Final build day and some R&R.

Hey everyone! I know it's been a few days but I've literally barely had time to even sleep let alone catch up all of my loyal followers! 

I left you with quite the cliff hanger last time... Has the suspense gotten to you yet?! So we were standing in a circle and Leslie was doing our closing ceremonies. Up pulls a taxi can and suddenly there is chaos as people get excited and start pulling out their cameras. I turn around and there are two really good looking guys. I was like "uh, cool, I guess." Turns out they are the twin brothers from the Property Brothers show on HGTV. Their names are Drew and Jonathan. They talked with us for a bit and were really appreciative of the work we'd done for Habitat (which was one of their favorite charities). They left soon after and we got back to the festivities. 

Yeah that's right, we got tweeted! ;) 

The next surprise was John and Garrett putting on a spoof about all of the people on the worksite and all the things that happened over the week. It was hilarious. 

We received our official polar plunge certificates. Leslie wouldn't give me mine until I would agree to lead a build. They don't call her the velvet steamroller for nothing! 

Tuesday night we went back to the church and scrounged for food for dinner.  We packed up our belongings and the first group of people started to leave for the airport. It was sad to see them go but  I also was feeling relieved. Having 23 people around all the time has been really challenging. 6 people left that evening. 

The next morning we slept in. Nope, still not true. We were up at 5:30am to finish packing, take down air mattresses, vacuum the church, clean bathrooms, put the rooms back together with tables and chairs, scrub the fridges out, etc. it was a frenzied morning! Two people left for the airport at. 7:15. We loaded up the vans at 8:30 and went to the habitat affiliate to drop off the habitat 15 seater vans. Cassandra and Laura volunteered to go pick up the rental vans for us to start our journey down to Homer, Alaska. Leslie (the host) lives in Homer and agreed to drive down at the same time so that we could follow her. Little did we know what a lead door she has!!! When it was my turn to drive (there were 2 of the 11 passenger vans and two drivers per van... I volunteered to be one of the four drivers) I could barely keep up with her. Let me digress a moment here... Who reading this thinks I am a slow driver? Who here thinks I have a lead food? Yep, it's a little known fact that while I am a very good driver, I also tend to like to drive a teensy bit over the speed limit. So while I was following Leslie, eventually I just gave up and didn't worry since there is only one road to Homer and it's only one lane. Eventually we would catch up! Our first stop was at a beautiful waterfall/rushing river. It was a beautiful blue/light gray/clear color. It's a glacially fed river (which most up here are) so they have this really pretty slate color due to the silt from the glacier. Leslie even showed us the first Eskimo disposable diaper... Moss! They would carry the babies on their backs. And before they would put them in, they'd set some moss /clump of dirt right beneath the babies bum. Once it becomes saturated, they'd throw it to the side and grab another clump.  Ta-da!! 

From there we stopped in this little town of Ninilchik. It's a Russian orthodox neighborhood on the coast of the Kenai Peninsula. There are maybe 120 people that love there. They still attend the small Russian Orthodox Church set high on the hillside. The church was built back in the 1800's and was very quaintly decorated with Russian orthodox decorations. 

Ok, I'll try to update more later! 

Sorry for the delay, here I go...

Happy Wednesday everyone!!! Is it really already Wednesday? Today is the official end of the build eventhough many of us are continuing on to Homer for the next few days. 9 of the 24 have already made their way to the airport. We've spent the morning (up at 6!) cleaning the church. Vacuuming, scrubbing toilets, cleaning out the fridges (and more!) taking down the air mattresses and packing up. With 15 eager hands to help, it's taken us about 2 hours. One of the things I love most about these Habitat builds is that everyone is always willing to lend a hand. 

One of the things that has been really different about this build is that there are many people and very little privacy. There were 24 of us sleeping in 5 rooms with most of them being about 10x10ft. Tight quarters! There is one main common room/kitchen. My Ghana build was similar in tight quarters but finding some quiet time was so much easier... Maybe just because there were much fewer people? The affiliate here has also kept us quite busy... We are literally running from about 6:30am until 9 or 10pm every day. I don't think we've had any real down time. 

Today we have a 5hr drive over to Homer Alaska so I'm hoping to get some down time to catch you all up on the week. They were looking for volunteer drivers as they wanted two drivers per van (2vans). So I might spend some of the time driving. 

