white house youth: 82 with a realfeel of 96.. what?

so our first day on site was very hot, as was expected. my phone told me it was 82 outside with a realfeel(tm) of 96. if it feels like 96 degrees, isn't it 96 outside? anyways, i digress. we arrived at the site a little sluggish for the first day, but were able to get a lot of the groundwork laid so that we can get some major work done in the days to come. as usual with my sites, we hit a few obstacles that are going to make it a challenge to get done by friday.. mostly with some spacial restrictions and having to reach some very high points on this house. not to mention all of the cicadas.

i didn't mention this last night, but i somehow got stuck with 4 of our students this week. i've never seen that happen. so i've got danielle, abby, mini pr, and half-hour bauer. so rest assured, they'll be safe with me. and they'll also stay busy!

our house has siding that can't be scraped, and as a result we have to peel off the loose paint by hand. i'll have an interesting picture from that venture below. we scraped the foundation, peeled lots of paint, and did a lot of work caulking and scraping around the porch area. there's a little more to do with that, but hopefully we'll be able to begin painting tomorrow. it's always a good step to be able to get started with that. i'm hoping that our students will get some better rest tonight as well, so that they can be a little more energetic tomorrow. staying at northside has given a few of them a sense of a lock-in, but they definitely regretted that today. lesson learned. i hope. i'll leave you with a few images of workcamp: day 1! enjoy.