The Observer, March 28, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 22
First Person: My spring break "home"work
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The words "spring break" together with "Miami" usually conjure images of beach parties and wet T-shirt contests, with sobriety being as commonplace as studying. Well, I spent spring break in Miami, only my experience wasn't quite the same. In your mental image, trade the beer for a hammer, the bathing suit for ripped up jeans and a T-shirt, and sleeping until noon for 5:45 a.m. wake-up calls consisting of your elbows and back slamming into the tile floor because the person you were sharing a mostly deflated air mattress with jumped out of bed, trying to avoid the same fate she so kindly bestowed upon you.
For spring break 2008, I went to Miami with Case's chapter of Habitat for Humanity. The trip started with a 19- turned 24-hour drive through the blizzard Cleveland threw at us for the occasion. We arrived Sunday afternoon, immediately compensated for our long drive by 70-degree weather. After getting settled into the church, we headed straight for the beach.
Monday brought our 7:30 a.m. orientation (to get us used to getting up at the break of dawn), after which we headed downtown to spend the day lying on the beach and wandering Ocean Drive. After stuffing ourselves with some authentic Cuban food, we called it a night so we could be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for our first day on site.
After an hour-long ride, we arrived at the work site not quite knowing what to expect. I mean, we're not professionals, what would they let us do? The answer was anything. For the next four days, from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. we were cutting and then hammering in studs, up on the roof attaching the trusses to the concrete with metal strips, and caulking then nailing wood around the windows. When we couldn't feel our shoulders anymore from hammering, or we could feel our hearts beating in our knuckles because we'd hammered them so many times, we'd just start picking up trash around the yard and making a pile in the front.
There were 14 of us on the trip, and I knew all but five beforehand, but now I feel as if I've known everyone for years. Being in such close quarters with everyone (we slept in a room of a church for the week), and having to work as a team to accomplish our goal, i.e. not letting the house crumble to pieces on our watch, was really like a bonding exercise on steroids. By the end of the week we all had our own little niche on the construction site. Those who were comfortable with power tools would do the cutting, while the klutzy people who fall off treadmills and didn't want to come back from spring break missing digits stuck to hammering.
Lunch was one of my favorite parts of the day. Not just because I love food, but because it was the time we'd all sit around, eat, and re-lather ourselves with sunscreen (discovering that we'd forgotten to put it on that gigantic hole in the front of our jeans the day before, leaving us with an awkward burn line across our thigh), and compare notes to see if Irvin (our lazy but hilarious site leader) had actually done anything productive yet. Our other site leader, Carlos, while instructing us on what kind of wood to remove from the storage unit, once specified by saying "it's the stuff the fat guy's sleeping on." Sure enough, we walked into the storage unit and Irvin was asleep on a pile of wood.
My other favorite part of the day was devotion. Right when we got there in the morning, since Habitat for Humanity is a Christian organization, we would all meet to pray. Irvin would lead the devotion, which ended up taking a good 10 minutes because in addition to "blessing this day no man ain't never seen before," he would go through and bless everyone he could think of– twice. It was like listening to a five-year-old tell you what they want for Christmas.
Even after four days of hammering while baking out in the Miami sun, the hardest part of the trip by far was the drive back. I was behind the wheel when we first hit snow again, and with peer pressure coming from all conscious passengers in the car, it took all my willpower to keep driving north.
Blisters and a farmer's tan aren't usually in the description of a killer spring break trip, but those are the tangible souvenirs I have from spring break 2008. Sure it wasn't stereotypical, but it was by far the best spring break I've ever had. I miss the little things, like our Latin-American radio station La Kalle 98.3 FM, dodging roosters as we parked at our work site, and just being able to go to sleep at night and tell yourself "today, I made a difference." I know the memories and friendships I made on this trip will last a lifetime– I just hope our house stands as long.
