ew place is experiencing the food. And one of the greatest things about traveling to a place on the coast is FRESH SEAFOOD. We had it on good authority that Lookout 49 and the Ole Biloxi Schooner were some of the best places to eat around Biloxi, and we were not disappointed. (Um, yeah that's me elegantly stuffing my face with a crabmeat po-boy).
Biloxi also has a bunch of brand new casinos and resorts, which will hopefully help to get it back on its feet. Our second night at Yankie Stadium we watched this video put together by the local news station about Katrina. The before and after shots made my jaw drop. Driving around the city two and a half years later we would see landmarks we recognized from the video and realize, "there used to be a church there..." or we'd see buildings that had been gutted by the storm and haven't been touched since. This 
used to be a dock...But if nothing else, driving past that stuff every day made us all the more motivated to build and do what little we could to help. We worked at a job site with some people from a Habitat chapter in Maryland, and some really cool students from Coe College (a small school in Iowa). We had a good time comparing UF and Coe... though I really hope I didn't offend them when I gasped and burst out with, "Wait, you only have ONE library??" I sometimes forget that I go to something like the 3rd largest university in the nation...
Anyway, our site leaders were these guys named Mike and Jim. On the first day we met them, the only way I could tell them apart was that one wore a red shirt and one wore green, so in my head I quickly dubbed them Mario and Luigi. We also worked with a really upbeat Americorp girl named Liz.
During the week we worked on hammering in hurricane straps, decking the floor, (the way Habitat houses
are built in the Gulf Coast are much different than the ones we build in Gainesville--they're put up on cinder blocks to prevent flooding so you're automatically always going to be several extra feet off the ground) laying out chalk lines for the walls (this was cool... I'd never really had a good look at a Habitat floor plan much less been in control of making sure the walls went in the right place) and our pride and joy--we built two sheds. (Sam decided it was much more appropriate to call them mini-houses. Seriously, I would live in one).
We had a great time building all week, getting stuck in the Mississippi mud, and I learned about something pretty cool. Our build site was being prepped for the Jimmy Carter Work Project, which I didn't know anything about. Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. president, was the first big name to put Habitat for Humanity on the map, so they say. His involvement made HFH much more recognized by the public, and every year one place is chosen for the Jimmy Carter Work Project (previous ones have been in India and Los Angeles, e.g.) For one week, a TON of celebrities and volunteers including the Carter family work to get an insane amount of houses done. This year I believe it's supposed to be 30 new houses built and 30 renovated in one week. That's an insane amount of work for one week. So much that in order for it to happen, people prep these sites for months and months ahead of time, which is what was going on at our site.
Although our fantastic sheds are permanent, the walls that were put up during the week (to make sure everything fit right) will come down, so that the whole house can be put together during the JCWP. At first this seemed extremely counterintuitive and almost a waste of time... But then you think about how much money and awareness this brings to Habitat, and realize that it's a pretty important feat. And since only one place is chosen for the JCWP each year, it was pretty cool that we happened to be there.Well now that I have rambled on, Biochemistry is waiting impatiently for me.
