While I Was Out Part 9: Greater Des Moines Habitat For Humanity

Hello Internet, it's been a while. Things have been a little hectic this last couple of weeks but I can now proudly say that I am an AmeriCorps Alumni and I'm back home in Cleveland. (WHOOOOH!) I'll get into the details about the closing week a little bit later but for now it's time to talk about Habitat. After our heroes of Maple One and Three were replace by Maple Two in Mississippi, the two teams returned to Vinton Iowa for a brief while and were then sent to separate locations to finish off the remainder of the second round. I can't honestly remember where Maple Three went, (it's really not keeping me up at night either.) but Maple One and myself were off to Des Moines Iowa to work with the Habitat for Humanity branch of the greater Des Moines area. Des Moines was surprisingly a very happening city. We were there during the late summer so we got to go to the local farmers market town which was amazing. We also checked out some stores and I got these really awesome jacket that makes me look bad ass. It's the most I've ever spent on a single article of clothing, (it costing $90.00 American) but Victoria and Andrea said that a jacket like that is an investment. One that I have yet to regret. Now, about the work.

and then we helped Habitat set up for their big event that year, The 2010 Blitz Build. The Blitz build was in 20 days building 10 houses, (2010 clever right?) and our job was doing all the prep work for it which included building and setting the frame work for the future homes and all sorts of cool things.It rained a lot when we were there which made our job hella hard moving those heavy mud frames and walls through the mud as we sank and almost fell every 5 or so minutes.
I got to use a jackhammer which as cool as it was, is actually a lot harder than it looks on television. We even got to see a couple of the houses that were finished being dedicated to the families which was pretty cool. Also one of the sponsors gave us all nicknames, mine was Magoo which, isn't terribly flattering, but it was cool that I got one never the less. When we got done with our time there it was already mid year. We'd get replaced by Maple 5 there after Midyear and they got to see the blitz build from start to finish and we got to go back for a day to see the final dedication of the ten houses.