First Day at Habitat for Humanity

Our exploration of Ocean Springs ended today when we started our first day at our Habitat for Humanity site. Our site is located in Biloxi, Mississippi, which is about a 15 minute drive from where we are staying now. It's right in the middle of casinos and clubs, which was refreshing after being in Ocean Springs, a smaller town. I suppose I should mention every morning we have devotional before breakfast. Yeah, that means a prayer. Today one of the fellow workers read a part of the scripture, after which he asked us to meet someone new and offer to pray for them. Lucky for me, I met a fellow named Eric and he offered to pray for me. Sweet! Someone is praying for me. After breakfast we had to make our own sack lunch. Awesome. I made myself a sweet cheese sandwich complete with mayo and mustard. I'm happy though, they had tons of fresh fruit so I could get my health on. When we reached the site it was slightly intimidating because we could tell a lot of work was already done yet there was so much left to do. We are working on three houses all together. One of the houses is still in the beginning stages while the other two are complete in terms of the framework. We're putting the finishing touches on those two houses and then we're going to do the internal components and put up the walls etc. Lucky for us we got another devotional before the building work began. It is kind of interesting how religious this area is. I'm not sure if it's the area or the people or what but it seems that the work being done here has a certain Holy air. Our groups were divided and put to work right away. Cristina, Stephanie, Shelly, and I were put to work nailing wood to specific parts of the wall. It's hard to describe exactly what we were doing because there was such technical labeling of the parts used. Our group climbed up scaffolding, yes, we climbed up scaffolding to the porch in order to do our work. I was impressed at how easily I was able to overcome my fear of heights. Obviously I felt the initial twinge of fear and it definitely stayed with me for a good portion of the time I was working. I was, however, able to climb up and down the scaffolding by the end of the work day without any hesitation. Our work day was cut short, very short. By noon we were sent home due to impending weather conditions. I was really upset by this, I was hoping to get more hands on work done. Most of the day I was really just holding ladders for Cristina or Shelly while they were hammering in the nails. Initially I climbed a ladder and started to do real work but my fear of heights got the best of me and I let it pretty much take over. I promise myself that tomorrow I am going to do real work, hammer in some nails and climb some more scaffolding. I don't want to go home knowing I didn't put as much into this project as I could have. I really do believe I am doing something worth doing. I really felt the comradeship at the building site. Even though I'm sure some of the people thought I was an idiot or some kind of princess who didn't really want to work, I felt like I made some kind of a different. I mean, I did help a little by making sure Cristina's ladder was safe and I also helped clean up. Ok, in retrospect it looks like I really didn't do that much at all. I guess that's where the rest of the week comes into play. I've been exposed to what I'm going to do. The trick is not to let the fear get you. That's what I did the first day and it pretty much killed me. Fear is that handicap, it won't let you do anything you want to do. You watch everything happen with this sense of restraint, that you can't do anything because you're too scared. I can't let myself feel like that again. It's not fair to me nor is it fair to any of the other workers at the site. Even though I may not be doing exactly what I would've liked to do or I didn't get a service trip I would've liked to get, I still think I made a good decision in committing to go. I've gotten to know some pretty awesome people and I hope to say I've gained some good friends along the way. We did a reflection when we returned from our day of work. Today's reflection involved everyone telling their first impressions or current impressions about one another. We wrote our names on a piece of paper and passed it around. These are the first impressions I gave off to my group:
-Down to Earth
-I thought that you are the first Indian person I interacted with, you changed my views of Indians
-Hopefully you don't take this the wrong way but SARCASTIC at every comment which makes you EXTREMELY funny. Very cool to be around
-Word! Funny and laid back
-Opinionated yet extremely easy going personality...you adapt easily. Great advisor.
-Strong personality
-Straight forward, doesn't care what people think, paranoid, cool

I get the paranoid thing since I lock up my computer in my suitcase whenever we're not in the campsite. Thanks Shelly!

Tonight we're going out to dinner, hopefully something good. There was talk of a local BBQ joint, which would be cool. It'll be nice to get out of the camp area and eat out, even if it is BBQ. Hopefully the locals have something for vegetarians. I did spot a Mellow Mushroom on the way back from the work site, maybe I can convince my group to pass on the BBQ for tonight and make a trip to the shroom??? We'll see though. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but quiet time starts at 10pm. Yeah, that means at 10pm the lights go off and we are quiet. That's not necessarily a curfew, but we have to be quiet for those people that are sleeping. Sadly, a lot of people go to sleep at 10pm. Yes, I was one of them. Oh well. I guess I'm going to fit in quite nicely around here.