Gerald was our father figure for the day and took all of us students to the job site. There was a little confusion about how to explain that we are volunteers, but we are off site volunteers for the design producers. Everything got figured out and we all got our blue Extreme Makeover t-shirts and white hard hats; that we all looked so cute in (:
Emily was dying to meet Paige and Amber was dying to meet Ty!!! We arrived on the site and saw all seven of the houses and were amazed at the progress that has been made-YES, they build seven houses in seven days! The exteriors were in my opinion 80-85% complete
We arrived at the perfect timing, because it was time for 32 seconds of silence with the American flag raised high above on top of the Joplin firetruck. (The 32 seconds represented the 32 minutes the tornado was on the ground.)
After the firetruck pulled away, Paige, Michael and Ty (3 of the 5 designers) were being interviewed right in front of us!!! We were all so excited and tried to get as close as possible. It is amazing to watch them get emotional over the stories each and every time they do a different project. After getting to be 3 feet away from some of my idols, we got to walk around and see the photos outside the houses of the families and take pictures of everything, including the amazing crowed surrounding and cheering on the workers with signs.
Do we wanna be on TV? An executive producer walks up to us and asks if we were busy and if we wanted to be in a scene? Of course I raised my hand and screamed "YES" while everyone else laughed at me. Half of our group got to go see the headquarters of where the blueprints and live screen footage of each house being built, and there was a screen that showed the entire block! Gerald, Melissa, Amber, Aubrey, Amanda and I all got the opportunity to ask the executive producer all the questions we wanted to about the show and how things work! While on the opposite side of the street Emily, Stephanie, Sarah, Katlyn and Jessica got filmed with Pauly (Designer)!
It gets even better!! We all got to take a group picture with him and get his autograph on the back of our shirts!! :) He was very personable and interested in us and who we were.
After all of that excitement, Emily gets to meet her idol! Paige who was about to film a scene, took a minute and let us get a group photo with her. The photo turned out to be fuzzy, but at least we know that it is her in the photo, and Gerald got a very nice clear picture with her, lucky guy! Emily got the chance to give her a hug and it was amazing how caring the designers seemed to be and how they really do care about all of us working hard with them!
Tonight at dinner, that amazing Gerald offered to buy for us, Amber got the opportunity of a lifetime, that I am not going to talk about, because it is her excitement and she will be on here sometime this week to post!
This has been a weekend to remember, and even though myself and some others are leaving tomorrow we will still be notified about what is going on and keeping everyone posted! Today was the highlight of my year and I know that we are all going to be sitting in front of a TV together watching the two hour long episode screaming at the TV "I made that!"
Keep reading all of the student posts that are posted, and I hope I did not forget anything!
Goodnight!
-ERICA-
