Day 12: A Day Without Rain

I finally get to make that lame Enya reference!

We accomplished a fair bit today. In the morning we taught the kids directions. I stole some ideas from when I was learning Chinese, and drew a map of a town on the board, including place names, which we had conveniently just taught them. Then, we taught them left and right; north, south, east, and west; directions; intersection, and traffic or stop light. Then we quizzed them, by either giving them directions from one place to another and having them tell us where they ended up, or by having them direct us from one specific place to another. It was a little bit of a struggle. There are a select group of students who clearly understood what was going on, but most of them took a little bit of encouragement and coaxing before they produced the right answer. We also had quite a few mixups with the proper grammar of certain sentences, but I feel as thought they learned a lot today.

We rested at usual after lunch and then went out to work. Today was a beautiful day; the sun was out for the first time since the third day we were here. Consequently, it was also quite hot, so we came equipped with water and sunscreen. We began to lay tiles at the larger worksite, and also started and completed digging the paths which will be covered with small stones. This was tough work, as the dirt was still heavy due to yesterday's downpour. We worked in teams: one person broke up dirt and the other shoveled it. I was surprised and a bit perturbed to learn that there no one has any spade shovels here, so we are using shovels that can't dig very well; they can only pick up loose dirt. After we completed digging out our pathways, we headed up to the smaller worksite and started shoveling stones into a wheelbarrow to be hauled down to the larger worksite. These stones will serve as a foundation. On top of this will be a layer of cement (or concrete; I sometimes get those confused). And on top of that we will place the best stones we have, as this will be the top layer and must be aesthetically pleasing. While we were shoveling stones, we spent a great deal of time digging through the stones and looking for the ideal ones which we will use as a top layer; they must be smooth, relatively round, and relatively flat. This process is very meticulous, and we were not even close to finished by the time we headed inside.

This post is short, but that is because most of the day was spent doing fairly monotonous work. We were all grateful for the sun, even though that meant that we sweated more than usual. Hopefully this is an omen of the good weather that is to come.