Week 3 Day 2

Day 2 for the third week began like every other day with making lunches and eating breakfast. The two hour time difference has been very nice for me. Now I'm a morning person! I've been waking up between 7-8 for the couple of days I've been here. The workers came earlier than any of us expected so there was a mad rush around 8:45 for everyone to get ready and out the door.

We were promised an easier day than the first but honestly I can't tell the difference. Day two was around the same amount of work packed into a shorter time period. We began our work day by hauling the dirt we toted up the hill inside the house. Ontop of that we "frosted" our cake with bags of portland cement. After the bags were cut and emptied we topped the whole thing off with some rocks. This pile sat... waiting for us. After all the material was carried into the house and piled we fiddled around for a few hours while waiting for the workers to finish securing the rebar.

We took lunch after the workers were finished with the rebar. Our break was very long to say the least. Finally the break was over when we began to help the workers put up the forms for pouring the concrete. Not gonna name any names, but someone dropped a hammer in a crevace behind one of the walls. A good thirty minutes of the day was spent on fishing the hammer from the abyss. Enyo finally was able to use some wire to snag the hammer.

Finally it came time to work the pile of soon to be concrete that had been staring us in the face all day. In the hour we spent mixing the pile with water we probably worked harder than we had all week. I know thats probably some of the hardest work I've done in my life. That's coming from someone who worked in an aluminum smelter around some pretty nasty stuff in some undesirable conditions. We were very good about supporting each other through all the intensity. After mixing the concrete we loaded the mix into buckets which were then handed to the workers for filling the forms. When all of the concrete was poured we were finally finished for the day.

On my way out I couldn't help but rough house with some ninos. Some how I found some energy to flip them around for a while.

This is a week of many firsts for me. I took my first flight and first trip to a foreign country. After observing the lifestyle in both Antigua and Santa Maria de Jesus I'm very surprised at the similarities between this culture and my own. I see families that love eachother, eat together, smile together (sometimes with fewer teeth) and a sencerity like I've never seen before. At first they may seem like they have nothing, but the family we are helping has much more than many families back in the states.

- Patrick Windsor