New Friends and Goodbyes

On Thursday, Allison and I were able to go out with a team to their work site to work alongside them for the day. We ended up working at Miss Ruby Greene's house with part of the team from Columbus, Ohio. The house is a duplex, so Miss Ruby is going to live on one side while her brother is going to live on the other. I worked with Allison and two guys from the team, Kyle and Josh, to put up the last little bit of drywall. We ended up having to take down 2 of the 3 pieces we put up so that we could fix them, but it looked great by the time we were finally done!
One of the things teams are encouraged to do is to talk to people walking by and not just focus on physical labor. There is an elementary school just up the street from Miss Ruby's house that the team had discovered and visited the previous day, so we went there for about 2 hours to play with the kids during their recess.
Every Thursday, we have a block party near teams' worksites. We give out free hot dogs and drinks and invite people to come throughout the week.The party went from 5:30 to 7:30 and was held on a median not too far from our work site. A lot of people came, and we gave a ton of piggy back rides to kids before the party was over. We got back to Trinity Church at about 8:00, but there was a memorial service going on so we headed to Walmart and hung out at the McDonalds there until a little after 9.

Yesterday, I had breakfast at church so that I could sit in on the team debriefings held at 7:00AM. Afterwards, we said goodbye to all the teams, and I cleaned the warehouse for the rest of the morning. I didn't do too much in the afternoon, but I made myself a stuffed bell pepper for dinner which was DELICIOUS and went on a run. I plan on joining a gym when I get back from Costa Rica because it is so hot here!

Today we went to Fountainbleu State Park which is about 15 minutes away. The park costs a dollar for entry, but it is gorgeous and they made a beach off Lake Ponchatrain. The water was really warm, and shallow because of multiple sandbars. I am sunburned on my shoulders and back, but we had a lot of fun and it felt great in today's 95 degree weather!