Day 5: work work work

This morning we awoke joyfully and drank some coffee. Then we loaded onto the bus and arrived at Hogar Escuela. When we got there we tackled various work projects. We even rented a jack hammer that will help us greatly advance in our projects. Then we resumed VBS. The kids were more energetic and comfortable with us and they are beginning to really open up to us. Many of the kids call us by name or mi amigo or amiga.

One of the biggest projects is transforming the gym into an open air space with no roof because of safety regulations, the school has to have an area that is uncovered in case of an earthquake. We got a jack hammer to help us dig a ditch along the side of the gym, that we will put a pipe in that goes out to the street for when it rains.  This jack hammer has increased the speed of this project very much because before the boys and men would take turns hammering the concrete to make the ditch.

Another one of the biggest projects is scraping the paint off of the outer wall of the school.  This has taken many days and we have not gotten very far because we have to scrap them by hand.  Just today we bought electric scrapers that help speed up this process a lot more.  Also today we are just finishing up another projects which is making raised garden beds for when the roof is taken off of the gym.   We are also scraping paint off of the main walkway of the school.  Those are our big projects!

This is the inside wall that we are scraping paint off of.

This is the team in action working on building the ditch for gym!