Photos!

Hola!

Here's the Picasa Album that I have all the pictures from the trip in. Enjoy!

Picasa photo album

~Official Historian C.C.MMX

Habitat for Humanity Veterans?

Hello y'all!

Today at our bbq lunch one of the habitat people said we looked like Habitat for Humanity veterans. You'll hopefully see what he meant throughout my next little blog entry. I'm going to try a new layout tonight, since I continue to have problems with pictures aligning correctly u.s.w. I'll just stick every picture in the middle of the page. Forget aesthetics, we're going for functionality here.


I woke myself up at 6:58 am with a big ol' snore. It was actually kind of frightening! I don't normally snore... and this was so loud and swine-like that it woke me from unconsciousness directly into a state of panic. Wowsers! Anywho, the whole group had to be up at 7:00, so we could eat, write our journal entries and leave by 8:00. We left Pilgrims Lutheran Church on time, which is pretty good for college students on Spring friggin' Break! : )


In this picture you can see our three main Habitat Correspondents. Kara on the left with the neon yellow hoodie, Bill with the skill saw and Tom hiding in the back on the right. Unfortunately for us, this is literally the only sun we saw all day. It rained a bit and even snowed some when we first showed up.

Brian C's words "Kara is the strongest woman I've ever met" pretty much sums this girl up. She is tough as nails and jumps from one dangerous place to another like a mountain goat. Bill is a nice older man who really knows how to teach people. He let's you get your hands dirty in tasks and offers little bits of wisdom here and there. I'm not sure about Tom. He a bit distant, but extremely dedicated to his work.


Here is Kara standing above us. She seriously stood up there during wind and rain and stayed for a long time.

Katie, Charlie and myself worked together at the beginning adding the sub-fascia to the back of the duplex we were constructing. Oh? I didn't mention that we are working on constructing a duplex and adding the interior to three two-story buildings. The houses are being built for 5 families or individuals. There is a elder couple from Vietnam, a single woman, a family with two kids and two other families that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Tomorrow we will probably be working a bit more in doors, doing interior on the two story houses. Bill mentioned that there was some counter top to be installed and Lindie, Syinthia and Maryanne have already been installing flooring.

Back to Charlie, Katie and myself. We cut a number of 2x4s for our job and had to move and stand on scaffolding in order to nail this thing in place. Scaffolding is heavy so we gathered a group of usually six people to help us move the thing. Here in Exhibit 1 and 2 we have a Charlie carrying a large piece of wood and a Katie and a Charlie working together to nail the sucker to the house..



Does anyone else think that in this last picture Charlie and Katie look a bit like giants?? It definitely does to me.. haha.

Well, just in case there is anyone out there interested in seeing pictures of the other group members and not just Katie, Charlie and I (I can't fathom why you would), just prepare yourselves for exhibits 3 through 6.

Exhibit 3


Here we have a Brian C and a Jennifer creature. The Jennifer is more than prepared to protect her territory from the cameraman. In fact, we regret to inform that this cameraman ventured too close to the Jennifer and never returned from the shoot. The Brian creature, a much shyer creature, lurks in the shadows. The camouflage on the Brian is impeccable, however, the orange pouch compromises any attempts to hide from humans. As humans we can see this wavelength of light, but Brians natural predator, the hurricane clamp, cannot see this color. The pouch serves as a status identifier and mating ritual. You see reader, the Brian with the best pouch wins all the mates.

Exhibit 4


Ah readers, here is a fun story in our kingdom of creatures.. Before us is an Emily in the construction phase of a shelter (which usually occurs in spring). The Emily gathers wood and like humans, uses tools (much more primitive, of course ha ha) to ease the labor of hard work. Not all creatures are capable of constructing shelters, but some (like the Emily) have the resources and energy to do so. The most remarkable part of the story of the Emily creature is that the Emily always passes the shelter to another creature of the kingdom. Perhaps a Brian or a Jennifer or some other creature will receive this well constructed shelter from the Emily. What a nice creature Emily is!

