Mas Construccion !

Buenos Dias!

Yesterday we woke up ready and eager to start day two of construction. We were super sore but it felt good to know that we are making a difference! A few of us got up and had a yoga session to get our joints moving again and it was a great way to start off the day. The ladies cooked us breakfast again and they made us pinapple pancakes. I have never seen pinapple put in pancakes before but now no pancake will ever be the same. It was muy sabrosa, or delicious! After breakfast we were met by our crew from yesterday, Timoteo, Miguel and Eduardo and left for the construction sites. We didnt completely finish our patio yesterday so four of us went with Miguel to finish that, while the rest of the group followed Timotao to the new location. We worked on building the patio until about 1:00pm until we went to lunch at a farmer’s house.At lunch you could tell that we were all getting pretty tired, but we came together and pep talked ourselves back up. What really motivated me to keep going was knowing that before we even began this morning, Timotao was picking coffee for a few hours prior to construction. These people work so hard for so many hours,but are still so completely happy about it. After lunch, our group of four re-joined the others at the new site, which was building a wall. At the new location there were two coffee patios that were old and broken basketball courts. There was a large crack in between the two where the wall was being assembled. This made us feel really good about the patio we built yesterday because we saw what they had to use instead of a coffee patio and it was not a good set up. Building the wall consisted of lots more teamwork. We had to mix more concrete, carry cinder blocks, and measure and stack the blocks too. Karissa was put on machete duty and got to cut the blocks with the machete. It was hilarious to watch. This station really tested our working together skills but it was tons of fun. We worked hard all the way until 5:00pm when we were done for the day. We said our goodbyes to Timotao, who stayed to keep working. We will all really miss him, he is the man. After two days of hard construction, I dont think we could have been more tired. Which makes me feel even worse, because these guys do this every day. We were sunburned and sore but we knew that meant we worked hard. We ran home to shower quickly before dinner with another family. Dinner is always at 6pm but today it was approaching 6:30 and no one had come to get us yet. Just then, the pizza delivery guy pulled up and we were told that we had a surprise movie and pizza night. This was SUCH good news because we were really dragging at this point. Some of us ran to the tienda and got some chips and soda and the movie night began. We hooked up a projector and watched a movie before crashing at about 9pm. Nicole had one more surprise for us, she had secretly contacted our friends and loved ones and they had all written us notes. It was the best surprise ever and I don’t think any of us have ever smiled that much. Many thanks to all of you who sent us some encouragement. It was a much needed piece of home!

Today we are off to work with some artisans. There is a group doing wood working, one with iron work and one with textiles. We just had some fantastic breakfast of eggs, beans and salsa and are now preparing to leave. We also have a market scavenger hunt in the afternoon and some time to shop.

Hasta luego mis amigos!