Up early as usual...breakfast as usual...we've got the routine now!
Today we went to Jubilados where we are building a new kindergarten. When we first saw it on Tuesday they were still digging (by hand) the foundation. And today the foundation was done, meaning it had been dug and the cement had been "poured". I put that in "" because it wasn't really pured the way we think of cement being poured. It was done bucket by bucket of cement that was also hand made....sifting the sand, carrying over the water, the bags of cement etc. You can't imagine how much work!
So our job today is rebar and cement. There were some cement blocks on the poured foundation and now we were going to make another bit of poured cement wall. Please excuse all my incorrect terms and spelling because I have absolutely no background in any of this.....it's all new to me!
Scraps of wood were used to make the frame and then bucket by bucket we poured the cement into the frame. We did two sides today with the hopes of doing the other two on Monday using the same wood.
Rebar...well that was an education. There are these long bars and you have 4 of them and then you have these square bars that goes around these 4 bars (and the square bars are all sawed and then bent into squares by hand). And then the square bars are attached to the long bars with thin wire (that all had to be cut to the right size) and then twisted and turned and then clipped so that it's all stuck together. When I can upload some pictures this will make much more sense!
So we sawed, we cut, we bent, we twisted, we clipped. All of it! And again it was hot!
We also filled some of the cement blocks with small rocks...(that's what the guy told us to do!). There are a couple Hondurans helping us out....one very hard young worker, Darwin, was great! Dave and Will ended up giving him a baseball hat!
The principal was also there working with us. She was dressed very well and was wearing her black leather mules....which by the end of the day were covered in cementy water! It was really obvious that she was very proud of her school. This was a well loved school and it was clear that the teachers also cared about it.
We could see the Science lab was filled....there was shelving on the back wall full of science related items and two big tables and at least 20 well made sturdy stools - it looked great and very inviting - a good environment to learn about science. After seeing so many classrooms with dust, cobwebs and not much else it was heart warming to see this!
The principle also took a moment to show us her kindergarten yearbook. She had every kindergarten class in one book (going back at least 5 years). There was a picture of every single student (much like Scott's school photos) glued into the book with their names in the most immaculately neat handwriting below. And the best thing was that every child was wearing one of those square black hats that graduates wear. They were all so cute, looking so proud to have graduated from kindergarten!
We lasted until about 1:30.
Today we went to Jubilados where we are building a new kindergarten. When we first saw it on Tuesday they were still digging (by hand) the foundation. And today the foundation was done, meaning it had been dug and the cement had been "poured". I put that in "" because it wasn't really pured the way we think of cement being poured. It was done bucket by bucket of cement that was also hand made....sifting the sand, carrying over the water, the bags of cement etc. You can't imagine how much work!
So our job today is rebar and cement. There were some cement blocks on the poured foundation and now we were going to make another bit of poured cement wall. Please excuse all my incorrect terms and spelling because I have absolutely no background in any of this.....it's all new to me!
Scraps of wood were used to make the frame and then bucket by bucket we poured the cement into the frame. We did two sides today with the hopes of doing the other two on Monday using the same wood.
Rebar...well that was an education. There are these long bars and you have 4 of them and then you have these square bars that goes around these 4 bars (and the square bars are all sawed and then bent into squares by hand). And then the square bars are attached to the long bars with thin wire (that all had to be cut to the right size) and then twisted and turned and then clipped so that it's all stuck together. When I can upload some pictures this will make much more sense!
So we sawed, we cut, we bent, we twisted, we clipped. All of it! And again it was hot!
We also filled some of the cement blocks with small rocks...(that's what the guy told us to do!). There are a couple Hondurans helping us out....one very hard young worker, Darwin, was great! Dave and Will ended up giving him a baseball hat!
The principal was also there working with us. She was dressed very well and was wearing her black leather mules....which by the end of the day were covered in cementy water! It was really obvious that she was very proud of her school. This was a well loved school and it was clear that the teachers also cared about it.
We could see the Science lab was filled....there was shelving on the back wall full of science related items and two big tables and at least 20 well made sturdy stools - it looked great and very inviting - a good environment to learn about science. After seeing so many classrooms with dust, cobwebs and not much else it was heart warming to see this!
The principle also took a moment to show us her kindergarten yearbook. She had every kindergarten class in one book (going back at least 5 years). There was a picture of every single student (much like Scott's school photos) glued into the book with their names in the most immaculately neat handwriting below. And the best thing was that every child was wearing one of those square black hats that graduates wear. They were all so cute, looking so proud to have graduated from kindergarten!
We lasted until about 1:30.
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