#4: Spend a day volunteering with Habitat for Humanity

Since high school, I've always enjoyed volunteering, and for some reason, building a house for someone through Habitat for Humanity seemed to be the pinnacle of volunteer experiences. Perhaps because building a house seems so hard and complicated, but also because of the underlying notion of how important a "home" is to a person's life, and here you are making that possible for them. Surprisingly, actual "build" experiences with Habitat seem to be harder to come by than you might imagine! I have been trolling their Web site at random intervals for a few years now, but every time I search for volunteer experiences, they are always at their "home office" doing who-knows-what. In my mind I wanted to get in on the actual physical labor, toiling away at the land, not sitting behind a desk, which I already do for 40+ hours a week.

A few weeks ago, just as I was starting to dive back into my 30 Things list, I got an e-mail from Disney VoluntEARS saying they were organizing a Habitat build day, and as you can imagine, I jumped at the chance to participate. I recruited my friend Anna from work to come along with me, and together we donned our white VoluntEARS t-shirts and headed over to Pine Hills to do some building.

Of course right off the bat, my sunny optimism about the day was shot down as we hit an atypical early morning Florida rain storm on our drive over to the build site. Any other Saturday, a morning shower would have made for a great excuse to stay in bed and read a book, but when you're en route to a construction site of sorts to do landscaping and yard work (in a white t-shirt nonetheless), this is not a welcome experience. Needless to say, we arrived at the site and were greeted by a very sandy (and ever-so-rapidly becoming very muddy) landscape in the middle of a semi-creepy part of town. Already I started to ask myself why I ever volunteered for this in the first place.

 

It was hot. It was raining. And the two together created my very favorite Florida weather condition -- steamy humid air -- the kind that creeps under your clothes and makes everything stick to you...the kind that your hair oh-so-quickly absorbs to create a frizzy mess. And here I was gathered under a very small car-port with 30 other sweaty people waiting to begin sloshing around in mud for 6 hours. What fun.

All this in mind, you can see why I very quickly volunteered to be a part of the crew that would do tasks other than lay sod and landscaping around the very large yard, thinking this would be a way to not get totally wet and utterly dirty (although I was warned to wear clothes I wouldn't mind getting dirty, it had become clear that if I took part in the yard work my clothes would go beyond dirty and reach into the range of becoming garbage, which I was not prepared for). So instead I was relegated to the task force of 6 women who would clean the inside of this new home to prepare it for the owners.

 

Let me back-track for a second and talk about Habitat for Humanity as an organization, as I learned some new things in this experience. Firstly, I never realized that Habitat was a religious organization. And even though they claimed to be "non-denominational" and supportive of all religions, they started the day off with a prayer in Jesus' name (and might I remind them that many religions, including mine, don't actually pray in Jesus' name, so if you want to be supportive of all religions, you might want to re-think that prayer). More importantly, I learned that there is actually a really rigorous application process to get a Habitat home and that the homes aren't given to the new owners scott-free. Rather, it's a loan like any mortgage, but Habitat sells it to the owner at-cost and interest free. They call it a hand-up rather than a hand-out, which aligns really nicely with my personal charitable beliefs, so I quite liked the sentiment.

 

Back to cleaning. This task seemed SO much better than the yard work, until we quickly realized that the home had no power. This meant no air conditioning, no fans, no lights, no nothing. And of top of that, the "cleaning supplies" we were given to clean an entire house included a couple very old, nearly broken vaccum cleaners (which we had to hook up to an external generator outside), some dirty mops, a couple of sponges and some rags. And this was a VERY dirty house. I'm talking sawdust everywhere, mud and grime tracked all over the floors and into the bathrooms, windows coated in fingerprints and cobwebs, etc.. This was a serious cleaning job that would have required a lot of new cleaning tools...and some air circulation.

 

We did the best we could. But when I realized that mopping the tile floors in the bathroom was actually making it dirtier than it was before, I sort of gave up. It wound up that Anna and I stood around feeling sort of awkward and useless for much of the time, although we did plenty of vaccuming, dusting, window cleaning and the like. By 11:30, I think both of us were over the experience and just ready to get cleaned up ourselves, eat something and sit in front of the blasting A/C for a long, long time.

