Thursday, January 31, 2008

Day One - Thursday



Today we worked at Jazmin. It was a drive - abt 30 km - and I was in the back seat of the van, middle seat....not the most ideal of seats but it was ok. We were 16 in all in that van. Anyway, we got there and all we saw was a one room school house (painted green) and a thatched roof open space which was the second classroom.

70 children go to school here - it is so hard to believe that they can all fit! So the job here is to make another room - a free standing new building to accomodate more children.




When we got there there were 3 walls - just about half way up - of cement blocks with open spaces for windows. We worked on building the 4th wall - sifting sand (throwing it onto a screen with a shovel which keeps out the bigger stones and pebbles), collecting these bigger stones and pebbles and filling them in the center hole of the cement blocks, carrying cement blocks around, mixing, filling in cement etc.

It was HOT!

Around noon I went with Linda, Dave and Colleen to see this woman Juanita who lives about a mile down the road from the school - the mission was to deliver her a wheelchair. Wait until you see the pictures of where she lived! She was in a plastic garden chair because she had a broken femur and a yucky long term infection at the bottom of her leg. She moved around in her little shack in this green chair. Dave wheeled in the wheelchair and she got herself right into it and was all smiles, She finally had some mobility and a much more comfortable chair.

Colleen and Linda gave her a framed picture of the family who donated the wheelchair - the daughter had Down's Syndrom and had died last year. How amazing that Juanita now has this picture in her little house as a reminder everyday of the young woman who once used that wheelchair.

Colleen the took her outside - we think she hadn't been outside for many years. She was so thankful and all smiles.

She then asked for a cell phone!

There is much more to her story but will have to write about it later.

Back at the school we had lunch (plates of fried chicken, rice and potatoe salad). And of course lots of water.

We stopped working around 2:30 because we had to go the dedication of the Physical Therapy Buliding. That's an entirely new entry which I will have to do a new entry.

Back at the hotel around 5, swimming in the ocean, catching the waves. Dinner next door and our favorite waiter from last year was there - Mr. Dick!

He calls me Miss Scott.

We are here!

Good Morning!

It's Thursday morning and we've been up since 5:30 - a crossfire of birds. It was like waking up in the jungle with birds almost arguing with each other from one side of our room to the other. Lucky though, because the van is leaving at 8:00 this morning and we've got to get all our work stuff ready.

We are waiting for breakfast downstairs on the veranda of the hotel, which is right on the beach. It's beautiful. There are 2 huge oil tankers not too far off shore unloading fuel for the town. It's a beautiful day which is great on the one hand but also means it will be hot working!

Scott and I have decided with work with Dave and about 16 others on a project at Jazmin. As many of the volunteers have been here a couple days this project is moving along really fast. They are building a school - well a one room school house. Similar to what we did last year at Jubilados. We can't wait because it's about 40 minutes away so we'll see a lot on the way.

Cher is here too. And yesterday she was able to skype to her kids back at CCS with a webcam. How cool is that. If we can we'll try to do that too.

Ok - breakfast is up (eggs, tortilla's, fruits, hot sauce, refried beans) - there is so much more to let you know about and we already have more pictures to post but that becomes a bit more difficult.



Until later.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

en Route - Jan 30 - Wednesday

We left the hotel (yes, all went smoothly) and tried to do curb side check in at American Airlines in Miami. They wouldn’t let us because they said the ‘system’ said we hadn’t paid our balance on the tickets. So we had to go to a special counter – and thankfully I was able to get our travel agent on the phone. I tell you travel agents are the way to go! Mine, Peggy is amazing. She has helped me in more precarious situations around the world!

Long story short, we had changed our return flight to one day earlier and the ‘system’ didn’t reflect that. We were pretty lucky that they found this now, today, instead of when we were leaving!

Almost there!

We started the day with breakfast and our malaria pills.

I picked up Scott at school around noon at school today, after I nearly drove off the very icey roads!


We made it to the aiport, flight to Philly was uneventful. Flight to Miami was actually early and I was thinking we'd be lucky to be checked into the hotel and asleep by 10 or so.

Oh how wrong I was! The hotel shuttle bus took 45 minutes. The only good things were that it was warm and there were lots of others also waiting for our hotel bus.

We arrived at the Regency Aiport Hotel at 10:00. To our surprise there must have been 30 people in front of us waiting to check in. We just couldn't believe it. They were all froma TACA flight that got cancelled and each check in took about 20 minutes...

We got to our room at 12:15 am!

Lesson Learned: Never stay at the Regency Airport Hotel in Miami again.