Corpus Christi—Habitat for Humanity
Day 4
As the week has gone on, the burritos have struggled to climb out of the bunks. With the work day starting at 7:30am, we try to be up and ready by 7:00 so we can depart to our work sites. However, each day the alarms clocks have been progressively going off 10, 15, and even 20 minutes later. Thus leading to scrambling around the church, not eating a full-fledged breakfast, chugging coffee and snacking on granola bars.
Today was “Tiling Day” at our Eleventh street work site and over on Saxet (that’s Texas spelled backwards if ya didn’t know) it was “Strap Day”. We learned how to butter the back of a ceramic tile with mud. The mud is very similar to concrete because once applied it will harden and keep the tile solid with the floor. It was pretty hard to grasp at first, between finding the right technique and not getting it all over yourself. We got recognized by one of the leads at the work site, he felt we were good enough to start our own tiling company. At the Saxet work site, the job was to put metal straps on the rafters of the roof. These straps are specialized to the Corpus Christi area of Texas due to wind storms. Essentially, the straps hold the roof and walls into the foundation. These straps allowed the home to withstand wind gust up to 120 miles per hour. Pretty fascinating!
Care-A-Vanner—Travel around the United States and Canada, helping local Habitat for Humanity affiliates build hundreds of houses annually. RV Care-A-Vanner volunteers participate in projects such as house construction, roofing, interior and finish work, renovations or disaster relief. The Care-A-Vanners are probably some of the greatest people we have ever met. They volunteer on a full or part time basis and help build homes just as we are doing on our trip.
After a long day of tiling and framing at different locations, the squad settled down with our aching hunger to make dinner. We chose breakfast for dinner because, why not? After making eggs, pancakes, and sausage we all settled down in our spots to start my personally favorite part of the day. Since we did have two job sites, dinner gives us an opportunity to reconvene and tell all those hilarious stories that happened throughout the day. Although only hours apart, the stories of our workday seemed endless. And dinner usually ended like a comedy fest, with some wiping the tears from our eyes of laughter and others doubling over gasping for breath as we re-experience a hilarious part of our trip.
Beginning as a motley crew of mere strangers, we soon came to be known as…. The Squad. Capital T and Capital S. After our first day of learning to tile, a Care-A-Vanner named Rick jokingly said “You guys could start your own tiling crew!” Simultaneously all ten members of our “crew” whipped around with a dead serious expression saying “Crew? No. Tiling Squad.” From then on our Mother Hen (Carleigh) just addresses all of us as “squad.” Coming on this trip, we would have felt lucky to have made a new group of friends, but never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined becoming the….. yes you guessed it…. The SQUAD.
-Laura & Steven Signing Out!
(please insert picture with peace signs photo here)
*Strong Peace Signs*
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