First Day of Work

What did you do today?
Shelly and Kathleen

First I hauled block. And then Kathleen and I got smart and formed an assembly line to avoid all the obstacles in the way. Then we sifted sand. Then our masons liked us so much they told us to come back Monday. They said we were good workers. I feel like we took a water break every half hour.

Diane G, Dewey and Mary

We hauled brick around and into the roooms of the casa. We tied rebar, put mortor into the cindar bricks of the walls. Sifted sands to remove stones (Mary wiggled her booty ) when sifting. Dewey tried to balance a brick on his head and claims that if the hat he was wearing didn't have a button on the top of it, then he would have been able to walk around. (yeah right!!) Ana (a Salvadoran) was able to walk about without a problem.

Marcia

I started out the day scraping cement off cement block and wooden forms. The block and forms will be used to make posts that were being placed in front of the daycare center. I then went on sifting duty for awhile which was brutal in the heat. I finished the day helping station block at the house Shelly and Kathleen were working at. I felt like a floater today and in the course of the day met many neat people including the masons, Cristo Rey church members and Habitat employees.

Stephanie

I was on team 2 which consisted of Lucy, Rosalie, Maria (a national volunteer), and I. Our main jobs were shoveling dirt into wheelbarrows and bringing the dirt into the house to get compacted into a sort of cushion for any tremors the area may feel. Another job was sifting gravel out of dust so that the dust could be used for mortor, sanding the bricks so that they could be plastered later, and finally, I got to actually pound the dirt with a paint can filled with cement that had a stick out of it to hold onto. It was extremely hot, but when you are working with people that are so passionate and so kind, you really do not notice that you are sweating buckets but actually having an amazing time. My spanish is not the greatest, but what little I did know from high school (and from my amazing college friends) I got to know the mason and his helper and am really eager to get back to work and find out more about them and also the families in the community.

Rosalie and Lucy

Lucy and I began our work day sifting sand. We shoveled gravel into frames of screen and doing a sort of shaking dance to sift out the pebbles. Later Lucy tied rebar--a hardjob, but it WAS in the shade! I removed stray mortar from the cement blocks with sanding blocks. We ended the day back at the sanding site.

Diane J and Katie

Our team worked in a small hole in the ground today. We laid blocks with mortar and tied reinforcement rods with wire. The hole was going to be used for sewage. The two masons that we worked with were very patient with us. We taught each other many words in spanish and english. We laughed together alot as we all said "no comprende" many times.

Lynn and Dan

Dan and I were partners today. Our assignment for the first part of the day was to sandblast the dried mortar of the outside of a 900 square foot duplex. This was to prepare the house for plaster. Our tool to do this was a rock. Yes I said ROCK. We started out smoothing the outside of the house/duplex with a 6 inch rock and by the time we were done smoothing the structure, our rock was 3 inches in diameter. I kept my rock for a souvenir. Dan and I shared lots of laughs and will have many memories concerning this task we were given to do. Dan also did some compacting of sand in the bedrooms using a 40 lb. block of concrete on a wooden handle.