Ok, now where did I leave off? Oh yes... Our R&R!!!  We slept in and woke up well rested on Sunday... Oh wait, that's not how it happened! ;) we woke up at 5am, had to move all of our stuff out of the rooms and get out the door by 5:45am. Now that sounds more like it ;) 13 of us got dropped off at the train station and the remaining 11 took the van to drive down to Seward. The train was amazing, it is about a 4 1/2 hour train ride down to Seward. All along the way were the most beautiful views of glaciers, rivers, waterfalls, and lush greenery.  It was a nice relaxing ride, many of us are sleeping, but I just couldn't stop looking at the view! :-) upon arrival in Seward, we embarked on the van marked Kenai Fjords. 

We boarded a boat for our wildlife tour. It was pretty cold that day, maybe 58 at the high and it was rainy/drizzly. That makes for a chilly boat ride! The indoor part of the boat was nice and about 68 degrees but soon after embarking on our journey the large swells began to make a good many of the passengers sick. We had 3 people on our team throwing up, 3 more looking incredibly green, 2 that tried to appear like they were sleeping so as not to have people hovering over them to ask if they were going to puke and one person who adamantly watched the horizon line for 4 solid hours. That left 15 of us to enjoy the ride and take care of all of them. ;) I managed pretty well except for one or two moments with some really big swells. No motion sickness, just a dropped stomach when we dipped down in the water. Before we'd even gotten out of the harbor we had spotted a few sea otters laying on their back in the water... They were just chillin!! One even raised his paw as if to say "oh hey there, welcome to my living room. The view is great!"  We next went to this rocky area where we saw puffins... They are those cool little black birds with the bright orange beaks. At that rocky outcropping we saw seals and a bit further down we saw harbor seals. From the rocky outcropping we crossed the mouth of the Seward Inlet. They asked us all to come inside since it was so choppy (hence the sea sickness). About halfway through the crossing the boat suddenly slowed and the captain said "wow, you guys are in luck today, we've for our first sighting of a Humpback whale!" We all threw on our warm clothes and rain gear and clambered outside. We saw him breech a few times... VERY cool!!!  We started our journey again and some of us stayed outside. I had on three layers plus a rain jacket, gloves, scarf and I STILL was cold. Brrrr!!! Pretty soon the boat slowed again and the incredulous captain said "wow, you are a lucky bunch. If you look out at 2 o'clock from the boat you'll see some or a whales." I could see the fins above the water as they'd come up and get some air. One even made an entire flop out of the water!!! My first thought was "Shamu!!! These whales look a lot like killer whales." Aaaaaaand I'm moron. Turns out Orca whales ARE killer whales, it's just the official name for them ;) we saw 4 different Orcas. SO magical to see them in their natural environment. 

Sorry the view is so small, it's the closest I could get on the iPhone without zooming in (my hands were gloved). 

It got REALLY chilly and wet so all of us went back inside for a bit. It got really misty and wet outside... Reminded me of the "moors of England" in the Secret Garden. Diana, Garrett, Quinn, Tim and I went to stand on the now and we started seeing ice chunks floating on the water. It was BITTERLY cold... I don't know if I've ever felt such cold. It was like standing in an icebox eventhough we were outside. BRRRRRRR!! Suddenly we were upon a tidal glacier. Tidal glaciers are a glacier that makes it's way all the way down to the sea. It was a beautiful blue color and radiated cold. The mist/fog layer was low so we couldn't see the entire thing but we got a great view. 

L-R, rear: Garrett, Tim, rusty. Middle: Quinn, tanner, me, Diana. 

We sat idle for a bit to see if we could see and hear some calving (not sure if that is how it's spelled). Calving is when the ice near the shore breaks off and falls into the ocean. It's LOUD, and sounds a bit like thunder. We were indeed a lucky bunch and we saw/ heard a lot of calving. Part of me was thrilled by the experience and the other part was thinking "OH NO, global warming is true!" ;) I have some videos (which I can't post on here) so if any of you are interested in it, let me know and I can email it to ya. 

