A group of Maryland college students are making their home at Franklinton Center at Bricks for Spring Break this week, to do something different with their holiday.

The 20 students from Hood College, a private college in Frederick, Md., are staying at Franklinton through this week. Their work includes doing exterior renovation to the center's administration building and pool, as well as going out to area schools and speaking with students.

Tuesday, many of the Hood students chipping away old paint and coating the administration building said they came to Franklinton for an opportunity to know their fellow students better.

As she swept up paint chips on the building's front steps, Hilary Lawch, 18, of Bethesda, Md., said she came to Franklinton Center for Spring Break because she thought it would be "a great opportunity to bond with classmates I haven't met before."

While painting on some finishing touches to an outside wall, Joe Hood, 22, from Frederick, Md., said this was his first Spring Break spent doing community service. Like Lawch, Hood said it was a good opportunity for him to meet his classmates.

Although he only has a five-minute commute to Hood's campus, he said the trip to Franklinton is "the best of both worlds" for him. It allows him to do community service, while getting to know his classmates better all in the same trip.

As she used a roller to apply white paint to one of the building's walls, Junghyun Lee, 23, an exchange student from South Korea, said the Franklinton trip has been "pretty fun" so far.

"I wanted to meet people, (and) I never hung out with (people of) different races" before, Lee added.

Jacob Ausherman, 18, of Laurel, Md., said he came to Franklinton because he "thought it'd be fun, to know I'm doing a good job instead of staying home and not doing anything" over Spring Break.

While he was edging a sidewalk, Dr. Ted Chase, Hood's associate dean of students, said that having the students and faculty work together, and talking while they're doing it, helps bring them together and learn more about being part of a community. And, to him, it acts as a sort of "getaway" for students and Hood staff.

"It is a getaway in many respects. (It) recharges some of those human batteries, by doing things together you wouldn't typically do," like renovating a building's exterior, Chase said.

For Hood's track team coach Brent Ayer, it really is a form of getaway. He said that coming to Franklinton gives him a week off from his coaching responsibilities, as well as his second full-time job as a congressional staffer.

Though the Franklinton Center helped rebuild areas of Edgecombe County after Hurricane Floyd hit in September 1999, the Rev. Ervin Milton, the center's executive director, said the work the Hood students are doing "helps out" with the operation of the center.

"It helps out because as a non-profit organization, we're (often) working on a shoe-string budget and can't always afford" to have professionals paint and maintain the buildings of the more the nearly 160-year-old property.

By treating their work like they would while working on their own home, Chase added that students could leave with a sense of "somebody (knowing) I was here" at Franklinton.