Workday one is done!

Let's get started!

BK and I are a little worn out after our first full day of work on the house. We now know more about where we are and what we'll be doing this week. We also met the homeowner- more about her later.

When we arrived in Bahia Blanca last night it was dark and we pretty much only had the energy to walk to dinner down the street from the hotel. This morning the city looks a little different. It's a port town and is pretty industrial from what we've seen. Our hotel is on a pretty lively street, but once you get out of downtown things start to look much different, including a number of huge refineries and lots of make shift housing all over the city.

Street leading to the house

I'm not sure of the neighborhood we're working in, but it's really close to the water and also close to a few of those refineries. It looks like the city might be trying to improve infrastructure, but within the neighborhood the roads are not paved.

Seed house- the before pic for this week

We're building a seed house for CL; she is a single mom with two young daughters, one of whom has special needs. Currently CL lives in a one-room house with many of her extended family members on the same land we're building the seed house on. With seed houses, it's up to the family to build, so we're there to work for her. She has a number of family members who are helping with construction management and were there today to teach us and tell us what we needed to do get things going.

Getting instruction to start

It was about 30* when we arrived this morning and we started with introductions and telling her why we decided to come to Bahia Blanca. For most it was to experience a new culture, give to someone in need and look beyond themselves. This experience is not only about building, we do a number of things throughout the day to get to know one another and build connection- things such as taking breaks and having meals together, playing short games on break and working in teams to figure out how to do things.

Hauling cement

We did all kinds of stuff today- moved a ton of bricks, wood and cement bags; treated the wood for the roof; prepared the walls to have their final layer of cement; separated rocks, dirt and trash to work on landscaping and drainage; and I made and scooped a lot of cement. Cement making is a learning process- you have to get the consistency right. For the record, ours takes one bucket of water, two buckets of cement mix, six buckets of sand, then you randomly splash water in the mixer to get the consistency needed.

Us at the end of workday 1

It's winter here, so it gets dark early and we can only work until around 4:30. We headed back to the hotel and then are going out to dinner later tonight. Restaurants don't open until around 8 in Argentina, so no early dinners for our group. We'll be up and with it early tomorrow morning to head to the house and resume work.

Meanwhile in Texas, K Bear and H Berry are living it up with Nani and Papa!