On the way back to the harbor we were cruising at full speed and the captain says "for any of you interested, we have a group of Dalls Porpoise in front of the boat, swimming with us and it looks like they want to play." I throw the rain fear back on and went outside to see whatever a Dalls porpoise was. I'm ashamed to call myself Sea World veteran... Dalls porpoise is basically a dolphin ;) there was a group of about 5 of them just swimming around on our bow. They were in and out, back and forth, leaping out of the water and pacing the boat. It was great fun!!  I have a couple of awesome videos of that as well so let me know if you are interested!!! 

We returned to shore about 5:15pm. The people who'd driven down this morning then hopped on the train and the rest of us stayed in Seward for dinner. We are at a nice restaurant called "chinook". Did you know that there are 5 different types of salmon?! And that each type has 2 names??? Ok, play along with me here. Hold out our hand, palm down. Your thumb starts the process... Your thumb= "Chum" or "dog". Index finger="Red/sockeye", middle finger= "King/chinook", ring finger="Silver/coho" and your pinky finger= "Pink/humpies". And now you know ;) at the restaurant Diana and I split an appetizer and a dinner meal. Our appetizer was Alaskan Crab sliders, and the dinner was rockfish and horseradish mashed potatoes.

YUM!!! Our drive back was quiet as most of us were completely exhausted. We arrived back at the church at 10:30 and had to move all of our air mattresses/stuff back to our rooms. 

Monday was back to the job site. Only one day of rest for the wicked! That morning I ended up on the landscaping crew with Charlie, Sam and Connelly. One of the other crews, the siding crew had less people than they'd asked for so I mentioned to Harry that I'd be willing to work wherever they needed me. He said for me to start on the landscaping and he'd come get me if they needed me elsewhere. We grabbed rakes, shovels and wheelbarrows. Connelly was assigned to go behind the houses and pick up rocks where we would be spreading the topsoil. Within an hour I was ready to cause bodily damage to both Sam and Charlie. Charlie is 19years old and this cocky, know-it-all guy. He spent the entire first hour bragging about  what a good listener he is and all the drama that happens in his group of friends. Every little minute piece of college drama. *eye roll* Sam (19yrs also) just stood there twirling the shovel around. When he did pick up a rake he picked up the smallest one and raked about 3feet in front of him. *sigh* I started praying, asking that God would help me with patience and peace. I was becoming frustrated at how little work both were doing. I'd raked topsoil over half the entire front lawn and they both had done an area of 5 feet. Then they both disappeared. I thought to myself about how frustrated I was getting that they weren't working at all, and how they should've been working harder. And then it came to me. Who cares how much they work. It isn't about them and how much work they do in comparison to me. I should so my work to the best of my abilities and not worry about them. Every inch of topsoil I spread is on less inch that someone else has to spread. And I can be proud of my actions simply because I am the one that did them. And wouldn't you know it, the second I had that epiphany Harry came walking over and said "where's the rest of the crew? Did they leave you here to do all the work?" I shrugged and he said "I could really use you on the siding crew. I've heard you have an eye for getting measurements just right and we could really use that up there."  Ask and ye shall receive. I immediately dropped that rake and bolted out of there!

It'd been raining all morning so we were all pretty wet and cold. I walked over to Bob's siding crew and he said "go ahead and hop on up there. I looked up... And up... And up... Diana and Tim were all the way up near the roofline of the THREE STORY house!!! That's a long way up! I started scrambling, trying not to look down on the wet ladders and planks. We worked the rest of the day in the rain and managed to get the siding all the way up to the peak!! 

Once finished we started taking down all the levels of the scaffold. It was a lot of work!! 

On Monday evening we hosted a BBQ for the construction crew, the pastor of the church, and all of their families. It was really fun (but also a lot of work!!! ) Halibut and Salmon were the biggest hit! 

We also had reindeer sausage. It reminded me of summer sausage but with a game-y flavor. 

Some of the people on the trip are getting sick (a cold) and so I was passing out airborne to everyone. A few minutes later Connelly comes into our room laughing hysterically... Turns out Cassandra normally gets the chewable airborne and so she tried to chew the one I have her. The kind I have fizz in water before you drink it. Turn out it will fizz in your mouth too! Her sinuses were screaming in pain and she was crying with laughter. Good times ;) 

Tuesday was our last day on the build site and it was only a half day. We got there around 8am and I spent the morning framing interior walls on the houses we'd poured the concrete into. Framing. How it makes my heart sing ;) we took a break for lunch and then the festivities began! Leslie started by giving each of us a sock. Only one sock. She told us that these are our socks to "sock away $" for donations. She said to hang it somewhere at our work, in our homes, etc and to make it accessible for people to drop in money to donate. She also kept mentioning our "surprise". She was VERY excited about it! 

