Today we worked on the Habitat house some more from about 9 am to 2 pm and then had a cultural experience for a couple of hours. We have made a lot of progress on the house - the walls are now high enough where we don´t have to bend over to lay blocks. We have started to put in the windows of the house, which you can see in the pictures. We finally have the floors low enough inside, so we don´t have to dig anymore dirt out to level the floor. We are all excited to hear Señor Gonzalez tell us ¨Esta bien¨ (It is good) instead of ¨un poco mas¨´(a little more).
We had more of the locals come visit us at the work site. Jaime and Ale came back to say hi, and we gave them our leftover food from lunch. Both Jaime and Ale have to go to school from 1 to 5, so they had to leave us after lunch. We met the little baby boy of the family who will be living in the house that we are building. His name is Cristian and likes to play in the water that we use to mix the cement.
After we finished for the day, we went to a home in a rural community where we learned how to make maize tortillas. One of the women there was 70 years old and has lived in that house for 50 years! They told us that some of the poorest people in the town only live on these tortillas and salt. After making the tortillas, which we topped with frijoles (beans) and queso (cheese), and enjoying some fresh mango, we watched a dance presentation by the local school. The kids ranged from about 9 to 15. After watching the dance presentation, they pulled some of us out from the crowd and made us embarrass ourselves in front of everyone. We shared some of the tortillas with them, and also played some soccer with a couple of them. Some of the girls talked to Angelica, a ten year old girl, and she gave them flowers to put in their hair and told them that she wanted to be just like them.
To finish up my post, I will answer some of the questions that you posted...
Mrs. Walter - I´m not exactly sure what their exact situation is with water, but all of the water we drink is bottled. At the work site, we bring the big jugs of water like you see on top of the Culligan water coolers, and we pour them into a cooler. The locals just drink the tap water and don´t seem to be affected by it, but we can´t drink it because we aren´t used to it. We have a hose at the site, so there is some sort of water supply even in the rural areas, but I don´t think any of it gets purified.
Mrs. Wildt - So far it has only rained one day, and that was in the evening on Tuesday. We were just eating supper so it wasn´t a big deal, and the work site had dried by the next morning. Typically, it is sunny for most of the day until around 4, and then the clouds move in... right when we want to go swimming. As far as the floor of the house goes, I think we are keeping one of the rooms with a dirt floor, and then the other two rooms will have cement floors.
Thanks for all of your comments! We appreciate hearing from all of you back in Minnesota. Keep posting comments with any questions, and I will try to answer them when I can.
Adios,
Mike, and the girls standing behind me reading this and commenting on it as I type :)
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