This past week was my university’s Spring Break so a group of 19 college students and one advisor from our school went to work with the Broward County Habitat for Humanity in the Fort Lauderdale, FL area. We stayed in a state park and had a ton of fun! Check out my group’s and my adventures!

Sunday

We left at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning and despite that being super early, I was very excited about going to Florida so it wasn’t very hard to wake up. We drove for a little over 17 hours from Fredericksburg, VA to Fort Lauderdale, FL, stopping several times for food and gas. I had never been in a car for that long but it was totally worth it to be in warm Florida! The next morning was going to be our free day in the Everglades so we went to bed and slept in a little.

Monday

When we woke up, the group leaders were still out buying groceries for the week so several of us went to the beach, a quick walk in an underground tunnel that ran under a busy road. The beach was so beautiful and the water was amazingly clear.

We left for the Everglades in the early afternoon and got there in about two hours. We stopped at three places, walking the trails at each one. The second one we went to had two alligators chilling out of the water, within a reachable distance. I was hoping we would be able to hold baby gators, but we didn’t find anywhere to do that. The Everglades are very pretty (and not buggy) during early March which was wonderful. We all took lots of pictures and tried to spot as many animals as we could. We saw gators, an owl, frogs and lizards in just a few hours. As we were driving back to Fort Lauderdale, we stopped by a big, family-owned fruit stand on the side of the road, called “Robert is Here” (and Robert really was there). There was more fruit than I had ever heard of or seen in one place, and there were also animals. They had parrots and chickens out back behind the fruit stand. Many of us tried unusual fruit for the first time, although their mangoes were a huge hit with some people in our group. Before we returned to our campground, we stopped at Kelly’s Landing for dinner which was so delicious. My roommate and I split a brownie topped with ice cream and demolished it in seconds because it was so good.

Tuesday

Wake up call was about 6 AM, but like the drive down, we were pretty excited about our first day on the work sites so getting up wasn’t too hard. We got to our meeting place and signed in. There were two other college groups in our Collegiate Challenge so after they arrived, we went to a big field in the back of the house and formed a circle. The site leaders talked for a few minutes and did introductions, then we said a prayer (Habitat is a Christian organization but they do not discriminate). Our theme or phrase for the week was “it’s not a hand out, it’s a hand up!” We split up into several work crews. My group went to a house several streets away, where I spent the morning building picnic benches for lunch, pulling nails out of concrete and chipping away excess concrete around the base of the house. After lunch we cleaned up our sites and headed back to our campground. Once we got back to our cabins, most of us changed into bathing suits and headed to the beach. Several of us played a hilariously horrendous game of volleyball on the beach. That night we went into the downtown area nearby and ate at a pizza place and then walked around for a while after we finished. With all of our hard work and many hours in the sun, we all fell asleep quickly.

Wednesday

Waking up was a little more difficult after our busy Tuesday. One of my friends and I switched jobs so I worked with the hospitality group which was two older women named Jean and Barbara. They are called “Care-a-Vanners” because they live in an RV, traveling the United States for months at a time, helping at various Habitats. Together, we sorted the dozens and dozens of shirts in one of the storage units. We also created a clothesline to help dry some of the shirts that seemed damp. Part of hospitality included making sure those of the students and adults working near our site were kept hydrated so we handed water and Gatorade up a ladder to the super-hot roof workers.

After we ate lunch on our site, we headed back to our cabins to go to the beach again. After dinner, we had a group game night which mostly included Cards Against Humanity and a card game called Tourette’s. There were many, many laughs and everyone had a great time. If we didn’t have to be at our sites so early, we probably would have played for hours longer.

Thursday

On Thursday, we had group pictures when everyone got to our meeting site. All of the participants were given green shirts with a handprint on a house and our “it’s not a hand out, it’s a hand up” phrase earlier in the week so we all wore those. We all took a giant group picture with nearly 60 people and then our separate college group pictures. After pictures, we went to our worksites and got a lot done. Many of our students said they finished as much work on Thursday as they had completed on Tuesday and Wednesday combined which was exciting. Our lunch was sponsored by the Cheesecake Factory and they had given us sandwiches and several types of cheesecake. My roommate and I both got there early to help sell the shirts we had organized the day before, so we got first dibs on cheesecake. We chose a Hershey’s chocolate cheesecake, and although I’m usually not a fan of cheesecake, we both nearly finished our huge pieces before we got too full. Three of us sold shirts during lunch and we made a lot of money. All of the money we made will go right back into Habitat so we were glad to help Habitat even more. I got a free shirt for working at our little stand so I chose a pink Habitat tank-top which I wore the next day. (It might be my new favorite shirt.)

When we got back to our cabins, we got ready for our afternoon adventures. About half of us went to Miami and the other half went to a place called Vizcaya Museum and Gardens (they stumbled upon manatees!!). Although it was cloudy in Miami, the beach and ocean were still beautiful and crowded. We grabbed a meal at a tourist trap (oops) and one of our girls even held a boa constrictor!

Friday

Friday was our last day in Florida and at our work sites. As we got ready in the morning, we wrote and signed “thank you” notes to the various leaders at our sites. Before our morning circle, we had our little shirt stand again and sold a few more shirts. Some of the adults thanked our 60+ participants for a wonderful week and being amazing people. They also mentioned we were one of the best-behaved groups they had ever had, especially at our campground (good job to us). I gave our thank-you note to the two hospitality ladies, Jean and Barbara, and they said they had never received one in all of their years of Habitat-ing so I was glad we were able to give them their first one.

My roommate and I did not have much to do in hospitality that day, so Jenna used her camera and Elliot (the Volunteer Coordinator) gave me his to go around and photograph all of the workers and sites. Jenna and I got a lot of great pictures of everyone in action. After we came back from our last day at the sites, many of us hit up the beach for one last time. We wrote our Positive Gossip (aka Pogos) to the 19 other people in our group. Pogos are notes that compliment others in the group and are one of the best parts of the trip. That night we had one of the families who will be receiving one of the houses we worked on come to our campground. We danced (all 50+ college kids did the Cha-Cha Slide) and had a lot of fun with the mother and two daughters. After they left, we cleaned the dining hall before we had our campfire.

At our campfire we did our highs and lows for the week and then we did paper-plate awards. My award was “most likely to have an army field operation kit in her backpack” because I bought a ridiculous number of Band-Aids before we got to Florida. Although some would consider it “overpacking” and maybe even unnecessary to have nearly 200 Band-Aids in my backpack, everyone came to me when they got injured because they knew I had something to help them. The only kind of Band-Aid I didn’t have was latex-free which one girl needed, but I fixed her up with medical tape and gauze pads. We ate s’mores and cleaned our cabins, packing to go home the next day.

Saturday

We woke up at 5 AM to get on the road by 6 AM. When we stopped for breakfast, the leaders handed out our Pogo-filled envelopes so that everyone could finally read their Pogos as we drove home. The drive back was filled with singing and making funny and sassy memes in the group chat with pictures of each other from the past week. As we reached the North Carolina-Virginia border, one girl’s parents met us at a rest stop with Krispy Kreme donuts! It was very sweet of them and we really enjoyed it. It took a little less time to get back to Virginia and although we were leaving beautiful and warm Florida, it was nice to sleep in our own beds and not wake up early.

I highly recommend going on a Habitat trip if you can! They’re so fun and you learn so much about yourself, those around you, and how to build things. Plus, you get to know amazing people who work for the Habitat in the city you go to. Even if you don’t know anyone on your trip. I guarantee you can make a new friend within a day or two (or on the drive there, depending on how far you’re traveling)! I am so thankful every time I go on a Habitat trip because I always have such a great time.