So today was the most effective day we had so far, and thus was a good way to end the trip. Pretty much started like every other day except today we got to put down the God forsaken paintbrushes and do some real labor. We worked on clearing the overgrown sections of the front of the school. We dug out roots, raked weeds, moved dirt and got sunburnt. It was sweet. Today made the most difference out of the whole place. That’s not to say that what we did earlier in the week wasn’t important, it’s just that the difficulty of labor today made me feel like we really made a difference. Today was the first day we got really addressed for the work we had done—one of the volunteers let us know how valued the chores we were doing really were. We thanked him with exhausted, dirty, sweaty smiles and posed for a pretty good group picture in front of the bushes Jan had worked so hard on (she did an incredible job with that little plot of land, let me tell you). This is the only time I’ve been to South Carolina, and after having gotten used to it for the past 5 days, I’m ready to leave it. We came, we saw and we definitely conquered. Hopefully they continue to work on the extra stuff that needs to be done around that property—it has so much potential and should not be given up on. We’ve definitely only added to that potential and hopefully, we’ve given it a little spark of life in the form of white paint and clean sidewalks. It suddenly seemed like less of a prison today, and that’s what told me that what we had done made a difference.

-Matt C.