building

Today was our first build day in Lawrence, Mass -- an old mill town a few miles from Andover. After a delicious breakfast (thank you Webbers!) we drove to Lawrence from the school we're staying at in Andover. It was crazy to see the transition out the car window from Andover's large stately houses to the rundown cramped Lawrence area.

When we got there, the site director quickly seperated us into three groups: 1. people with construction experience who weren't afraid of heights, 2. people with construction experience who are afraid of heights, and 3. people without construction experience. You can guess which group I was in. As most of the group started tackling the frame and walls of the house, ten of us drove off to another site, where we would dig holes and place the posts separating three new habitat houses from two older habitat duplexes behind them.

I thought it would take us a few hours tops. But then, I started digging. I'd remembered learning in my environmental history courses about the rockiness of New England soils. Well... they're rocky. It took hours of hacking out the ground with shovels, post diggers, and even a crowbar in order to dig the 19 holes (each 2 feet deep) that we needed. After lunch (again, thanks to the Webbers) we returned to our site to mix and pour cement around the posts. It was pretty tiring, but cool to see what we accomplished, and also to get a chance to talk to my fellow B&Bers one-on-one while we struggled through the rocky soil.