The sun does shine here after all

Week 2 at Habitat was much better than week 1. We had a much better sense of what we were doing, and they seemed to have a better idea of what to do with us, so we were better utilized. One of the houses is scheduled to be completed this coming week, so most of the team spent the entire week at that site. It was great because it's a walkable distance, and we can come back to the house for lunch, and it's a much more relaxed environment as well.
This week I:

-built a retaining wall with some guys who work for Adidas
-built a deck on a front porch
-more and more flooring
-trim in bathrooms and closets
-drove to home depot twice to pick up 1800 pounds of cement blocks
and on saturday, the sun was out and there wasn't a cloud in the sky all day! it was amazing. i was happy all day.



and then yesterday, on my day off, i went with some of my teammates to do an ISP (independent service project) in the northwest part of oregon that had been hit hard by the flooding last weekend. We spent the whole day ripping out wet insulation from underneath houses in one neighborhood. between my team and the other portland team, about 20 of us went, and we got 3 houses done.
It was hard, dirty work. It took me a while to convince myself i could do it, but once i was under there, i just worked hard on focusing on the work at hand. I only got scared a couple times. (i'm claustrophobic, and ordinarily, that kind of work would be very hard for me. but knowing how much it was needed pushed me to keep doing it.) More than the work itself, what hit me hardest was the people from neighboring houses who came by and said "how can we get help doing this to our house? how would we even do it if we had to do it ourselves?" there's definitely something striking about knowing how immediately necessary the work you're doing is.

<--the allstar crew i worked with























And in other exciting news, i got to talk to Kristin last night. It was a short conversation, but i've missed her terribly, it's been hard not talking to her. so speaking again was wonderful. we're going to have a lot to catch up when we go home for the holidays.