The entire team arrived safely at Los Angeles Airport Monday at 11:30 p.m. A four-hour delay in Malaysia made for a later arrival time.

10 p.m.

It's over. Tomorrow we all go home. We're in Mount Lavinia, outside of Colombo, in a nice hotel. My room is bigger than my house. It's big.

We went into the village before we left. They had a thank you program for the group and other people who did things for the villagers. One group provided boats, one group is building a community center.

All these villagers who have absolutely nothing were dressed in their absolute best clothing. One woman was dressed to the nines. She is one the group is helping to build a house for. She took us back to her old house that was destroyed in the tsunami. There were holes in the walls and part of the house was on the ground. She's still living in the shell of the house. The yard was destroyed. Yet she's dressed in her best clothes. For some reason that really kind of hit me.

The villagers' feelings are genuine. You look at their eyes, when they see foreigners, they see hope. Almost to a person they say they don't trust their government, and that their government hasn't helped them. The only help they're getting is from charities.

The group is still talking about everything. Talking about people they met. The houses aren't finished. The village still has partial walls and walls without roofs -- damage from the tsunami. And then there are the new buildings that are partially finished. The buildings damaged from the tsunami reflect the end. The new walls reflect the beginning.

Some people down there knew the pope had died. But it wasn't until we got to Mount Lavinia that I learned it. I went to a Buddhist Temple in Mount Lavinia. It was quiet and serene. The monks had their robes on a laundry line in the back hanging out to dry. I talked to them and they talked about how sad they were that the pope was gone. Their memory of him was as a friend.

They said the pope had shown them kindness. He had visited Sri Lanka before. They said he was a spiritual leader and they wanted to pay their respects.

We leave the hotel at 4 a.m. tomorrow and fly to Malaysia, and then to Taipei and then to Los Angeles. We get in there at 6:25 p.m. Monday. It takes just over 24 hours to get home.

10 p.m.

We're wrapping up. This is really the last work day. The houses aren't complete, but some are getting very near complete. The villagers have been doing much of the work so they'll be able to complete it.

The team provided the money, momentum and planning. Everyone is really upbeat. There was more interaction between the team and the villagers than there ever has been. Some of them exchanged gifts.

One 65-year-old villager gave Chris Wright, the 18-year-old from the church, a pine cone and a piece of coral. Wright gave him a picture of his home and his address and a shirt. He has really bonded with the people, probably more than anyone else. He's worked elbow- to-elbow with them. They really like him, he really likes them.

Tomorrow there's a ceremony in honor of all the work they've done in the village. Not exactly sure what it will be.

Today, Matt and I watched silt fishermen. They sit on a branch that's about 12 feet high that's placed out over the water. They put another branch and make a little seat on it and they sit out there and fish for sardines and coral fish. They told us the fishing got much worse after the tsunami. They aren't sure why. The theories are that the water that came so far ashore dragged some sort of poisons back into the water.

On the way back, we saw about 30 people hauling in a net from the ocean. They set it several hundred yards out, and then they haul it in and harvest any fish they find. The harvest was pretty small, and the fish were so small. The fishermen don't know what to do.

The mood was kind of giddy today. Even though we've been through monsoon rains and a tsunami warning, every group member said they would like to come back. They're all fired up about it and talk about how much they like it.

It's 90 degrees every day, it's 90 percent humidity. It's hard. This is the physically hardest assignment I've ever had. There are mosquitoes. It's not a place I'd vacation.

Tonight was Sri Lankan night again at the buffet table. We also had shrimp cocktails. There was curry, dahl curry. And they had seafood. They had some sort of pepper beef steak. I'm going to do a food story on coconuts. Several times they cracked them open and we drank down the juice and ate the fruit. Coconuts are everywhere. They use it in celebrations. They use coconut oil. They use it for shelter -- they weave the fronds together for a roof. They use it in everything. The hotel chef said in every meal he cooks there is some coconut. They make their french fries in coconut oil. They're really good.

10:20 p.m.

In my backpack I have everything that I would ever concievably need: extra contact lens, sunscreen, Deet, Power Bars for lunch, my rain gear that we've needed the last two days, the satellite phone that doesn't work, a roll of toilet paper, my malaria pills and my sleeping pills and my aspirin and my One-A-Day vitamins. The problem is that I have so much stuff in there that I keep losing stuff.

I thought I lost my malaria tablets, but I didn't. I thought I lost my notebook, which is worse than losing the malaria tablets, but I didn't. I thought I lost my double-billed hat (it has a baseball bill front and a wide bill in the back to protect your neck, it looks kind of geeky but it works) and I did.

We keep the backpacks with us at all times. Some people carry them on their backs whereever they go. I keep mine in the car. It's a backpack I borrowed from reporter Charles Levin. I was keeping my airplane tickets in there, but I was thinking that wasn't so smart.

We're getting toward the end of the trip. The work is progressing, but probably not as fast as originally hoped. I don't know if anyone had expected that they would finish all those houses. It looks likely that they won't finish the houses, but they will be finished by villagers after they leave. The group has been working with villagers all along, and now they'll just hand them off to villagers.

The walls are going up, the brick walls, it's kind of cool watching them go up.

We drank nectar from flowers from the coconut palms. The nectar is fermented and is alcoholic, they say. Someone from the village shimmied up a coconut tree and harvested the nectar so I could taste it. It's white frothy stuff, looks like milk with a head on it. It has a weird, pungent odor. And it tastes kind of carbonated. Can't really tell that it's alcohol. I'm not convinced it is -- they say it is.

We did a little shopping today at the end of the day. We bought gifts for people and stuff. Everything here is incredibly inexpensive. I bought a Pink Floyd CD for $4. You can get nice gifts for nothing.

10 p.m.

Matt McClain does the blog today.