Exhibit 5


AH READER!! THIS is a rare sighting indeed! A wild Kyle has appeared briefly above the canopy. It makes a threatening gesture to scare away predators. The Kyle is not a creature that should be tinkered with! The cameraman was quick to capture this image as the Kyle moves with a severe swiftness not present among other creatures in the kingdom of creatures. Remember: yellow on black, you're okay jack.. but a wild Kyle and you'll be dead before awhile.

Exhibit 6


Here is another famed builder of the creature kingdom. The Eric can easily be spotted due to its exposed forearms and extra poofy blue mid-section. The Eric in this picture is preparing to rip this large chunk of wood in half. A strong creature, the Eric is (and a smart one). The exposed forearms help in this scenario to protect the Eric from the dangers of its sharpened wood cutting tool. The Eric will rip boards in half for other creatures if they ask politely enough. If a creature gets too demanding with the Eric... well, let's just say other creatures know better.


We got a lot of work done today. The permanent crew even expressed their appreciation for our attitudes and hard work. As I said at the beginning, they rewarded us with a bbq for lunch and I believe we will be eating bbq for the rest of the week, courtesy of Habitat for Humanity Spokane.


We went to dinner at David's (like the statue) pizza on the campus of Gonzaga. We thought we would be eating in the cafeteria of Gonzaga, but they were closed. Sure maybe they got one on us, but they lost to St. Mary's tonight, so they can have their cafeteria food and cry over it. Go St. Mary's!!

I will be adding all of the photos that I've been taking this week to a Google Picasa photo album. They should be accessible to anyone who wants to view them, but I'll let you know more once the pictures are up. You better now quit reading the blog and only look at the pictures. What do pictures tell you?? You miss all the creatures stories that are soo worth your time. Haha

Words of wisdom from a car I saw today -- "give blood, play rugby"


~Official Historian C.C.MMX

Morgen Comrades!

[Warning -- The alignment and sizing on this page is all screwed uP! I promised I tried to fix it, but it is being obnoxious!]

Today has been both long and short. The best way to explain, I'd have to say, is that explaining today can take either very few sentences or it can get pretty complex. Simply put, we all got in a car at 9:00 and five hours later arrived at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Spokane. We did a scavenger hunt in the nearby neighborhood, ate dinner went to mass and then bed.

Of course, that's just the macro picture we're talking about. I can only speak for myself, but I feel like I've done a lot in that fairly basic day.

As I said, our day officially started at 8:30 am, which is when we were to meet at the Moreau Center. I was busy watching Shutter Island instead of packing last night, so I woke up at 7:00 to get the job done. (I'm typing this in Spokane now, which means I didn't forget anything essential for this job) We ate, packed up and left. It was pretty simple.

Our armada consisted of two beastly Physical Plant vans and Jennifer's car. I was one of the lucky few to have the privledge of riding in her car. The vans lacked any and all electronic equipment. The cigarette lighter was jammed in and there was no tape player. Therefor all of modern humanity's hard work toward the Ipod was rendered useless and the poor people in van # 2 suffered beyond comprehension. On the other hand, I subjected my car to the wonders (or evils) of my Ipod. I played a lot of Jeff Bridge's music from Crazy Heart (which won best musical soundtrack!!) and a bunch of country, Disney, 90s, etc.. I'm not sure who suffered more. Haha You can see the two tanks here in the picture. Charlie is driving the blue one and Emily is bringing up the rear in the white one.

Five hours and one (!!!) pit-stop later we were in Spokane. Talk about a dedicated crew! I literally held back three bottles of Treetop juice an hour past all that is natural (two questions. Does that make sense and will that cause damage??). We passed through the always beautiful Gorge and the wind farms that are now becoming almost a symbol of "going green." I snapped a couple pictures and they turned out better than I thought they would.

Our first task once we got to Spokane was to explore the surrounding neighborhood for an hour and a half, while the dinner group cooked us food. What began as somewhat of a competition turned into mostly a walk around and have fun couple hours. We were supposed to do a number of thing including: find a menu for a restaurant, find some Gonzaga paraphernalia, do a good deed, find some random stuff, etc.

