Bumping into walls or holes

Wow. I was totally disoriented when we arrived at SBV. What happened to the half finished cottages? I was amazed at the difference since April. Good news to the scrapers in cottage 4. Your work, and hideous work that was, paid off! The cottage looks great - painted, windows in, roof on! Cottage 3 is not quite there but so much farther along. Billy, I showed Hunter ("Casador") the room you tamped. The chapel is completely roofed and the portico almost finished. The dining hall is under construction too. They have switched construction materials from adobe blockas to concrete blocks. Huh. Real construction workers do adobe! At least the cinder blocks don't melt in the rain!

So we started on the playground. As always, day 1 is "bumping into walls" day. The fool proof instructions are, um, not so much. We began digging holes to the specified space between them only to realize the roofs are 10" wider than the instructions said. (Digging the holes goes like this: Take a long (heavy) steel rod with a pointy end and a flat end and jam it up and down in the dirt. After awhile, your partner digs out the dirt with her hands. Then start jamming the rod again. Hard work, very similar to tamping except much more jarring when you hit a rock... )OK, so fill up one row of holes and start again. We are working with Franklin who thinks he speaks English much better than he actually does. Wilmer was there to start us off, and rescue us now and then. Wilmer is the HOT young engineer. We also had William Scott (!) who is a Hickory NC transplant! He speaks Spanish with the world's worse accent! But is effective in communicating. Really nice guy. We learned alot today, Hunter routed all the edges of the posts, and we are getting a bigger drill bit for tomorrow. I think we will make alot more progress tomorrow. Typical day 1.

The kids are great. Two new girls, both 8, Doris and Evelyn. Today was Evelyn's first day at SBV! She came to us from INFA (Honduran social services) which means she has a grim story. Doris lived on the streets before coming to us 2 months ago. Gina is great, John, and wanted you to know she was sharing the candy! Angelie is getting bigger by the minute as 2 yr olds tend to do. Still so very beautiful. The teens are funny and causing a bit of trouble as teenaged girls tend to do. The little boys, Sergio, Fernando, Elias, et al are charging around like normal.

Late in the day the boys discovered Hunter's leg. They were fascinated by it! Hunter explained it in Spanish and said it was "un regalo de Dios" - a gift from God, the way he has always thought about his leg. The boys were totally puzzled by another comment he made. Then, of course, they wanted to know what is right leg was like. (He had on long pants) He said it was "concreta" (concrete) meaning it is very strong. Their eyes bugged out! I quickly clarifed that it is "como concreta" while they lifted his pant leg to touch it and see for themselves!

Check out the pix... just a few so far. More tomorrow!

Amanda

Checking out the leg:

Evelyn:



Chapel portico:

Cottage 3:

View of cottages 3&4: