Yo. B)

Yep, I'm back home, and glad to be in lovely air-conditioned rooms! =D My week has been... ah... hectic, to say the least.

Prepare for a long entry today.

~*~

For those of you that didn't know by now, I was gone all of last week on a building project over in Cincinatti.

The group I worked with is called World Changers, off of the NAMB, which has hundreds of teens go around all summer and do week-long construction projects in different parts of the USA.

Now, I know some of you are thinking: Why would I want to spend a whole week working on construction in 105+ weather? Let me tell you, it was WORTH IT.

Alright, here's how my week rolled out.

Saturday (29th) :

Woke up, ate breakfast, then packed all my luggage into my mom's van and drove over to my church around noon. I unloaded all my luggage from the van, put it into a bigger van, submitted in the rest of my medical forms to my youth leader, and piled into said bigger van with about 8 other kids my age or older.

All 16 of us drove in two vans for about 2 hours, arriving at Rockdale Elementary School at 3:30. (Rockdale is where all the World Changer participants stayed during the week - slept in the classrooms, ate in the cafeteria, etc.)

Quickly got up the stairs to my church's girls room, which we shared with another church. (We had 6 girls, they had 7.) Dumpped my luggage, set up my cot, etc., while waiting for supper.

Problem number 1 of the week: We found out, after supper, that there were only 12 showers. For 200 people. And 3 of them wern't working. o_o Needless to say, this problem went on throughout the entire week, thus, endless lines to the showers.

The rest of Saturday was just, like, a welcoming thing. No need to get into it.

Sunday (30th) :

Met with my "crew" for the first time. A crew consists of 8-15 youth, a crew encourager, a crew driver, and a crew chief. Each crew is assigned to one house during the week, which they will work on until Friday or until they get it done, whichever comes first.

My crew had 10 youth, youngest being 14, oldest, 17, from all over the Eastern and Central U.S. We all introduced ourselves, sorted out jobs (I became official BreakMaster), then headed off to our sponser church (which provided our on-site meals during the week.)

After service and a very generous lunch (homemade fried chicken... ^^), our driver brought us over to our worksite. Our main job was to rip apart the porch and columns, rebuid and replace both, and prime and paint both.

Seemed easy enough at the time.

Got back to the school, did some other stuff with the crew, had supper, and went to worship, which was in the gym.

Now, here comes problem number 2 of the week: The air conditioning in the gym didn't work. At all. So we were all dying of heat stroke for about half the week. They finally brought fans in around Tuesday.

Monday (31st) :

We finally got to work today!

Sort of.

Since I was BreakMaster, I had to wake up at 5:45 a.m. to go down and fill our water cooler. I got to do this every morning. (The Assistant BreakMaster hauled it onto our truck.) Got back upstairs, got my tools, had breakfast, and met with my crew to head out to the work site.

We got the whole porch ripped up within an hour.

We never got our lumber to rebuild it.

So, instead, we helped out the other 15 crews with random jobs (picking up brush and tossing it into the dumpster, carrying ladders, cleaning up shingles, stuff like that.) We were all dissapointed that the lumber never came.

Got back, waited for 1 and a half hours for a shower (), then had supper and went to worship.

We still didn't have our gaint fans, so the heat in the gym was still very high, and one of the leaders actually passed out, having to be carried out halfway through the service.

Nothing major really happened this day, actually.

Tuesday (1st) :

Filled the Water Cooler again, had breakfast, went to the work site.

And we still had no lumber.

So, again, for the first 4 hours of our work day, we did more random jobs.

Then comes problem number 3 of the week: One of the crews, about 6 houses down from us, was being kicked off their site. The Health Department of Cincinatti claimed that they were endangering the community. (They were powerwashing a house which had lead paint. The Health Department said that the paint would get into the ground water, endangering the people who drank it.)

Thank goodness, for reasons I cannot discuss on this website, the issue was cleared up, and the crew was put back to work by lunchtime.

