Up on the “Ruff”

It’s hard to believe that we’re in the last week of our project! The week, for me, started out a little rough, but each day has gotten better. Yesterday was a pretty cool day. Sarah, Ian, Ashley, and I were able to work with Lauren up on the roof (or as Jeremy and I say the “Ruff”) laying the starter strips for the shingles. It was a little frightening to be working so close to the edge of the roof hammering the strips down. My mind was screaming, “this is SOOO not okay,” especially with the wind blowing against us, but I was able to get the strips in without any tumbles. Unfortunately, we were only up there for a short amount of time, since they wanted us to get back onto land and finish up the siding so we didn’t have two unfinished projects going on. Everyone’s spirits were better because the weather was so much nicer than on Tuesday. We were also able to go ice skating with Job Corps last night, which was a lot of fun! I had a blast skating; it seemed to brighten everyone's day a lot.

Today the group worked on finishing the siding on the house, which will hopefully be done in the next couple of days. Sarah, Ian and I started working on the siding in the back of the house. By the end of the day, some of the Job Corps members came over and helped us get the siding up. It was awesome to work with Job Corps in a closer capacity than we have in the past.

Tonight Habitat treated us to dinner and made us spaghetti, which was a lot of fun, and the food was fabulous. We got to meet and talk with some of the people who work in the Habitat office, which was neat since we only work with the people out in the field. We also had a team meeting, where we found out more about our next project. After six hours of training the first week, we’ll all be IRS certified to help qualifying community members with their taxes. It sounds like the project is going to be awesome, with a lot more fieldwork than we originally thought. We’ll also be working with ABCD, a community outreach program, where we’ll be able to lead some projects in the community. Every time we start talking about our next project, I just get more and more excited for it.

~ Jenna