Well, it's time for me to go to bed now... I'll finish the rest of the story tomorrow! Good night ;) 

The team..

Hey everyone! How's it going? Today was another busy day up on the scaffolding installing 2x8 beams ontop of the concrete walls. Yesterday, before the concrete set we stuck metal screws in the concrete. Today we laid the beams flat and had to drill holes that would line up with the screws (not necessarily an easy task!). It went went well and today I worked with Garrett, Christina, Becky, Sue and Leslie. After work we hit the showers at the gym and then had a "free evening." We drove to downtown Anchorage and they have us $ for dinner. I ended up hanging with Tim and Rusty. They are super cool guys and we had a great time! We ended up at the Snow Goose Brewery. John (the boss on site) has recommended it. I ordered a hamburger and it was amazing! They mix up the meat with bacon. Yum!!! The sauce was a root beer (brewed fresh on site) and aioli sauce. It was really good! For a beverages had.a "snow dog." It's made with Kahlua, vodka, cream and freshly brewed root beer. Tastes just like a root beer float!!! 

After dinner we walked a bit along the shoreline and caught up with Connelly, Garrett, and Christina. 

This is Chrisina, my work partner in crime: 

Oh, and we hit a tree tonight. Nothing big, just when we were backing up. Poor Brian was driving the van and took a lot of teasing for it. 

Off to bed now. We have to be up at 5am to pack up our stuff and move it i to one room so the church can use our bedrooms while we are gone. I'm REALLY NOT loving this whole pack everything up every couple of days thing :( we'll hope on the train to Seward at 6:15. The train is about 3hrs. From there we'll take a glacier cruise. It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow so hopefully we'll still get some good pics. Wish me luck! 

Two new posts.. Yesterday's post never posted

Concrete pour, GB Packers crazy house and respect...

Today we played with concrete ;) I guided the boom into the walls, used wheelbarrows to pour door steps, cleaned up scaffolding, raked topsoil, watered trees and installed metal brackets on top of the walls. A busy day! At the end of the day, John, the lead came up to me and mentioned that the superintendent will not be there tomorrow and he's in charge. I've worked with him two days now. He said that he would need someone he trusted to step up and be a lead and he wanted to know if I'd be interested. I was sincerely flattered and he was very sweet the way her asked. So tomorrow I'll be leading a team up in the scaffolding doing some stuff and the. Eventually taking down the scaffolding. 

After work we went to a woman's host as she hosted us for dinner. She and her husband are SERIOUS Green Bay Packera fans. Their entire house is completely decked out in packet gear. Cheese heads and all.

So now it's 8:30pm and we are chilling at the laundromat. $5 dollars for wash and $1.00 for dry. Yikes!!! Luckily they are big so Diana and I shared a load. 

Have a good night!! 

ReStore

Today is going to be a short post. It's been a pretty rough day for me. It began with a phone call from home with some disconcerting news. It really shook me up and I've had a hard time dealing with trying to me present in two worlds... My world here with 23 people around me constantly (with zero downtime) and my world back home. Today was a late start for us and we didn't have to be at the site until 10am. Today was my day to work at the ReStore so I went with Connelly, Garrett and Laura. The restore isn't very big (about the size of two trailers) and they have to pay $7000 a month in rent! Apparently rents in Alaska are at a premium and The Alaska ReStore ranks third in the country ReStores for the highest rent costs. The other two are in southern CA. The restore was basically controlled chaos. Everything you can imagine for your house is crammed in there. It's like a garage sale in crack. We were only there from 10-3:30 but we unloaded three Uhaul size trucks FULL of everything from railroad ties to washing machines. It's by far the most heavy lifting and manual labor alive done here. 

Dinner was at the Native Hospital and we got to try native foods. Of course I'm always game. I had moose stew, Eskimo salad (whale skin& blubber, seal and walrus) and herring eggs.  The moose stew was good, the herring eggs have me goose bumps both times I took a bite, the walrus and seal were fishy but good... and the whale skin? That ended up in my napkin. It was really chewy/dense and the blubber felt like trying to chew through gristle but was also almost as hard as a bone. No thank you. 