My group (Katie, Brian S, Leslie & Myself) found a fire hydrant painted the colors of either the Zags or WSU. We then picked between two directions in the road and ran off trying to find a restaurant. One of the groups beat us to Papa Murphys, so we went next door to Pete's Pizza and got a picture with a nice man named Calvin. He told us where the local Habitat for Humanity offices are and we left happy to find our good deed.

We saw a plastic bag up in a tree and threw a few rocks at it before we realized the possibility of hitting an oncoming car. We left the bag in the tree, but we also left inspired. At that moment we became team I spy trash. (no, that is not lame) We needed to find a bag and our bag search led us down streets, to a school and eventually onto a trail and into the woods.

We completely stumbled upon the fact that we were living next to a very scenic valley here in Spokane. Down below there is a large river and a bridge crossing it. The sun was also setting and the air was warm. It was very nice indeed. We had found a bag by then and we were collecting trash along the way.

We had one of those big black garbage bags and by the end of our trip it was filled with all kinds of goodies. We even found a smashed DVD player to go with all the newspapers, cans and cardboard. Toward the end of our trash gathering journey, we stumbled upon the "shelter" of a homeless person. It was almost inspiring to be reminded in this way of the reason we are here this week. We cleaned up around the site and left some money (we found the money nearby) on the blankets. Brian was the courageous one to climb under the brush to reach the sleeping location.

We found out today that we will be eating a number of meals at Gonzaga University this week. On one hand that means free food, but on the other it means eating in our rival's cafeteria!! Yuck, Ha... it's probably good though. I'll let you know tomorrow.

I'm literally up past our bedtime which is set at 11:00. We have to be up tomorrow at 7:00 am and at the work site by 8:30. So, thus it begins the last day my back won't be sore. A revoir!

~Official Historian C.C.MMX

Preparations

Bonjour Amis!

Thanks for joining us again on our voyage! Technically we haven't gone anywhere yet, in fact, I'm typing this from the laundromat in St. John's, but our travels are not the point of this post!

As I said in the first post, we've been preparing for our Spring time service with Habitat for Humanity for probably six weeks now. I'd now like to tell you a bit about that. There were essentially two really important things to get done before leaving. First and foremost, we needed to pay for this extravaganza. Second we needed to start wrapping our minds around housing issues, so that our service would not be limited to physical work, but also include some critical thinking.


[Warning, math ahead!]


Raising the $

Our trip was estimated to cost $4900. ASUP (our student government) contributed $1000, The Moreau Center $1000, each of us $100 ($100 x 15) = $1500, which left us to finance $1400. One standard procedure for raising money is our letter writing campaign. I don't know the figures on how much we raised there, but I know the expected amount is $1000.

I can get back re the effect of our letter campaign later, but for now, we'll call it $1000. That left us with $400 to get creative with and that we did.

[End of Mathematics]

Fund Raising

We brainstormed some ideas for raising money. Virtually everything from a paper airplane contest to a photo booth service at junior parents weekend crossed our minds. We ended up reverse duct taping Brian S and letting him run through the crowd at a University of Portland basketball game. This picture is a fairly accurate representation of what we did to Brian, but unfortunately I cannot locate any of our photos.

The idea is that people stick paper money on the duct taped person as they run through the stands. Apparently last year someone stuck a $20 bill on this so called sticky person, but this year between Brian and two other guys, we probably collected something like $40.

We also sent representatives of 2010 C.C. to a Moreau Center coffee house event, where we served free coffee and lattes with members of the other service learning trips and accepted donations. The Moreau Center hosted a brunch to raise awareness in the community about the service learning trips that it hosts and each of us contacted friends about attending. It was the first year the Moreau Center has held this event and hopefully not the last. Rachel Prusynski spoke about her experiences in Haiti and how the Moreau Center has impacted her life.

Housing issue awareness

The group met up a few Fridays in a row before our trip and during two of these meetings we engaged our brains in some deep thought. The first Friday was a panel discussion with Habitat for Humanity: Portland, The Fair Housing Council of Oregon and Rebuilding Together Portland. The three organizations together painted a decent picture of the diversity of organizations out there dedicated to helping others with housing related issues.