And, speaking of lunch, after our meal, we FINALLY got our lumber! So we got some of our porch ready to build before we left.

Got back, waited for a million years to get to the showers, etc.

Wednesday (2nd) :

This day was scary, with problem number 4 of the week.

About halfway into the work day, I heard this really loud scream from across the street.

I find out, about 10 minutes later, that a highschooler fell from 16 feet of scaffolding, hittind another kid and a fence before hitting the ground.

Hs name was Philip.

And he was from my church.

Had a big commotion with the youth from my church as the fire truck pulled up, then our youth pastor (he came up the street at about 80 miles an hour), then the ambulance. The people who had seen him said that his leg was either broken or shattered, no doubt about it.

We got back early from our work sites, only to recieve excellent news: Phil was fine. Perfectly fine. No broken bones, no fractures, no swelling, no cracks, not even a sprain. Just a scrape up the side of his back and a bruise on his ankle. It was just remarkable.

He was discharged from the hospital at 2:00, and, along with his crutches, he came with our youth group on a rest-of-the-day trip to Downtown Cincinatti. We walked from the Reds Stadium across the river to Newport, Kentucky, where about half of us had lunch at Johnny Rockets. Got done with that, met up with our leaders at an AMC, and walked over to the GameWorks (huge arcadey place. It was awesome.) Stayed there 'til about 6, had supper at the grill there, walked over the bridge back to Cincinatti, and got our seats in the Reds' stadium (18th row box seats behind third plate. ^^)

Reds against the Dodgers. Reds lost, 3-5. But it was still fun!

Thursday (3rd) :

This was another scary day.

Around 10 in the morning, my crew chief sent me any the two other gals on my crew to go down the street and get his ladder back from another crew chief.

We agreed and went down the street.

And here came problem number 5 of the week:

We had just found the ladder, when the leaders of that crew rushed us, and everyone else on their crew, down below the house. We wern't allwoed to talk or leave.

After about 10 minutes, they herded us into one of the vans and told us what was happening. One of the crews, about three houses down the block, had gotten serious shooting threats. To ensure the safety of the youth, all crews were evacuated from their work sites.

Everyone was in the cafeteria in about 15 minutes. We wern't allowed to leave the school at all after that.

After playing Yuker for 3 hours, everyone in my church was getting restless. We wanted to go out there and finish up our projects, no matter what came in our way.

We did end up going back, our church and three others out of 20. Each church worked on one house, and we did it as long as we could. We got so much done, it was crazy.

Later that night, we heard that the guy who threatened us had apologized. He thought we were there to hurt the community and steal their stuff, so that's why he threatened us.

Friday (4th) :

Got our house done early! It looked amazing when we finally finished it.

Everything was going pretty well out last day. I was actually first in line for the showers! =D

After I got back up to my room, however, I was immediately pulled out into the hallway by my youth leader, for problem number 6 of the week.

My father and younger brother were in a car crash earlier that day, totalling the car and landing both of them in the hospital.

That news really made me want to go home faster. Shared the news with my youth group and crew before worship.

Halfway through worship, my youth leader pulled me out into the hallway again, to answer a phone call from my mom. My dad and brother were alright, just a lot of bruises and cuts (which they still have right now.) I was thrilled to see them when I got back home, even though it was 1:00 in the morning.

Saturday, I slept.

Sunday, I worked at church, and then slept some more.

Monday, I actually unpacked all my stuff.

Yesterday, I WAS gonna come and post all this, but my family went to the State Fair for the whole day, so I never got on the computer.

And today has been perfectly normal. And I have air conditioning. ^^

~*~

Art news:

Like, ZOMG, it's Jaller!

I've got some new stuff up in my art topic, as well as a new topic in the Art Forum. ^^ The Inika are fianlly becoming easy for me to draw.

I'll also be updating my website later this week, along with a new piece of art for my 2nd year thing!

~Nikira