The black stuff is the Eskimo salad. The twig looking thing had the eggs on it. 

We got back to the church at 8:30 and decided to go for a hike. Yep, a hike at 8:30pm. It was like the middle of the day out there. 

Good night everyone! 

And then there were stairs!

Greetings all you contiguous states people! It's now the end of day 3 on the build site, day 4 of the trip. I'll get ya started on today's activities later on but for now, the promised updates from yesterday. After getting back to the job site, John, my leader on the site brought a drill over to me that had a bit stuck in it someone had used it and the bit had gotten twisted. He asked me to help him. We spent the next two hours taking the drill apart, putting it back together, trying to grip the bit with pliers, gripping the bits with wire cutters, pulling, twisting, you name it. That darn bit wouldn't budge. We finally tried using an angle grinder to shave off part of the bit and then pull it. Triumphant!!!!! I really like working with all the Alaskan crew guys here. They are really cool to talk with and they firmly believe that I can do everything the guys do. If I show any hesitation to work a circular saw they simply go over the safety with me and then make me do it. If one of the guys on my team offers to step in, they firmly and protectively say "nope, Sheri's going to do this." I'm really liking that. 

After the workday we went to someone's home for a BBQ. Her name is Shelly and she's a wonderful hostess! Her daughter set up the beanbag toss, we played horseshoes and badminton. About 20 of her friends stopped by and there was lots of mingling to be had by all (prompted only ever so slightly by the Margarita slushee... Holy crap, I think they put the entire bottle of tequila in there. We were told by our team leaders to show gratitude and appreciation for our hosts so I slowly gulped it down). Freshly caught Salmon and hamburgers were in the menu with a strawberry rhubarb dessert chaser. 

When we got back to the church around 9pm a couple people asked me to lead some yoga/stretching. About 15 people came upstairs! We didn't all fit into one room so we opened a door into another room. Some people came up halfway through so they just did hallway yoga. It's a new thing, hallway yoga. ;) 

This morning was another early morning. Up at 6 because we had to break down our mattresses again, pack up all of our stuff and move it out of our rooms so that the church could use the space. It might be ungrateful of me, but part of me feels like "this church is great for lending us their space to sleep in the basement" and the other part of me thinks "and then every Sunday and Wednesday we have to pack up all of our luggage, move the air mattresses, put the tables/chairs back in the room and be out much earlier... Can't you just meet at the Starbucks around the corner for the week?!" Lord please don't strike me down for being annoyed with the church about this. 

Today's work was amazing! I worked with Becky and our new lead Kaleb. He's a sweet teddy bear of a guy. Reminds me of my brother. We got to work on building stairs. We cut the stairs/the risers and later the part the looks like a zig zag that the stairs sit on. Becky and I wanted to get the entire two sets done but only made it up to the first landing. Stair building had to be REALLY precise. I also got REALLY good at using the table saw and the powerful circular saw. Never fear, all body parts are still attached! 

I loved it all!!! Leslie is the host up here and it's been such a blessing to talk with her about Habitat. Today she was trying to convince me to lead a trip up here next summer. Her nickname is the velvet hammer... She's smooth and grooms ya softly and then... WHAM, she gets ya to do whatever she wants :) 

After work we went to the Van Zyle house. They are two artists who live in a eagle creek (just outside of anchorage). They have a bit of land and also have sled dogs. Jon has raced in the Iditirod two times and has quite the experience with the dogs. They still have about 7 dogs but most of them are about 13yrs old and don't sled anymore. We learned all about dog racing, mushing, etc. it was really interesting!! 

They have SO much energy!! His wife Jonna also has many stories about racing dogs. They are both artists... Jon does paintings and Jonna does beadwork and makes jewelry with dried salmon skins. Jon is actually the official artist for the posters for the Iditirod!! 

Here is the upcoming one for the 2015. Cool huh? 

We got back to the church around 11 and had to put our rooms back together. It's late now and I am off to bed. We have a late start (10am)tomorrow since tonight was a late night. Hooray!!! I'll be working at the ReStore tomorrow so I will not be out at the build site. Good night everyone!