Hi, is this gas station clothing optional?

It is impossible for me to talk enough about how much I love Habitat for Humanity. I took my first week-long Collegiate Challenge trip my sophomore year to Eastman, Georgia and had the time of my life. The people I've met on Habitat trips, whether from the SU volunteer group, or the members of the local community and H4h affiliate, are always the most delightful. A week bonding with new people, doing something good, meeting local homeowners, and working up a sweat is my idea of a perfect vacation. It is oddly freeing to let your mind wander away from textbooks and deadlines and focus on a particular, unfamiliar task at hand. I always chuckle finding skills I never knew I had (roofing!) and the things no one should ever allow me to do again (using a nail gun--my inner Terminator took over when I mistook it for an automatic weapon and fired four nails into one hole).

Last week I spent my spring break in Palm Beach, Florida working on a 27-home build. So much happened, I can't possibly recount it all (though you can read some of my play-by-plays on Twitter). We know I love a good list, so I'll recount some of the top highlights and lowlights for you here.

HIGHLIGHTS
- I took my first H4h trip all by myself. Quite the leap of faith, but I made some great friends and was happy to throw myself out of my comfort zone. But this trip was extra special because it was my senior year, and I went with one of my best lady friends, Paige. We grew even closer (5.a.m. heart-to-hearts through torrential rain in North Carolina), but also let each other be alone long enough to harass new people into being our friends. I had a great time with you, boo!


- You may find this impossible to believe, but the car rides are some of my favorite parts. By the end of them, you can recite the complete dating history, favorite childhood pets, and social security numbers of all of your fellow carmates. Long car rides breed intense intimacy. However, they also breed a little bit of insanity. Somewhere between New York and Florida, I thought it would be HILARIOUS to deem everything clothing optional. Libraries? Clothing optional. Starbucks? Only if it's topless. Habitat work sites? Soooo clothing optional. This was one of the week's catchphrases, and I immediately gained a reputation as being the group's biggest creeper. Which is okay. I would typically be the last person to suggest group nudity, but you know? Sometimes it could be fun. I got some people to disrobe, and fun was had by all.

-Related highlight: Tuesday, after a lobster dinner, we all hit Palm Beach for a night on the town. At the beginning of the night, on a whim, I asked a bartender if the bar was clothing optional. He said "Absolutely, it's encouraged," and the new dress code was announced over the microphone three times. Cha-ching. People went buck wild; dancing on bars ensued, booty contests galore, strange cougars macked on our SU boys. Paige and I just stared in disbelief. These people came to party.

-New construction skills! Our work site was extra special because several houses were in different stages of completion, so we were assigned a variety of tasks. We framed the walls of an entire house, fastened tar paper on its roof, shingled another, gave one nearly completed house three coats of interior paint, and laid sod and planted trees. So many new skills to add to my resume.

- Beach. Ocean temps were in the 70s. The weather all week was heavenly, dry and sunny in the lower 80s. We went to the beach almost every day after work, and played board games, Bananagrams, and ultimate frisbee. Small buzzkill: whenever I play a sport, I assume the mindset of a 300-pound toothless rugby player, so I got some ferocious sandburn scrapes from diving (okay, and a little falling). All the beach time made this trip feel much more like a real vacation than my past trips.


-Cuse games. We watched all four games that week, including the incredible, heart-attack-inducing UConn game. We were absolutely beat after long days of building and beaching, but sipping a mojito in an outdoor bar and watching the Orange make us proud was the perfect end to the day.

(Edited to add)- Becoming a local celebrity. Monday night, on our way home form a Marlins/Tigers spring training game, I got pulled over for the first time ever. Quite the blow to my ego, but earlier in the day, we had been featured on the local news while we were working at the re-store. The officer recognized us from the broadcast and let me go with a warning!

LOWLIGHTS

No church dinners! One of the reasons my GA trip was so meaningful was because of our interaction with the community there. One night the ladies at the local church cooked a huge meal for us. We learned about them, their town, and the Habitat affiliate. We spent time with the homeowners of the house we worked on, and heard their stories. I'll never forget how sincerely grateful they were to us, and the disbelief in their eyes as they watched strangers put their house together, just because we wanted to. We had similar experiences in Louisiana when we met people displaced by Katrina, and ate dinner every night with volunteers at the church where we stayed. Unfortunately we didn't meet any homeowners this time, and I missed the focus on getting to know the community we came to serve.

Lack of participating in state park activities! We stayed in Jonathan Dickinson state park (read a creepy story from the park's history here), and they have hiking and biking trails, horseback riding, and loads of wildlife (our group saw an armadillo...ew). Alligators are frequently seen in the river, where you can canoe and kayak. Paige and I wanted to go, even if we were sortofkindof terrified, especially after we were told that a little boy was eaten a few years earlier. We ran out of time and never got to canoe, and I never got to see an alligator. The siren song of the Jupiter beaches just drew us back day after day, and I loved every minute of it.

