Puerto Rico Winterim 3/22

Written by Skye, Raven, Anna

The group woke up at 7:30 in the morning, started getting ready and ate breakfast at 8:00. We left for the worksite at 9:00. It was about a 30 minute drive to the worksite. Once we got there we set our stuff at Maria's house and walked to the worksite. We got there and put on our cement work boots they had there for us and they started to explain our task for the day. Willy explained how cement was made and produced and Danny helped us translate. We then split into two groups: one for sorting rock (8 buckets for each batch) and sand (10 buckets for each batch), and another group for shoveling the mixed cement into buckets and passing the buckets down a line to the holes we had previously dug. Cement was poured into the trenches we dug Monday and Tuesday and empty buckets were passed back to be refilled. We spent the whole morning, till about 1pm, using this process to finish the foundation for half of the house. We didn’t want to stop working, but we had to because we ran out of rock sand and concrete and had to wait for the truck. The group on the cement side was covered in cement by this point. We walked back to Maria’s for lunch. She had made us rice, mashed potatoes, salad, and pork. Some of us went to go look at the animals one last time with Abram and Brayan. After lunch we went back to the worksite where they offered us the opportunity to switch sides. Some of us wanted to but the majority of us didn't want to because we had a good system going. Everyone had a job that they knew how to do well and we were making great progress. At this point we had almost finished the foundation for the house. At about 2:30 we poured our last bucket of cement and finished the foundation. (90 bags of cement (7200 lbs), 360 buckets of rock ( 8 cubic yards) and 450 buckets of sand (10 cubic yards))  Willy, Angel, and the rest of the crew were both shocked and proud of what we had accomplished. They didn't expect us to finish the foundation and assumed the next group would finish the other half. After taking a picture and being congratulated, we went back to Maria’s to take off our dirty clothes. After changing, we got in the vans to head back to the big yellow house. We got ready for the beach and walked over and had a very deserved jump in the ocean. Some people went and looked at the coral and fish and others played with the football and layed in the sand. We went back to the big yellow house where we prepared for dinner with the community that we helped. We moved lots of tables and chairs together to make room for the children and adults. Willy, Maria, Angel, Danny, and the rest of the crew as well as the teachers took a moment to speak to the group about the work we had done. They were more than grateful. Some of us played with the kids in the big field and some had time to talk to the crew. After dinner and speeches we took two pictures and gave a basketball and soccer ball to the community. After this hard day of work we went and all passed out for another long fun day in Puerto Rico.