A few hundred Penn State students traveled south for spring break last week, but not for margaritas and sun bathing.

The Penn State chapters of Habitat for Humanity and United Campus Ministry spent their week away from school rebuilding parts of the South -- part of a nationwide service effort to clean up the devastation after Hurricane Katrina.

Howard Wu (junior-economics) led a group of 16 students to Meridian, Miss., one of the evacuation points for Gulf Coast hurricane victims last year. Their trip was one of eight organized by Habitat for Humanity, which involved 129 students this year.

The group teamed up with other college students and professionals, working on everything from installing insulation and roofing, to building a house for a mother and her three young children.

On Friday, the group visited the coastline to see the progress.

"It was difficult to anticipate how totaled the area was," Wu said. "None of us really understood what we were going to see mile after mile after mile."

The student volunteers worked from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m every day. They also took time to get to know each other and explore Meridian, Wu said.

The group left State College early March 4 and returned late Saturday night.

Wu said that not only was the experience rewarding, but they also had fun.

"I have done this for three years now," he said. "People who go will tell you it is not a sacrifice."

Ashley Tarabay (freshman-marketing and psychology) also volunteered in Meridian, on her first trip with Habitat for Humanity. She said now she hopes to be a trip leader in the future.

"It was something that I always wanted to do, and with the hurricane hitting, I wanted to be an actual part of rebuilding the south," she said.

The group, which Tarabay said consisted mainly of freshmen, seniors and graduate students, worked with a group of Vanderbilt University students and AmeriCorps volunteers all week.

"The devastation is indescribable," she said. "The news does not even portray how awful it is, and it was upsetting."

She said that while visiting the gulf coast, she could not even tell that any work had been done.

"If that's what it looks like now, I do not even want to know what it looked like before," she said.

The family that would be receiving the house came to the work site throughout the week.

"They were so excited to be getting a house," she said. "The kids were picking out their rooms."

Tim Earnshaw (junior-accounting) coordinated the organization's trip to Spring Hill, La. His group helped finish a house and then traveled to nearby sites to help other groups with their projects.

"The past two spring breaks I hung out at home," he said. "I was just trying to do something new."

Eric Sauder (freshman-electrical engineering) joined 60 students organized by United Campus Ministry in Louisiana during the break.

The volunteers spent a week in several towns in Louisiana. Sauder went to Dulac, La., to work with the local community center run by the United Methodist Church.

He said they met with hurricane victims at the center and spoke with victims from the local Houma Native American tribe, which is not recognized by the government.

"As far as most people are concerned, they don't exist," he said.

The students worked on a variety of jobs, making repairs requested by residents who came to the community center for help.

"The damage was different in different places," he said. "We had people in New Orleans doing really rough work, like clearing mud out of houses."

Sauder said it was a humbling experience to see the things they saw.

"Things were just not where they are supposed to be," he said. "Like boats on land and huge amounts of trash out on the streets."