to Trinity for a breather before heading to a different church for dinner (a 35-40 minute drive). We were served a meal of southern style food including baked mac and cheese, veggie-embedded jello, sliced ham, and peach cobbler. Once I finished eating, I realized that I would probably gain some weight this week... I love Southern cooking, but not on a daily basis.
Towards the end of the day, Ellis organized some group games which involved name games and individual goal setting. The grocery run was also made prior to bed, you can see the video of it posted by Brandon. At this point, the Food Lion employees were familiar with who we were (from the bulk shopping a couple of days prior), so riding in a shopping cart was only mildly unusual.
Day 3 - Routines
Each morning, we followed the same routines. This particular morning, I woke up early with another student, Javain, to go for a morning run. It was like 5:30-6:00. It was a bit brisk but it wasn't that bad. The beach was too windy to run along so we ran around a block about 3/4 of a mile and ran back to the church. I made Javain dribble a soccer ball the whole way.
When we got back, Ellis decided to break the morning ice by unleashing a fart from his sleeping bag that struck me the moment I opened the door and stepped into the room. If you're wondering how he got his nickname, Stinky, now you know. Let me tell you, that as disgusting as it was for Ellis to fart in front of students, it was amusing to watch Javain's facial expressions (I've never seen him grimace before).
After clearing up our sleeping bags from the floor, we served ourselves some breakfast and prepped our lunches again. At this point we're starting to get into the routine of getting up in the morning to Michael Jackson music and making breakfast. This time around, Sydney made some egg salad for a few of the girls who requested it. Before we left for the work site, Ellis had the students reflect on their past day by writing something positive they saw in someone else that day. These were read aloud and received an applause of snapping fingers. This daily reflection on the day before would also become routine.
At the work site, we continued with the drywall. By the end of the day, we had finished 80-85% of the walls in the house. The only room that wasn't walled was the bathroom since we were waiting on special drywall that resists mildew and mold specifically for rooms that encounter lots of moisture. One of the other bedrooms was also not entirely completed. This picture was taken the morning after, just as we finished that bedroom.
The weather at this point had cleared up. It was a bit windy but the sun was a welcome sight. The rain had all but stopped and the backyard had started to drain.
Another thing we noticed about this area is the poor drainage. Many of the trenches that we saw along the roads were full of run-off. Students were talking about the ground saturated with water (tid-bits from Ms. Mitchell's Earth Science class).
We cleaned up at the YMCA as usual. The men were a bit more cautious about entering and leaving the shower areas this time... Understandably so. Then we returned to Trinity for a break before going out to another church-sponsored dinner. This time was a bit different, we met with the organizers of Habitat for Humanity and we introduced ourselves and met a couple of home-owners through this program.
I learned that home owners are not just given a home, they ultimately have to pay a mortgage on it. So the cost of the materials is essentially what they pay. They are also responsible for putting in 350 volunteer hours on their home or another home prior to moving in. Making quality housing affordable and accessible is really the mission of the Habitat for Humanity organization, but I digress...
This particular church where we had dinner, happens to be one of the oldest churches on record in the United States. Richard, the Pastor, told stories about how pews were rented to townsfolk and one day an inebriated man sat in the wrong pew and was arrested... Though there were no stain-glass windows, the large windows along the wall of worship would guarantee a well-lit church even without electricity.
After dinner, we stopped by a corral with 3 horses. The horses wanted to see what the commotion was about with 2 cars pulling over so they wandered over to the fence. The sun had already gone down so it was difficult taking pictures, and flashing the horses is not a good idea so we came back to Trinity after admiring from afar.
This time, we played a group game in the office. Imagine 17 people crammed into a room, everybody sitting on their place on the floor and a couple sitting under the desk. We played a game where a selected individual would have to go up to someone and ask them "Honey, I love you, would you smile for me." The responder would have to keep a straight face and reply, "Honey I love you, but I will not smile for you." Should a student smile or laugh, they would have to find someone else to ask to smile. There were some really funny moments. Jermaine probably had the best facial expression for this exercise. The teachers are pretty hardened to student so we held our own pretty well against the students.
This evening, students stayed up pretty late. In anticipation of a day off the next day, we let loose and enjoyed the evening. We settled on going to VA Beach for the day... This could be interesting...
Day 4 - VA Beach
Cape Charles is not that far from VA Beach. It's about a 40-45 minute drive south over a ridiculously long causeway bridge ($12 toll and $5 coming back). So in the morning, we slept in for an extra hour or so then packed up for a day at the beach. The long bridge had a strict speed limit and it was long enough to have 2 speed traps with police cruisers along its length. If you ever consider going to VA Beach, don't speed.
Notable events from the day:
- Burying Ms. Ellis in sand
- Riding 4 passenger bike
- Lunch at Dough Boys
- Kite flying
- Castle-building contest
- Vivian's rejection
- Javain flipping
- Souvenir Shopping (Leesage and Estephanie are Life Guards?)
- Lee failing at DDR at the arcade
- Knocking people over each other
It's always been a minor concern to me that we would be out of town with a group of students during April Fool's Day. Some pranks can go too far, luckily the events that took place today were within reasonable limits.
