"Drivin away, leaving it all behind ..."

Currently Reading: Don Quixote, Cervantes
Oh, heavens. I am so far behind, shame on me. Things have been so busy since my last entry.

We ended up passing off our Port Arthur house to a group of volunteers from Oklahoma, I think. While they adopted work on that house, we put decking up on the underside of the houses in Sabine Pass. Yeah, everyone thought that we were done with them. Every time we went back, it was to do a few finishing touches and they were finished. Well, now they're finished for real. Decking is frustrating. It's supposed to cover the insulation underneath the house, preventing birds from nesting up in it. But putting it up requires spending your entire day looking up with your arms over your head the whole time. We also had some issues with measuring the pieces and getting them flush on all edges. By the end of it, we had somehow found a rhythm. Still, we were definitely glad to finish that little project.

That next weekend, me, John, Nikki, Adrienne and Travis went canoeing with Wolf 4. That was lots of fun. We did a nine-mile stretch of river and spent seven hours on the water. It was awesome. We all had names for our boats. Nikki and Travis were Man Boat; Sarah and Renae were Gettin Wet for Jesus; Pete and Emma were Free Spirit; Wade and Noelle were Buzz Kill. Apparently as soon as Team Man Boat got on the water, they flipped. Poor things! Nikki lost her shirt and her sunglasses, Travis lost his hat and lunch. Still, we all survived. Mark and I half capsized at one point when we got stuck on a fallen tree. Nothing suffered besides us, though. I ended up with some prized bruises by the end of the day. It was great, good battle scars.

So canoeing was Saturday. On Sunday, Earth 5 had another ISP scheduled at Buu Mon. This time, we spent the morning fertilizing all of the buckets of lilies and lotuses. We only worked up until lunch, though, there wasn't much to do after everything was fertilized.

We kept decking on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. On Thursday, we went back to Beaumont, the first project location we had at the very start of our round. Everything had come full circle! We spent the day roofing. I loved it! It was a really nice day for it, too. The sun was behind the clouds all day and there was a light breeze. I spent all day putting shingles down on a roof, it was great fun. Unfortunately, it was downpouring hardcore when we woke up on Friday, so we reported to the warehouse. The site supervisors divided us up and took a few groups to different houses to do some interior work. I was a part of a group that remained at the warehouse and built some sheds. It wasn't bad. Adrienne and I cut 2x4s all morning. We helped assemble sheds after lunch.

For our last weekend two of the site supervisors, Rory and Troy, showed up to our humble shack on Sunday with some barbeque for us. That was a nice little gathering. And I believe we invented a new game while we were hanging out. It's called Triple Threat. It involves throwing around a frisbee, a football and kicking around a soccer ball all at the same time. Sometimes, you try to bombard one specific person with all three. But basically, it's just fun to try and keep them all going.

On Monday, we were able to go back to Beaumont and keep roofing. It was sunny and a little humid, though I know the rest of my team would probably say that it was really hot and humid. Personally, I enjoyed it. And we were roofing! So I had fun. After work, our team went out for our team dinner. We went to a Chinese buffet, because it was the only thing that would fit in our budget. Big mistake. I should never ever go to buffets of any kind. I always want to eat a little bit of everything and that always ends up being way too much.

After we got back from dinner, the livestock were grazing near the Y again so some of us were feeding the horses. There's one that was really friendly, she was a sweety. She really liked me. That, or I just had the right kind of grass for her.

So we all lounged around for a while, put off packing, and tried to spend one more good night with Wolf 4 as we could. Eventually, I packed up most of my stuff. A few of us in Earth woke up the next morning to see Wolf off to work. There was lots of hugging. Not gonna lie, I cried a little. After they left, we finished gathering up our stuff and Earth 4 showed up. We packed up, ate lunch and headed out. After a little driving, I started crying a bit. I think leaving actually started to hit me. I felt really detached, it was a little surreal. I'm really going to miss those guys. I think Adrienne pointed out the night before that we'd actually spent more time with Wolf 4 than we had with most of the people in Denver. We'd lived with them for a longer period of time than CTI, we were around each other a lot. We spent a lot of time together. Our first round is insperable from them. They were definitely one of the reasons our first project was such a good experience. They were great people, I'm really going to miss all of them. I hope we can keep in touch. If they have a project near Philly when I go home on breaks, I think I'll try to visit.

As of right now, I'm lying around in our hotel room in Amarillo. We spent last night in Dallas. We're apparently getting up wicked early tomorrow to make it back to Denver early enough to go to a Rockies game. We'll see how tired I'm feeling. It sounds like it would be a good time.

Okay, speaking of ... that's all I have as an update for now. I know I have more to talk about, but I think I'll save that for when I've settled back into my dorm. Sorry it's been so long! I hope it won't happen again. If those of you reading have any questions about what's going on with me, feel free to post them and I'll be sure to answer.