So am I happy that I chose to volunteer with Habitat? Certainly! Do I ever feel the desire to do it again? Unless it's a freezing, sunny day in February where we're not tracking around in dirt? Probably not. Of course, I still believe Habitat for Humanity is doing great things for the community, so I'd encourage others to give them some of their time, but I warn you that the physical side of it may not be as glamorous as it appears when you're actually in the moment.

And with that, I can proudly say that I've reached the half-way point in my 30 Things list. It's honestly taken me longer to get here than I hoped, and with only 13 months remaining until I turn 30, it's going to be a bit of a challenge knocking through the second half of the list. But I remain determined, and even if it requires a little bit of altering to my items, I will get there! Until then...

#15: Go Parasailing

It's a bit shameful that it's been 8 months since I've updated this blog, although I like to think that I have good reason -- I started saving my money! I know it may seem weird for me to confess that previously I wasn't doing so, but the truth is that for the longest time I was literally living paycheck-to-paycheck, and while I was getting by and squeezing in a few extras along the way, I had a bit of an epiphany that a) if I ever want to buy a house b) if I want to be able to afford a new car when my lease expires and c) if God forbid I should ever get fired and need to support myself, I better start finding a way to save some money. Thus with the shift of a portion of my income to a savings account, much of the funds I was using to fulfill the tasks on my 30 things list went out the window. And let me tell you, I did not pick 30 cheap things!

Alas, I think it was my very dear friend Tausha that helped me have my second epiphany, as I was mentioning to her that money was holding me back and I wasn't sure if I'd get through my list. And if I've pegged her correctly, she swiftly replied that I shouldn't forget this is my blog and I make the rules! There's no one standing behind me punishing me for swapping out an item on the list or modifying it to make it more affordable. Once that clicked in my mind, I was re-inspired and ready to start checking off items again, even if it meant they'd be altered some from their original intention.

However, today's post really isn't meant to go into detail about how and when I'll be altering some of these items, but rather it's to get back on the bandwagon and share my story of conquering number 15: going parasailing!

 I have my good friends at Disney Vacation Club to thank for this one, as the admin on our team, Karen, who graces my pictures in this post, just happened to have the right connections and was able to secure a parasailing outing for our team for free (thanks Karen!)! So what started as just another day at work swiftly turned into the rare opportunity to check a normally very expensive item off my list without spending a dime. (I will say that my original intention was to go parasailing over the ocean somewhere, with the beautiful, crystal clear, blue water glistening beneath me, but settling for sky-high views of the Magic Kingdom, and even downtown Orlando just had to do!)

For those of you that haven't been parasailing before, I like to think of it as the perfect intersection between an adventure and relaxation. Obviously you've got the height factor -- which for us topped out at 600 feet -- but while you're in the air, it's as if you're the only person on the planet. The views are truly spectacular, and I was amazed at just how far I could see (it was a particularly clear morning). I think my biggest fear the entire time was that a nearby bird would fly into us/our parachute and wreak some havoc (which thankfully did not happen). I'll admit that I was death-gribbing the harness straps for the first five minutes or so, but once I realized I could relax my body and not fall to my death, it was a beautiful thing.

 

The flight in itself lasted for about 8-10 minutes and that's including the fairly slow ascent and descent (there's none of that stomach dropping feeling that most people hate). Unfortunately, there's not much opportunity to take pictures while you're in the air (unless you don't care about accidentally dropping your phone and/or camera into the water), so my photos are limited to before and afters. But once you're back in the boat, if you're with other folks going parasailing, you get to enjoy a nice 10-minute boat ride while you're friends are off floating through the sky - a really nice way to cap the experience.

I will say that now that I've done parasailing, I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay the typical $100 per person to do it again. But boy oh boy was it great to experience! And even better is that I've got another 30 things item on the schedule for just two weeks from now. I'll be heading to Disney's Vero Beach Resort for the weekend and it just so happens to be the very time of year that the loggerhead sea turtle eggs tend to start a'hatching. While there's no guarantee that it will happen the one night that I'm walking along that shoreline, I'm hoping that the 30 things gods bless me with a miracle! Speak to you then!