Wednesday - Worksite

Today, we worked a "half" day -- we left the church around 2 p.m. so that we could go to the market in Guatemala City for a little while. We managed to make some progress though before we left. The work was somewhat repetitive of the last two days in that we first had to sweep the rain water off of the roof (sweeping it to the roof drain on the roof), cut rebar and assembled rebar structures for columns and th bond beam. We mixed a little mortar but no cement today. A team of 4 busted up the leftover concrete from yesterday that had hardened overnight so that it could be recycled. We also made the form for the bond beam on the long wall. On the second floor, we also swept much of the rain water off of the roof -- but here we did not have a horizontal roof drain to sweep the water to; instead we had an open drain that we created a "funnel" of sorts to help us get the water off of the roof. Here are a few pictures:

Margaret recycling the unused (and hardened) cement from yesterday

Lu carrying someone needed tools to work . . .

Kim, Dale, and Krystal cleaning 2nd floor roof
Linda Kaye sweeping rain water from work site with short broom towards roof drain


Kellye and Linda Kaye cleaning 2nd floor; make-shift funnel at downspout / drain


tools to bend rebar (and small c-shape that has been bend on jig)
putting rebar assembly in place prior to setting forms for bond beam
Jodi anchoring rebar bond beam assembly to column assembly
Cleaning boards so we can make forms: Dale, Kim, and Melissa
and Patty
Melissa and Barbara working to prepare for bond beam


section of form for bond beam in place . . . took some ingenuity in more than one place to install


Pat cutting block for pitched roof at one end of building

Toni and pal . . . he enjoyed looking at her pictures . . . (She works too -- but she had bonded with this little fellow and today he had no other playmates his size on site . . . so Toni gave him some personal attention and he enjoyed it,)

Grilling steaks . . . grill is an old tire rim

Macaroni salad being prepared
sitting down to lunch



person selling fresh goat milk . . . He had a herd of goats that he walks through the neighborhood and then milks for whoever wants to purchase fresh milk.


Barbara and Celso singing Christmas songs in Spanish