my time in mexico - part one

so instead of doing one boring mega-post about my week in mexico, i thought i would break it down into a series of posts with different themes. i thought i would begin with what we were there for...building.

our week began on monday morning with a bang. we were taken to the first house and told that we were going to help with the pouring of a concrete floor. now that wouldn't normally be a daunting task in a 600 square foot house, but we only had a small mixer and all the materials had to be moved by hand. we set up a system of sorts and got to work. some of us shovelled gravel into buckets, some of us shovelled sand into buckets, some of us helped heave the materials into the mixer, and some of us helped move the concrete into the house in wheelbarrows. it was hot, tiring, repetitive work. but in only 2 1/2 hours we had produced a floor. it was an incredible feeling of accomplishment.

after lunch we were taken to the next house and somehow mustered the strength to do that all over again. by the end of monday we had finished two floors.



tuesday morning we got up and felt how hard we had worked the previous day. but we were ready to do it all over again. we were taken to the third house and were ready to go. but the dirt subfloor wasn't ready and we had to make several trips out to a field to bring in dirt and then bring it into the house and tamp it down. and then we didn't have enough water. and then the mixer ran out of gas. things went a lot slower on tuesday, but we did manage to finish our third floor.

now that the construction was pretty much finished on all of the houses we were working on, the rest of the week was spent doing things like putting in windows and the door and painting and finishing the electric and plumbing and then cleaning up outside and putting in landscaping. we didn't have time to do this work on all three houses, so we concentrated most of our time on the house where the dedication ceremony was held on saturday.

here's the finished product. we were all proud of our work.

but mostly we were proud to have been a small part of building a house for someone who appreciated it probably more than we could ever understand. this house was for anna. we made sure we all took a picture with her.


it was an exhausting week, but we all enjoyed every minute of it. and we would all do it again in a heartbeat.