Reflection: First Day

So far the trip has been a lot of fun. We had a good time yesterday on the ride down playing card games, listening to music and getting to know each other. When we got here, we got all of our groceries and unpacked our stuff. The cabin is comfortable and reminds Marc Torchio of a birdhouse. We ended the night on a good note, by talking about our goals for the week and then playing games like Manhunt outside until it was time to go to sleep.

Today was our first day actually working on the site. It was an interesting experience, since most of the building days that I have been on were with new houses that Habitat started building. The connected townhouses that we're working on were damaged by a fire, but a county law states that Habitat can only help rebuild the old houses, as opposed to demolishing the old houses and building new ones. So a lot of the work that we did today focused on getting rid of parts that were too damaged to be useful and replacing them with new parts. We ripped out old plumbing, knocked out fire-burned walls with sledge-hammers and put shingles on the roof. Overall, it was a great start and I'm sure we'll have accomplished a lot by the end of the week. I can't wait to continue building.

--Jeff