Today was my second day at Habitat – the Redwood City homes are almost done and they’ve been assigned to families! Well, they already had families a while back, but they hadn’t assigned which family was getting which home until recently. They needed to find families earlier since every habitat family is required to help build for 500 hours. Since it’s a community of townhomes, the families have had a chance to meet each other and build with each other – I can’t think of many better ways to get to know your new neighbors. So what did I do today? I caulked. And painted. Caulking was actually rather fun – somewhat relaxing – and I felt a lot sturdier with my feet on the ground (as compared to third floor scaffolding last week). Painting was also pretty fun, although I’m still trying to figure out how I managed to get so much paint on myself. The giant sploch of paint behind my knee was from stepping backwards and hitting the bucket of paint, the nice line on my jeans was from leaning too far, the splatter on my knee was probably from the paintbrush, the paint on my wrists was from… well, you get the idea. At least most of the paint (I think) made it onto the wood and not me!
During our lunch break I got a chance to think about how Habitat is really made up of some amazing people. Lunch is the only time during the day that you’re allowed to be on site without your hard hat (because no one is working – everyone is having lunch). Your hard hat does a lot – not only does it protect your head (very important), it also lets everyone know who you are. Everyone has their name on their hard hat and the hard hats themselves are color coded so that you know if someone is a day volunteer, a regular volunteer, in AmeriCorps or a Habitat employee. Almost everyone is a volunteer of some sort (usually there’s at most one actual employee on site). So these houses really are built mostly by volunteers. And most of these volunteers are either people who have decided to spend a year of their life dedicated to the organization (AmeriCorps) or people who have decided to make a regular commitment of working a full day to help build affordable housing (regular volunteers). So, when I say that Habitat is really made up of amazing people, I’m not talking about the amazing people who have accomplished so much during their lives that you can’t help but say wow when you hear about them – I’m talking about the amazing people who have such great compassion that they make you to do more for others. Even though there’s only one employee on site at a time, everyone who is there – digging irrigation, painting, putting up siding, etc – is a part it.
As for an update on biking… I’m just going to have to say that biking 30+ miles and having a full practice for ultimate is exhausting. But it’s a good kind of exhausting. 🙂 I’m also starting to think that maybe it’s time to look into purchasing a new bike saddle.
Until the next post…
Izzy Bikes and Builds 