Oh yeah, I forgot to tell everyone, I'm in my fourth project now!

So it's been over a month. Hopefully not too many of you missed my banter...

We ended Green Light two weeks ago with a bang. I designed the annual report, a two by three foot lovely poster for a tabling display as well as two logos, one for 10,000 people in New Orleans, and Buy Green Give Green. Both are currently being made into t-shirts and Andi (the boss) is going to send them to me asap. Yay! They may also use my skills in the future, so stay tuned.

Now for our last and final project! We are working with St. Bernard Project (www.stbernardproject.org) in St. Bernard Parish, which borders New Orleans. To get downtown is about a 30 minute drive. Not too bad, but it does steer us away from spending way too much money. As for the organization, they do housing reconstruction for people whose houses were destroyed during the hurricane. So we don't build houses, just gut them and redo the insides. The primary candidates for the program are usually disabled individuals, elderly, or families with young children.

Each of my team members have different roles including, site supervisors (leading volunteers), electricians, office assistants, warehouse assistants and me... a PLUMBER. Yup, that's right. I'm working on my butt crack exposure as we speak. Abby, Earl and I (both are on my team) plumb together. Today was our second day and luckily our work is relatively laid back and quite interesting because the heat is pretty unbearable. I seriously have never sweated so much in all 23 years and 358 days in my life. If you didn't catch that, my birthday is next Thursday. Happy birthday to mwah!

Back to plumbing. SO, my boss is Tony, and his assistant is Doug. They are two interesting guys. I'll tell you about them another time. For now, I will give you the highlights of the day:

-donned a yellow, plastic Tyvex body suit and army crawled underneath the house (there is about a 2.5 foot gap between the ground and the floor of the house) and nailed in hot and cold water pipelines across the house.
-learned how to install water lines inside the house.
-watched some sweating and soldering of copper piping.
-climbed into the rafters in the attic and drilled holes through the ceiling with the "hole hog"
-sweated so much I looked as if I jumped into a pool. And I am NOT exaggerating. My entire shirt was a different shade of grey.
-walked to the Dollar General down the street four times to use the bathroom/bask in its glorious air conditioning.

So that's the rundown of the day. I'm essentially a plumbing apprentice. I must go though. It's dinnertime.

I promise I will do more writing.

Anyway, have a wonderful June week!!!!!!

<3 anne

P.S. 50 days until AmeriCorps is done! Not that I'm counting...