Spring Break 2012 Cleveland, OH

So this spring break is like no others that I've taken. 

This year, I took a trip with the Kutztown University Community Outreach Center on an Alternative Spring Break trip. I am currently sitting in The Nehemiah Mission House. It's so nice to be staying in a place that believes :) Their slogan is, "Send me to the city"... what could be more perfect? There are scriptures on the bathroom walls!!  We are building a house for Habitat for Humanity here in Cleveland.

I left on this trip not knowing anyone, and now I've met all kinds of new friends :) There are 11 of us on this trip, fitting in 2 rental vans from enterprise. Our drive was supposed to take about 7 hours, but it took so much longer because we left late, and we stopped only about 100 times. ("Mom I gotta peeee!") We ate a lot of snacks, and after many turns and tolls, we finally arrived in the middle of the ghetto in Cleveland, Ohio. We are SO CLOSE to Lake Erie (One of the REAL great lakes, Lauren Stump & Angelique Harris). Tomorrow we have a free day, which means it's time to explore Cleveland!! As of right now the only thing on our list is the Cleveland Zoo. I am SO PUMPED! They have giraffes!! (and polar bears, and tigers, and wolves.. I'm excited can you tell?) Monday we start our work on the site. An exciting task we have this week is to take pictures of Avalanche (our bobble head mascot) with fun things that we come across. Here is just a taste :

Avalanche Phone Home

18 Wheelers are my friends

I'll be trying to update this blog everyday, so check back for my daily endeavors!


Day 2

My first trip to the zoo!

Hey, so I don't have a bunch of time to update the blog tonight because it's getting late, but let me just say this. WE WENT TO THE ZOO TODAY. We all had so much fun, no matter what our favorite animal was. I am enjoying my time so much, getting to know all these great awesome people. Tomorrow we start our project! Gotta be outta the mission house by 9 am. (oh goodness) But we will be painting tomorrow so I will be prepared to get messy.

Today we got a special delivery from a group of middle schoolers who wanted to help out with the project, but you need to be at least 14 years of age to work on the project site, so they asked what they could do, and you know what they came up with? They made us a HUGE BOX of goodies. Crunch bars, chips, peanut butter, gummy bears, homemade cookies and brownies, Pringles, granola bars, muffins, and much more. We were so blessed to have these children do this for us. We will also be gaining so much weight after this trip.
For dinner we went to a chinese buffet. It was DELICIOUS. I had a bunch of crab legs and I must say that was my favorite.

Here are some pictures from todays adventures :)

As I took this picture, He said, "Come at me Bro"

GIRAFFE

disgusting to even look at

My favorite animals were the monkeys, we were friends!

Day 4.

I know, I missed last night. I sincerely apologize. It was a long day. Yesterday was our first day of work. We met Kim who works at Habitat for Humanity and we worked at the offices yesterday. We got a tour of the place and then got down to business. Painting. 3 rooms, 2 of them being restrooms, all 11 of us. It was a grand old time, and I am really getting to know everyone!

TODAY though, was our first REAL REAL day. 7 of us went to a construction site, while the other 4 went to the offices to finish the painting and any help that they needed there. I was on the site team. What we are doing this week is the first step of a habitat and humanity project. It's called rehabbing a house. A family was either evicted or just randomly moved out of their house and left it abandoned. Homeless people, and people looking for extra money will go inside these homes once they're "empty" and pull out copper and wires to sell to junk yards for money. They rip of the walls and trash the place. Today we had to rip up the carpet all over the house, but me, and 3 other girls main project was the basement. We had to tear down a whole wall, 2 by 4's, rip down ceiling, rip apart a futon, sweep, carry heavy bags and boxes of junk out, pull screws out of everywhere, all the while not dying from mold or dust inhalation. Surprisingly it was a lot of fun for us. Tomorrow we will go and do more work on that house and then thursday we switch places with the people at the office, and we get to do some office work. Avalanche has been going on many adventures with us as well. On our free time tonight we went to Lake Erie, and then to ice cream. Other than the crazy drivers and rolling through "the hood" once in awhile, it's not THAT bad here. (ha-ha.)  

Lake Erie

Beautiful Sunset

Avalanche is enjoying his trip.