Hi everyone! I am going to try to send you all weekly or biweekly updates on my internship to give you a glimpse of what I am doing this summer! I started Monday (May 21) with Habitat for Humanity in Evansville, Indiana as a Construction Management intern! I meet everyone in the office, the Executive Director, Lori, the Construction Manager, Steve, the Volunteer Coordinator, Kelly, the Community Relations Director, Sally, the Development Director, Sister Jane Michele, and the Site Supervisor, Mike. There are a few admin. assistants and volunteers that work in the office too.  I have learned that just about everyone here is relatively new! This is Kelly's third week and Mike's second week, and Lori has only been here since January so it is a learning experience for the majority of the office! Everyone here is so wonderfully nice!

The reason why I wanted to intern with Habitat of Evansville is Operation Home Again.  Back in November of 2005 a tornado went through a trailer park near Evansville and there were numerous fatalities.

Operation Home Again is a program for families who were affected by tornado that devastated the community. As a part of the program, Habitat is building a subdivision that will be called "New Haven" and it will have streets with named Inspiration Street, Healing Street, Promise Street, and Belief Street. New Haven, when complete, will have
55 houses and a park.  June 2, 2007 is the kickoff day for building the first 6 our of 27 houses to be built in the subdivision this year! The ground work is almost complete for those 6 sites and the infrastructure (water & sewer lines) as well as footings and foundations should begin to be put in place by today or early next week. If you go to our website, there's tons of information about Operation Home Again and the New Haven subdivision, http://www.evansvillehabitat.org/

I am living in an apartment complex that is literally right beside the subsivision site!!! I won't even have to drive to work once we start building, I'll just have to take take about 30 steps and I'm on the job site!

This week I have had the opportunity to meet Habitat's most faithful volunteers, the Tuesday Crew, the Wednesday Crew,and the Concrete Crew and as you can guess, the Tuesday Crew helps out on Tuesdays, and the Wednesday Crew helps out of Wednesdays, and the Concrete Crew does concrete work as well as anything else that needs to be done.  You may be wondering who would be gracious enough to volunteer all that time to building homes, and I guarantee it will put a smile to your face...it's a rambunctious bunch of 70 and 80 year old men!!! Some of them have been in construction all their lives and other have been CEO's of banks, doctors, and various other professional professions! These men have taken me under their wing and have already showed me how to do trim work around doors and windows and how to build jigs to serve as templates to cut siding to the to fit on the gable ends of the house at angle of the roof. They are working the our workshop as often as they can to build T's, corners, and headers for the first 6 houses that way all we have to do at the job site is nail the pre-made pieces into place! This will save so much time and effort! The Wednesday crew bought me lunch on Wednesday too! I think I'm going to have about 30 Grampas by the time the summer is over!!!

I also had the pleasure to go to a house dedication on Wednesday for a woman and her toddler daughter. This is where the Christian side of Habitat really comes out, it was such a beautiful dedication! Everyone that came stood out on the front lawn (well by the end of the summer there will be a lawn, right now it's straw) and the woman's preacher, the woman and her daughter stood on the front porch along with Lori and read some scriptures and prayed and presented her with a Bible, a crossstiching that said "the Wisdom Family" and the keys to the house, and afterwards, the woman was so kind, she brought bottled water and cookies and doughnuts for everyone!

As we are wrapping up the week, in about a half an hour me, Mike, and Steve are going to walk through some houses that are not quite finished to get a list of things that need to be done and finish them before our big day on June 2! This first week has been so packed full of activity and learning! I feel so blessed to be here with these wonderful people and to be a part of Operation Home Again! I couldn't believe it when they told me that I had my own office (which is HUGE!) with my own desk (which is gigantic!) and my own computer, phone, and cell phone! I don't feel like an unpaid intern, I feel like a full time staff member!

I have found that some people question my decision to come here and not get paid (they are paying for my housing though) and telling me that I need to find a job that pays good, but I realized this week that those people don't understand what I am getting out of this experience, the opportunity of a lifetime to help people who have lost everything in a tornado finally have a place to call home again.

On my first day, Steve told me that a Construction Management position is made up of three things, Paperwork, Communication, and Vision.
Paperwork to get things going, Communication to get support and such, and Vision to see the project through from beginning to end.  I see exactly what he means everyday, and that is some of the most simple, yet knowledgeable words I have heard regarding my career path!

I know this is really really long! I apologize! If you know anyone who I didn't send this to and knows what I'm doing this summer please forward it on! I don't mean to leave anyone out!!! Take care and have a great long weekend!!!

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