Hi! SO, I'm about half way through my second Americorps project!
It was a three day road trip to Harligen Texas where we are staying, which is roughly 40 minutes from the office that all of our work is based out of. We are working with Faith Communities for Disaster Relief. Basically My team is split into a group of four and a group of six and we rotate every week. The group of four is involved with case work. Going out and completing case files for people who have suffered from damage caused by either hurricane Dolly or Alex. The people we work with don't have the ability to fix the damages the hurricanes caused. The other six people are the construction crew. After all of the paper work is filled out and there are enough donations we go out and do the best we can to make repairs.
Anyway... we started our round with a huge 42" Pizza during spike travel. It was delicious. =D
This is the house we are staying in in Harligen. It is pretty awesome that we have palm trees in our front yard. Its too bad they dont grow in New York, but I hear that the attract roaches so maybe its not so bad....
The house has three bed rooms, they aren't big so me and three other girls took over the "dinning" room. (My cot is the one with the army blanket.) The cots are actually very comfortable which surprised me! Unfortunately they really aren't made to hold more then one person. Haley's cot (the blue and black one) broke when Eli, Haley, and George "dog piled" on her cot. Haha
So since our teams were split I was lucky enough to start out on the construction team. Our first job was to help paint the insides of a brand new house!
=D
The second house we worked on belonged to a family who's original home had burned down. They bought a trailer that wasn't the greatest to begin with and it sustained damage when the hurricane came through. 6 people living in that trailer, one child in a wheel chair, holes in the floors and mold on the ceiling.
They decided that the trailer couldn't be repaired so for the first time they decided they had the funds to build the family a new home. So we spent the day clearing their front yard to build the new home.
And of course since my whole team consists of pyros we burned all of the grapefruit trees we cut down.
A church group from Austin Texas came down to volunteer and built the main parts of the house: the foundation, and all of the frame work.
They even did the roof.
Our team did the siding! And helped finish the roof!
The other house we worked on had to be re dry walled.
Working Hard!
They had 4 really adorable puppies! Unfortunately though there was one day when we were there that one of the puppies got hit by a car and then the owner accidentally ran over another with his car. =( It was really sad, but the other two are still around! =)
Our sponsor likes to play pranks. He covered me and Haley in glitter and blue and orange hair spray. We got him back with the joint compound...
And then it was my turn to be on the case management team. Other then Petting everyone's cats we have completed a lot of files.
Most of the homes that we visit are in colonias really close to the border. So, sometimes we get to drive along the fence line between here and Mexico. Mexico doesn't start right on the other side of the fence. That's still the USA, you have to drive a bit further to actually be in Mexico.
There are some spots though where the fence is pretty much pointless.
We have gotten a lot of out independent service hours done! We went to South Padre Island and volunteered with a Sea Turtle Rescue!! They had us walking the beach and picking up trash.
You don't actually notice how much trash is on the beach until you have to pick it up.
In just a few short hours the 10 of us filled up 17 trash bags with the trash we found on the beach.
We got to see some of the sea turtles that were rescued. Most of the sea turtles are there due to injury.
After that one of the workers talked to us about the turtles that nest on the beaches of south padre and the work that they do. The turtle painting that George is laying on is actual size. It is a Leatherback Turtle which is the largest sea turtle.
We spent the rest of the day enjoying the beach!
We also volunteered at a food bank.
We passes out water to runners at a 5/10K run.
We also volunteered at the Citrus festival!
We were able to visit with Border Patrol in McAllen Texas.
They showed us all of their stuff. And explained a bit about the process of deporting people back to their countries. They also mentioned that the vast majority of the people who come into our country illegally are just doing it with the hope that they can improve their lives and the lives of their families. Only a very small percentage are actually here due to drugs etc.
The guy all the way to the left gave us the tour.
Plus we got to go set up a table at a college to talk about our program!!
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(We finished it!)
