Constru Casa

I can't speak for what happened the first two days of the building project for Constru Casa, because I came down with a stomach bug from some food here and so didn't attend. However, I can say that having the stomach bug here is absolutely no fun at all. We think that I got the bug from eating food at Sumpango, but to me that's just part of the experience, no matter how unenjoyable it is. Wednesday was a little bit hard, since I was hyper and needed to get out, and Larissa and mom both really needed to rest. I couldn't understand that at the time, but now I definitely do.

Thursday morning we caught the chicken bus out to Ciudad Vieja with Thomas. Mom says that I had the misfortune of starting on the hardest day. I was definitely sore and tired by the end of the day, but the challenge is welcome. For most of the day we hacked holes into the cement blocks with hatchets. Let me tell you if you don't already know, that is neither a fun, easy, nor enjoyable experience. It also gets pretty boring after a while. Of course it's just painful by the end of the day when you have multiple blisters and can't really wack the block anymore because your arm is so dead, but it's very satisfying to finally be done. All that was to say, that I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got home Thursday night, and the thought of having to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning the next day really didn't help.

Friday morning I woke up, and oddly enough, I didn't feel like a living dead person. That's not to say I felt completely fine, but it was amazing how much just having a good night's sleep repaired me. Ben came to work with us on Friday, and we got a lot down. So much so that it almost looked like a house by the end of the day. Mixing concrete and hacking blocks doesn't get any easier, but we finished it all up, and it was very satisfying to see the piles of blocks ready for use. These men must be almost inhuman, because they work 6 days a week, while we work 4 and at the end of every day we feel completely exhausted. But I suppose that's what they're trained for.

Overall the first week of the building project was very fun. The workers warmed up to us, so much so that they can tease us or being gringos now and everybody laughs. It's a fun environment to work in, despite the sun beating down on you everyday. Willy, the youngest of the workers, was joking that we'd look like Guatemalan's (our skin) by the time we were done. It's not going to be that drastic, but we're definitely going to come out of the project darker than when we went it. I do have to mention though, that Friday when they said that was enough and we could all go home, we were very glad for the prospect of two whole days of rest.