Spring Break, etc.
March 19, 2008
If I don’t do this now, I never will–I already don’t feel like recounting the week, so I’ll summarize:
We went to Gulfport, Mississippi to work on reconstructing local houses in disrepair from Hurricane Katrina (or occasionally because they were too old to do it)…
Stayed in corrugated cardboard tents called “pods” which we actually got used to really fast.. At least showers were separated (within one huge pod)…
Teams were chosen for different projects you were skilled or interested in, and broke off kind of on their own schedules to work each day. But breakfast for everyone was at 7 AM, and dinner was usually around 6 PM or so…
Various groups volunteered to prepare each of our meals for every day we were there besides the first night and our “dine out” night–supposed to support local economy, but just plain good…
Camp fires every night for those willing to stay up late & plenty of board games to go around for the evenings…
Simultaneous best & worst story my team heard: An old lady whose aging shed we painted told us that not only did her son die before the hurricane, but his body was inexplicably transported from their local funeral home to one on the beach just before Katrina hit. Of course, his body was washed away with everything else, so she doesn’t know where he is now and never had a chance to bury him. Not to mention her four daughters, each living somewhere within the state, rarely ever visit or call her. How ungrateful can you be?? So we’ve decided to “adopt” her: send her the picture we all took together (when she nearly cried because we were leaving), a few letters, and have someone check up on her in the area.
My team mostly did demolition and painting, by the way.
I think everyone that went really liked it, if not for the work then because of the people we met and the stories we heard. No matter what campus they were from, I didn’t hear one person say they didn’t plan to come back again next year–not even the ones going up to Main next year. (Not to mention, the weather in Mississippi is about a hundred times better than most of PA right about now. It definitely involved a lot of nice t-shirt/shorts weather.)
I’ll link to pictures if I ever get around to developing mine/tracking down the others’.
