Mississippi Gulf Coast

Thursday we headed out to Camp Victor in the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We went to work on a house with Habitat for Humanity in Pascagoula. It rained for most of the morning yesterday and the whole afternoon today, so we didn't get as much done as planned, but we pushed through and still got some quality work in!  Most of my team stood on scaffolding and put up siding on the house that was about 20 feet in the air, on huge cement stilts, so that if another Katrina-like hurricane comes through it won't get destroyed, but the water will just go underneath it. Its pretty cool how their houses are on stilts, but also really crazy and sad that they have to do that! Since I am a big chicken, I opted to destroy one of the inside bedrooms with a sledge-hammer! Haha, I had to crawl into a closet that was on top of a dresser with the doors still on it, so it was super claustrophobic, and I had to try to bust the ceiling out...it was very hot in there and difficult to hold my weak little arms up so long with a sledge-hammer! But I got about half of it done, was a sweaty mess, and then let my teammate Eric take over and finish it off. After taking the ceilings out, we moved on to sweeping out the room and pulling up the carpet and carpet pad...that was tough too...but I felt so hardcore it was awesome! Then today I worked with Dianca to take out old screws and put new ones in on the staircase in the back of the house. That sounds easy, but it was not...the screw-guns wouldn't work so we had to actually do it by hand (screwdriver and hammer) which was difficult, but we did it! And it was better than the other option of climbing all over the scaffolding like the rest of my adventurous team!
Our on-site Habitat for Humanity supervisor was really cool, a young guy (in his late 20s I would guess) who loves photography and he gave us all his card to check out his website and I fell in love with his pictures...so here is the website if you wanna check them out! www.jkmortonphoto.com

Tonight we are all going out for my team leader's 24th birthday, woo! It's exciting to finally get dressed up and go out to dinner with the team and hang out without having to hammer something while wearing our ridiculously awesome battle dress uniforms :-p 

Another group of AmeriCorpers got to be on the Anderson Cooper 360 show the other night, which we all watched and got really excited, but also really jealous to see our fellow friends and AmeriCorpers on TV! But thats okay, cause tomorrow the groups who didn't get to do that are going to a governor's lunch for volunteer appreciation on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. 

Driving around here reminds me soo much of Miami, Florida, it's so crazy. There are so many casinos and the beach and other cool things, it's so hard to believe that this area used to look totally different before the hurricane hit (the casinos used to be on the water, and are obviously not anymore). 

Also, the Camp Victor we are staying at is just like a giant summer camp building, with lots of rooms full of bunk beds and shower rooms, cafeteria, and a common room with about 20 couches, a pool table, ping pong table, and 7 computers (one of which I am currently using). All of the walls are decorated with previous AmeriCorps, church groups, and other volunteer group's artwork who have stayed here in the past. I guess the Roloff family from the TV show Little People, Big World have stayed here before too...there is a picture of them on the bulletin board by the door here, which is neat. 

Anyways, sorry this blog is all over the place, it's tough trying to catch up when I haven't blogged for a couple days!