Today was a short day, but we got to see some amazing sights. We started out with a full team, but Coach Steve had to go home because he was sick. He was looking a little green....
Jun let us use the concrete mixer today... And we had workers to help us with the mixer. In anticipation of the pour today, we had a little architecture lesson yesterday at lunch about the history of concrete, and how it was lost as a building material for thousands of years after the Romans were defeated. The team tells me that mixing concrete on the ground is the hardest thing ever, so I suppose I must be thankful that we had the mixer. But let me tell you, a morning filled with bagging rock and gravel is no walk in the park, so I can only imagine...
The blue conduit is for electrical feeds.
There was a big debate on the concrete mix. How many bags of sand, how many bags of gravel. Jun told us 3 and 4, but the workers were saying 3 and 7. Thats a pretty big difference! The first batch came out really runny and would never pass the slump test (architecture humor again) The final decision, of course came from Jun. He decided on 1 bag of cement, 6 bags of sand and 2 bags of gravel.
Step 1 Pour in the aggregate (rock and sand) and cement. George sometimes poured in the bag as well :)
Step 2 pour in the water, and don't get splashed.
Step 3 turn the wheel so that the mixer dumps the concrete over.
Step 4 rake and trowel. Pretty sure OSHA doesn't allow barefoot troweling by the way!
'making' sand
As the day went on we realized how many more bags we would really need. The kids again were helping us shovel away, tireless!! The only problem was the huge backhoe that was right next to us blowing exhaust (as if the air wasn't already bad enough) into our faces. The kids paid no attention. All I could think was 'I hope he knows what he is doing because he could easily take a couple of us out with that thing.'
And back at the build site we got about 1/3 done before lunch... Good work team!
At break time today we gave the kids Barney chalk. They knew Barney right away, and also angry birds... They have lots of angry birds clothes over here, which cracks me up. Side note, I STILL can't believe there are no dunkin donuts in LA but there are hundreds in Manila. I would like to get my hands on their franchise manager. Anyway, right away they started playing hopscotch on the street. Some of them just jumped around, but some actually had it down! We played a game at lunch with the chalk, kind of like tag. I decided to play. I almost outran a barefoot 7 year old. My high school track coach would be so proud.
After lunch we had a short day. We went back to work and it started raining pretty soon after (that can't be good for the concrete). We saw the black rain cloud and it looked pretty intense. And WOW it sure was. It is those times in the rain when we are just sitting there with the kids, or Cherry, that we sit back, take a break from work, and really connect with these people. Some of us were in the lunch area, where all the kids were there trying to teach us Filipino words. We learned a lot more than I could remember right now, but every time we said something correctly, everyone let out a cheer! And let me tell you, it took a long while for us to say anything correctly...
The plans for the houses (each home will sleep 5-7)
In the house next to us, the rest of us were talking to Cherry about the children. She tells a sad story of so many. She tells us about each one: so many stories that just break your heart. It really made me think. Here I am, overwhelmed by children, getting frustrated that they want to jump on top of me when it is 4,000 degrees outside (Fahrenheit), and I am sweaty and tired, but these kids just want love and attention. When we fall in the playground, our mom comes over to pick us up and coddle us. They need to be a lot tougher. They cry for a minute and have to get up and shake it off right away, and they do. The saddest part for me is knowing that many of them are not in school, because they are not getting the opportunity to affect their circumstances.
George teaching the kids how to thumb wrestle
The young kids gave new meaning to 'singing in the rain'. They were at full sprint, buck naked running though the streets. They stole a paint roller and were running all over the place with it, painting the street, each other, until the painter came by, and he didn't look very happy at all. Then they came over to us (we were trying to get them to dance all morning with no luck) and did some bizarre Macarena looking dance in front of us, all of them dancing in the pouring rain right outside our window. Hilarious.
So we got about 3mm of rain in an hour. We realized it wasn't letting up and the drivers came to pick us up, door to door service, we are so VIP. The rain was torrential. It didn't occur to me that we needed to get back to the hotel before we were physically unable to get back to the hotel because of the flooding, but WOW can it rain here. Christopher kept opening his driver door when we would go through the flooded spots to make sure it wasn't too deep, but finally we came to an area where we had to turn around. After a 60 point turn, we went back to take a different route. The place where we turned around had a few guys there working on dismantling a wood barrier so that the water would clear from the street. People were walking, biking, and driving through it like it was no big deal though... Crazy!
We definitely took the long way home, but it was quite amazing to see. A early day, and an early night. The weather calls for more rain on Friday, but let's home for cloudy skies instead!!
Car wash drive here!
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