March 8, 2005
Today was long, but not so much “make you dirty and sweat” kind of work.
When driving to our next project, Sumeet definitely drove on the wrong side of the road for a few seconds. This time we were working with YouthBuild USA– which is an amazing program that takes low income youth who haven’t finished highschool, gets them ready to get their GED and trains them for future job opportunities. It was a group of about 20 and in the mornings they all meet at their center, have announcements, appreciations, and boosts. They alternate days of work and study. Half of them stay and study and half of them go to the construction site. They’re building homes for low income families.
The weather was not as hot as it was yesterday. 70’s as opposed to the 80’s of yesterday.
So we helped build a house. But it seems we might’ve been more in the way than we were any help. We put up the frames of the house – what was left to put up and removed the wooden mold of the cement base of the neighboring house. The work was a lot harder than I imagined – I mean, just trying to remove a nail from a piece of wood – it took me 20 minutes to get my first one out. Even then I kept having to ask Riley (!!!) and Steve for help.
It was nice to work along side youth our age. They were so willing to work with us.
Joe – now he was a character! He definitely made the atmosphere we worked in a fun one. He gave us all jobs to do, but never left with just telling us what to do – he wanted us to learn it and understand. So he would explain things to us – even things we didn’t need to know for our particular task. He was funny and whitty and made us feel very comfortable.
After some of us finished building a door frame (there were about 5 of us girls and Sumeet) – built the whole frame by scratch) then Dave, Nader, and Jon come along and attach it to the wall and claim it as “their door”. Hah! Men! That’s okay, their masculinity was questioned when it took them a long frustrating hour to get some nails into some pieces of wood, haha). Joe came to us and was like “is this the way you guys work? Or are you trying to piss me off?” haha…he was kidding (I hope!) – but that’s the kind of humor that made it so fun to work with him – plus, his sincerity and genuine interest in seeing us learn.
When we were packing up for the day, he asked one of us (Jenna) how many roles we have in life. There are many: daughter, friend, student, future mother, etc…the point was, that there were many roles and so you can never say that if you do drugs that it only affects you. it affects a lot more than that. Something to think about…
We had “appreciations” at the end of the day and the youth expressed lots of gratitude for us having been there. We thanked them for everything – especially opening up to us and sharing their lives and their big dreams with us. I wish I had gotten to talk to some of the youth during the day.
I found out later that many of them have kids of their own and are trying to raise enough money to leave "B-ville" for a better life.
They presented us with a hard hat, Youth Build hammer, and a certificate – above and beyond our expectations. They didn’t have to do that.
We got back here around 4pm. A bunch of us crashed only to be woken up a couple hours later by Sumeet. It was time to work on “Life maps”. That was fun. Basically the idea was to make a map of things in your life that contribute to making you the person you are today. Then we made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner. Sooo good! Of course, all our dinners will taste exceptionally good to me.
Then we all piled into the vans and went bowling. Let me just say that riding in the van with Sumeet is a “special” experience, haha. He kind of reminds me of me…at least things that I’d likely do (which is probably not such a hopeful prospect for those who have to share the road with me in the future). We went the wrong way on the high way and in about 5 minutes had reached the border of Mexico. There was no where to turn around, so we had to approach the border. Nader freaked out: “we are two middle eastern drives, in 2 white vans, around the border. What are you doin??!!!...we gotta cross the border…don’t be sketch!” Dave: “is the bowling alley in Mexico??”
The guys at the border were cooperative – we were able to back up and were then guided out by security. Another “Sumeet” moment: Sumeet pulled into a parking lot to turn around…except when he got to the exit of the lot, he realized it was a one way road we had pulled off of, haha.
We finally reached the bowling alley after the 3rd try. It was fun.
On our way out, Sumeet drove through a mall lot to cut through to the high way and drove 50 mph over a speed bump (“uh, guys…I think we hit something”)…yeah, haha, it’s the opposite of my 5 mph “sorry guys, I was going too fast” incident back in high school (oh so long ago, right?). Then, Kelly pointed out our exit we were supposed to take and Sumeet swerved “off the exit” into the grass…a little too early before the ramp…Kelly was only pointing out the “exit Boca Chia Blvd. 1 Mile” sign. We all screamed and he swerved back onto the road. We died of laughter, and some were just scared to death.
We made it back in one piece and then had 3 life map presentations. We talked about our highs and lows of the day and then hit the sack.
Good things, good things.
Quotes of the day:
“uh, Sumeet? WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD!!”
Kelly: “I have some throat drops”
Dave: “haha”
Kelly: “What’s funny?”
Dave: “haha, nothing – it’s just that Nader’s been complaining of a sore throat for the past 3 days now.”
“Why aren’t they following us?!” – Sumeet
“Uh, why would they?! You just led them to the border!” – Kelly
“It was fun tonight!”
“yeah, except for the time Sumeet almost killed us”
“you mean the 10 times Sumeet almost killed us?”
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