PKchecking in for final day

Hi everyone, Well, today was the last day of building, and we'll be off to Pittsburgh tomorrow. I know everyone has said this, but the best part of this trip has been the group we were with. Our site supervisor (who's a former NFL player, by the way) said that we sure had a group of hard workers and that they would sure miss us. We'll miss them and the other members of our team too - wonderful people all. I found myself having to fight back tears as we all said goodbye today.

I think we'll all take away new 'knowledges (lessons doesn't quite seem like the right word) from this trip so I thought I'd begin by sharing mine.

1. Working like this makes thinking about anything else impossible. I think we all brought book work of some sort that we 'thought' we'd work on at night. And we all agreed that we haven't thought a bit about what we normally do. (to my Emerson students -- I brought your midterms with me guys, but you wouldn't have wanted me to grade them in my "after work" condition - trust me on this)

2. As several have mentioned, we had to DEconstruct several walls and other parts of the house before we started building again. Knowing what it takes to do that has made me (even more) in awe of the power of a major hurricane. It's just incomprehensible that houses could be shredded by anything.

3. There are lots of decent, generous people in the world. We've met many of them. The camp itself is a testament to that.

4. Our students have once again made me so proud. Fun, dedicated, thoughtful, smart, fearless (Tiffany today with that router!) -- just wonderful people.

5. The 15 person van (our transportation for this week) is much easier to stop empty than when loaded with all of us and our gear.

6. Tetanus shots, tetanus shots, tetanus shots - nuff said.

7. Waffle House food will probably not kill you.

8. Hard work is much more fun with a lot of people working hard.

9. People who have lived in this area all of their lives love it - and with good reason. I understand completely why they would want to rebuild.

10. Because the house payments that people who live in these habitat houses is used to fund the next one, our work here will live on and on --

and the memories will live forever.
It's been a wonderful adventure.

PK