I want to tell my mom not to worry.

We're working long days. But I'm wearing my Deet. And the clothing you bought me, the mosquito repellant clothing, it's working for the most part. I'm getting bit some, but I feel fine.

I'm thinking about my mom, dad and brother. After Monday night, the really long day, we were both really tired. I came back and thought of my mom because I turned on the stereo system, they had an oldies stations on. They had Elvis live at Madison Square garden. Mom is big Elvis fan, like me. I thought of her and it gave me my second wind. I felt good the rest of the week.

But they didn't have that station any more the rest of the week. Instead, they had a Sengalese station. And a really bad contemporary music station where they played covers of songs. It had a really awful rendition of a U2 song. I went down to the lobby to ask them if they could get the other station back. That became my routine at night though, turning on the music. They would have some weird version of the Bee Gees or Anne Murray.

As far as the rest of the work, during our journey yesterday Tom and I went on a 21/2 hour excursion to the south. After riding with our driver, I don't think I'll ever be afraid of California driving again. Because even though Californians don't use turn signals, they don't pass on blind curves. It's petrifying. The whole time you think your heart's in your throat.

The people here are really friendly. Everybody's been warm and inviting. It's a great place. On one of the first days, a village woman asked if I was married. I said I was single. She asked if I like Sri Lankan women. You never know, I might meet somebody out here.

I think she was trying to set me up with her sister.

I need to do some more work before I go to bed. More later.

10 p.m.

We had a good day. It was raining really hard today. It's less right now. It's going to be soup out there tomorrow. It's not the monsoon, just a hard rain.

Some of the people are still living in tents, and they live in an area that floods really easily.

Matt and I went to a village just outside of Tangalle. It was a little group of villages on the Sri Lankan deep south -- right on the southern tip. We hooked up with Will Prosser, an artist from Ojai, who has been in Sri Lanka for two months doing relief work. He's part of a group that has been providing fishing line, hooks and other supplies to fishermen. His group is led by an Australian.

He's been involved with giving away mattresses to villages. Today they gave away a pickup truckload of propane tanks and gas burners. That was pretty cool. He showed us around the village.

The villagers gave us tea. It was really, really good. It was sweet, almost tasted like a cappuccino. It was creamy and sweet.

One of the things that was interesting is that there is so much need down here, but there's also much scamming by the villagers. It's hard to tell who is really in need.

Will said he thinks they're doing good if they can get 80 percent of what they're giving to the people who really need it. They factor in a 20 percent bilk factor. He said some charities think they're doing a good job if they get 50 percent of what they give to the people who need it.

Will is staying in Sri Lanka until June. And he says he'll probably go back again.

His worry going over there was that he wouldn't be able to make a difference. But now he thinks that he has. He feels very fulfilled by what he is doing. One of the things while he was there -- the villagers kept demanding fishing nets. He doesn't have them and told them they have to go through the government to get them. Thousands of nets were destroyed in the tsunami. It's a desperate need.

But his group decided not to focus on fishing nets because they don't think they can find them to provide them. So they're focusing on housing. They want to build between 50 and 100 houses.

The area where Will is has about 1,600 people who live there. About 120 people died in the tsunami. it was really hard hit.

Back in Hikkaduwa it's a driving, hard rain. And I suspect that it's going to be wet tomorrow. The rain didn't start hard until the evening. So they did make progress today. They have walls going up at every one of their five construction sites.

They drive like maniacs here. It's just crazy. They pass into facing traffic -- addictively. They do it with trucks, buses, maybe 50 meters ahead. It's crazy. There's probably a dozen times that you think you're going to get hit. They make California drivers seem cautious. I've never seen anything like it. They have a system -- when you're in a passing lane they beep to the oncoming traffic. They do this going into blind curves. I guess you're suppose to hear the beep and slow down.

10 p.m.

The village went crazy last night after the earthquake happened. They learned through the radio that there was a good chance of a tsunami. I was told the radio reported that a tsunami was coming. Almost all the villagers started running. They ran about 2 kilometers to an inland temple and spent the night there. About a handful of people stayed in the village and climbed coconut and mango trees and waited there.

There was all sorts of pandemonium. Kids were crying and people were running. At 4 a.m. they learned the tsunami alert had been canceled and they started coming back to the village.

The good thing is that the warning is off. Everyone is safe. I don't think there's any reason to worry now. We're all well. We're all healthy. And everyone seems to be in a good frame of mind.

2 a.m.

The team is huddled in one room on the fourth floor of the hotel in Hikkaduwa waiting to see if there will be a tsunami.

I had just taken my sleeping pill to go to bed. I was very groggy. Then someone came pounding on my door. They were our drivers trying to make me understand that a tsunami was coming. They said they were going to try to go to high land. They thought we were safe in the hotel because we were so high up.

The group is just waiting. They are in good spirits, no one seems scared. Chris Wright is sitting out on the balcony. He's writing in his journal. His Bible is next to him. He has a video camera.

Bill Champlain said the reason they don't sound worried is because of their faith in God. He's the team leader.

The hotel manager assures us that we are safe in the hotel. I asked him what he was advising his guests. He said he wanted them to stay put -- that there would not be any problems with safety. The bottom floor of the hotel is completely open, so water could go through. The hotel safely made it through the last tsunami.

Out in the streets it's desolate. Nobody's here. This is the main drag of Hikkaduah.

It's very eerie. But it is 2 a.m.

12:30 a.m.

The team has not decided to evacuate yet. I just got woken up and told the earthquake happened. Trying to figure out what to do. We are on the fourth floor of the hotel. We are told it is safe.

Our drivers came and woke us up. They said they are going up in the hills to be safe. But they thought we would be fine in our hotel on this floor.

The team was alerted about the earthquake near Sumatra. They are evacuating -- moving to higher ground.