Rebuilding Together is an organization that goes out only a few times a year to remodel houses in need of repair. They aggregate a whole bunch of projects and then usually in Spring send a large number of people out to work. People apply to have work done on their houses and Building Together gathers supplies from many of its corporate sponsors (like Home Depot) and does the work through volunteers. It is fairly easy to get involved and you should try it sometime! here is the link: (http://www.rebuildingtogetherportland.org/contacts/new)

The Fair Housing Council of Oregon is an organization that doesn't receive as much press as maybe they ought to, given the amount and importance of their work. They send out undercover home buying agents to make sure landlords and home sellers are not discriminating against peeps. They offered for us to come help them do some undercover work, but their website currently says they are not hiring. Here is a link to the bus tours they give on the history of discrimination in Portland (http://fhco.org/tours.htm) if you're interested.

We also met another Friday night and while we ate pizza (since it was dinner time) we also watched an episode of 30 days. (http://www.imdb .com/title/tt0502498/). This particular episode is the first episode of the show and the topic is living on minimum wage. For those who don't know (I certainly didn't) the actor is Morgan Spurlock (which probably still means nothing)... He's the guy from Supersize Me and each episode of 30 days is essentially a new Supersize Me with a different topic. Here is the link to Hulu, where you can watch (all?) eighteen episodes! (http://www.hulu.com search?query=30+Days&st=1) The first episode is a bit unbelievable and silly at points, but for the most part it is probably accurate and definitely interesting.

We shall see what Spokane has in store for us. It is a five hour drive from Portland, we leave at 8:30 am and my Ipod is only half charged!!

~Official Historian C.C.MMX

C.C.MMX

Dear Interweb,

I'm sitting in my housemate's La-Z-Boy after watching Planet Earth, the Pittsburgh Penguins vs New York somebodys (I'm not much of a hockey fan, until more recently), Wheel-of-Fortune, Parks & Recreation, The Office and The Marriage Ref. I also swept the kitchen, wiped down the counters and finally did the dishes that I'd left unclean in the sink for at least a week and a half. It is my duty as a house member to pull my own weight and I do so in binges..

It was just soo nice today in Portland, that I could hardly get anything done. I threw on my sunglasses, shot some hoops (mostly missed) and watched the day pass right by through the window from the seat where I currently reside. I thought to myself: "It's Blog Time!" and thus here I am typing about doing dishes and watching The Marriage Ref. You might think I was tweeting or something... Let's get serious though.

I have other responsibilities too, as you might imagine; school, for example... and there are probably others... Anyways, lucky for you (or unlucky), I am also writing the blog for this year's Collegiate Challenge! Do you have any idea what that is? Odds are, the average person reading knows what we are up to, but just in case! (https://pilots.up.edu/web/servelearn/home) …Not that the website tells you much about us... You'll get a much better understanding by reading this blog throughout the week. If this blog post was an episode of LOST, I'd probably stop right here and leave you hanging, but I'm nicer than that, so I'll pawn up a little more.

Spring Break 2010 is less than a day away. My friends have been talking for the past 2-3 weeks about their plans in some far off exotic land like Cancun, LA, Vegas (go pilots bbx!), Disneyland, etc. Where we're headed is a bit colder. We'll be in Eastern Washington this Spring Break in the lovely city of Spokane. This place is as dry as a desert in Summer and cold as a tundra in Winter. The National Weather Service is already calling for a possibility of snow on Monday night, Tuesday and Wednesday. Now that's a bit far in the future to forecast though, so we'll see what actually happens.

There are a total of 14 people participating in the plunge this year and on Saturday all 14 of us will be likely hopping in a few vans and riding off, marking the beginning of our weeklong adventure. It’s hard to say what exactly is in store for us, but I expect it to be both a lot of fun and highly interesting. We’ll be working with Habitat for Humanity Spokane. That’s one sure thing at least. Our weathered leader Lindie participated in the Collegiate Challenge last year, so we expect to be heading into this not completely unawares. Here's a picture of her building a freaking house! Awesome note to end on.

..I’ll blog tomorrow about how we have prepared for our Collegiate Challenge throughout the first half of this semester.

~ Official Historian: C.C.MMX