I could go on forever, but I'm sure you're all sick of hearing me talk nonstop about Habitat. But for any of my legions of readers who have time left in college, take a trip with Habitat. These trips are my favorite things I've done at SU, and they'll be yours too. Promise.

Beyond Belief

A good documentary should leave you unhinged.

It could blow your mind by exposing a new culture, or uncovering the the unfamiliar in your own. Maybe it strikes an emotional chord, reverberating in a dusty, forgotten recess of your heart. Maybe it confirms something you always knew but never considered closely enough.

You should watch Beyond Belief . It will do all of these things, and it will unhinge you.

The film tells the story of two women, Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, suburban moms from Massachusetts whose husbands were killed in the planes that hit the towers on September 11. Both women were pregnant at the time. The documentary delves deeply and intimately into their grief, showing the endlessness of the heartache that follows the unfathomable death of a loved one.

But what makes Beyond Belief so remarkable is how Retik and Quigley transform their sadness into a cross-cultural journey to help the widows in Afghanistan, who have suffered through decades of war and a lifetime of oppression. Retik and Quigley founded Beyond the 11th, a foundation to raise money to support Afghan widows by providing them with chickens, coops, and incubators. With such simple tools, women can feed their families, and forge some economic independence by selling the eggs. With the money they make, most send their children to school.

You'll follow Quigley and Retik on their trip to Afghanistan, a country which before 9/11, Retik confesses she couldn't have found on a map. You'll watch as they realize the remote country is inextricably linked to their own, and the universality of the grief they find there. The warmth with which they are received, and the candor with which the Afghan women tell their stories of loss and hardship will leave you both wildly hopeful and devastatingly discouraged.

More than half a million women in Afghanistan are trapped in cycles of poverty, because they are illiterate, economically disenfranchised, and the sole caretakers for their children. (In Afghan culture, if widows remarry, their children must go to the deceased father's family. Women stay single in order to stay with their children.)

This is a must-see movie. It will reveal the nuanced, painful truth behind the triumphant headlines of Al-Qaeda captures and little girls going to school. It will remind you to look for the human faces that are all too often left out of war coverage. It will make you feel guilty for forgetting them in the first place, and implore you never to forget them again.

(image from: http://www.principlepictures.com/beyondbelief)

Word Cloud

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Who knew I wrote so frequently about Russians? This also makes me think I need to start blogging about something more substantive. But then where would you go for your daily nonsense fix?

Songs that make your heart sing: "How is this a song"? edition

I derive absurd amounts of guilty pleasure from this song. A radio station back home used to play it almost every Saturday when I was on my way to the gym, and I always sang along loud and proud while bopping to the beat in my mother's glamorous minivan. Kudos to whomever added the wildly inappropriate subtitles to the YouTube video. Highly enjoyable, and please, let's all start saying " 'Sup baby girl, how you livin'?" Not.



Although, if I ever find myself in a serious relationship, and my faithful eyes are wandering, you better believe I'll confide in my best friend and tell her, in between fits of girlish giggles, that I've been tempted by the fruit of another.

In the mind of a procrastinator...a stream of consciousness

I'm going to write my paper. Let me find the course reader and my notes. Page 29...women in the labor movement...

I'm thirsty. I guess I should make some tea. Oh, this kitchen is disgusting. I should clean it.

Kitchen is cleaned. Back to work, but I shouldn't do my history homework right now. Must research my magazine article so I can sketch out some interview questions. Let's check the news to see if there are any updates on my topic. Better yet, Twitter. Now let's read the Twitter feeds of every single one of my followers. So many links from NPR! I need to listen to these stories.

This has been productive. Maybe I'll write some cover letters for jobs. Let's pull up the Career Center's e-mail. Ooh! An email from my mom! Hi mom! I should write back. Sent. Ooh! Someone wrote on my wall. Which reminds me, I need to go on facebook to RSVP to an event. Huh? Facebook says it's Julie's birthday? I have to call her.

Where's my phone? Can someone call my phone? Oh I hear it, it's in my bed. Oh my God, when was the last time I washed my sheets? I need to do that right now. Okay, laundry's on. Back to work.

But first I should put on some music. I can only be productive if I'm listening to something good. Hey, where's my Ipod? Oh I hope I didn't leave it at the gym. Speaking of, I need to put on another load of laundry. My gym clothes smell worse than a fifth-grade classroom after recess.

But I don't have any more quarters for the washer and dryer. I have to take a walk to the coin machine. I need some fresh air anyway.

Back. Found my Ipod in the hamper. I'm going to sit on my bed and read, away from the computer. No reading news, e-mails, Twitter, anything. I can only read about women in the labor movement.

Labor movement? Textile mills my foot, at least they had jobs! I will never find work. Why am I even trying to study? I'm a second-semester senior. I haven't watched Grey's in three weeks. Maybe I should just do that instead.