The work site was free of any pranks. Thank goodness. It's not the right place or time to pull a fast one especially when you have people wandering with box cutters and drills. We had all but finished the drywall and started to move on towards covering the screws with compound to make the walls flat.
One of the issues we've had is that some screws or nails wouldn't be in the drywall enough to cover up so we have to go back and either screw them in further or hammer them in, as Javain demonstrates in this picture.
In the meantime, other individual students were taking mesh tape and starting to tape over any seams we came across. The seams created by drywall boards were going to be covered up.
The last thing that took place was the corners of the walls were covered with steel corners. This was done by one of the home owners. As we learned before, they're required to put in 350 hours of volunteer service before they can move into their homes.
We had lunch on site this time and we had sandwiches brought to us by the friendly ladies of the Habitat for Humanity team. One "This should be interesting..." moment took place when I tried for the first time a sandwich with cream cheese and olives... I can't describe it, you just have to try it at some point.
The rest of the day was routine. Drive out to the YMCA, avoid the nudity, take showers or go for a swim (which we weren't allowed to, but the students jumped in anyway), then drive back to Trinity. This time, we were fed a Turkey dinner by the people from Trinity, which was like an early Thanksgiving. I was thankful I didn't have to drive 30-40 minutes away for dinner. It's like adding an additional 1-2 hours to your day when you have to drive here and there each day.
The church had services that day so it wasn't the best time to pull pranks. I had pulled one in the car ride back from the YMCA. Brandon and I would yell at the top of our lungs as if we were crashing to scare Javain and Vivian who were sleeping in the back seat.
Later in the evening, the guys used some rubber cockroaches and placed them in various areas of the girls' room and in the bathroom. Jessica and Natalya freaked out (putting it lightly). Even after confessing that the roaches were fake, Jessica would still freak out when shown a rubber roach. I won't lie, they looked pretty real from a distance or in the dark...
One of the highlights of the evening was going to the beach for some sunset pictures. I remember driving back to Trinity and watching the sun go down. The last quarter mile back, I raced towards the shore to get sunset pictures since it seemed as if we wouldn't make it in time. Once the sun came down we also took some night photos of the stars.
Though regular point and shoot cameras were not very good at it, having a camera that could take 30 second exposures was pretty helpful. It was also helpful in making the night-time graffiti pictures the students made. One of the notable night-time graffiti tags was made by Natalya, who drew a string of hearts across the beach...
Day 6 - Compound Mess and Final Moments
Our last day on the work site was spent covering the nails and screwed with compound with flat knives. This was sort of a pain in the arse since it was hard enough to put screws into the drywall of the ceiling, now we have to climb a ladder to fill the screw holes with compound or reset them with a drill.
We also covered all the seams of the drywall with mesh tape to be compounded later on. Once the compound dried the first time, we had to go over the screws again two more times with the flat knives. This took the rest of the day. Luckily we weren't around to sand them down, apparently that would have been a really big pain... This was probably the messiest of days since that compound gets all over the place. Once it's on you, it dries and hardens and crusts up. Showering or swimming at the YMCA with compound on our arms was probably not a good idea but oh well.
For lunch we didn't pack anything, we were treated to a barbecue in the back of the house. We cooked burgers and hot dogs and Betty was nice enough to go get some macaroni salad, coleslaw, and Subway sandwiches for those who were observing dietary restrictions for Good Friday. Here's a photo of Dennis and Susan at the barbecue on the deck in the back of the house.
For dinner, we decided on looking for a nice place to gather and eat as a group. Looking for a place to dine in this part of Virginia was a challenge. I used the GPS to look for restaurants to dine and found a few that were 15-20 miles away.
The first 3 places didn't exist when we got there (out of business or closed down). The last place was an Italian restaurant called, "Little Italy." We entered with our Bx style by created a friendly ruckus in our party room (isolated from the main dining area). When neighboring parties sang happy birthday, we sang too. No worries, we left without incident, and Vivian managed to get the waitress's number (redemption from his shameful rejection on the VA beach boardwalk)...
Today was probably the most reflective day of all. We had accumulated more than 16 gigabytes of photos and video and having Ellis constantly pull out random activities out of a hat really took a toll on us. He made little booklets for us to sign and write messages to each other about this week as tokens of our experiences.
It started to sink in that we were going home after tonight, especially after the slide show and final beach trip.
Once we returned from our last evening at the beach, we packed our things and the kids stayed up late while Ellis, Sydney, and I went to sleep for the long drive home the next day. It's safe to say that none of us really wanted to go home...
Aftermath
The ride home was difficult. Staying awake while driving for 6-7 hours was a struggle, but a coffee break and the radio was enough to keep me up for the long haul home. It didn't help having a car full of sleeping students, especially when one is nodding off in the passenger seat next to you.
After driving nearly 1200 miles with another mile to go before dropping off the rental van. Mr. Ellis, in a curious twist of fate was struck by a truck that crushed one of the side-view mirrors on the van... Luckily, nobody was in the van and repairs cost a minimal $40... Nothing a band-aid can't fix...
There is talk of students interested in a return trip to Cape Charles, VA. Perhaps a Habitat reunion trip will be planned for later in the year, however, raising the money to go back down there may be a challenge.
