みんなさん、今晩は。
Since Wednesday, I've been set up nicely in a home in Ishinomaki, about a two minute walk from the "Hope House" in the heart of the city. I have been continuing to do mud-outs with Samaritan's Purse, but for the past couple days I have been working with an entirely Japanese group from Chiba and Tokyo. These high school and college kids, now on vacation, were a joy to work with, but unfortunately most of them departed for home earlier today. I will be in Ishinomaki probably until Monday, when Higurashi-san will hopefully be able to give me a ride back to Tome. Sunday and Monday are the weekend days for the mud-out crews, so I'm not quite sure what I'll do over these next couple days. Maybe I'll study Japanese, or just go exploring. All in all, I like living here in Ishinomaki, and I hope I'll have another chance to do so before I head back to the states in late April.
Thanks for reading.
Julian ... what exactly are mud-outs?
ReplyDeleteSamaritan's Purse has a decent, albeit slightly ungrammatical description of the mud-out at http://www.samaritanspurse.jp/en/mudout.html, reproduced below.
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"Mud out" means complete removal of all furniture and belongings from a flooded house, remove damaged walls and floors, power wash the interior structure, and finally spray the structure with a sanitizing solution. Samaritan's Purse will provide your team with instructions, tools and supplies to do the job. Though this team requires little to no experience with construction or the mudding out process, the work can be physically strenuous. Hopefully volunteers will have the opportunity to speak to the home owner being helped.
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