FIRST DAYS OF GUATEMALA HFH-GV BUILD

Our team all arrived at the hotel in Antigua last Saturday and we departed by a van/bus Sunday morning for San Marcos, which was nearly a six-hour trip.  We arrived just in time to meet the two families whose homes we will be working on, and members of the local affiliate of Habitat.  A nice little ceremony, then settled in our hotel rooms, had dinner,  and  a little orientation before ending the evening.  The hotel dining room is nice, and we are served meals family style.  Plenty of food and it's good.  Rooms are fairly spartan but that is what we expected.  Adequate blankets on the beds and not as cold as I feared.

I divided the group into two teams based on age, sex and roommate's preferences and it seemed to work out okay, with my roommate being the leader of the other work group.  However, she got sick in the middle of the night and couldn't come to the worksite, so I asked my friend Karen to lead that team. Then mid-morning, a young woman on my team got sick so the driver took her and her mom back to the hotel.




One of the first jobs introduced was to tie re-bar. Here are Samantha and Gracie hard at it.

Our family is a single mom with two kids; a girl Jackie age 15 and a boy, Jorge, age 12. He stopped by to see us after school in his soccer uniform.  A real cutie.  He had a harder time with my Spanish than our mason, so I helped him with some English words.

Here's a video of the concreto mixing and pouring.  I allude to it as mezcla in the video, but that is incorrect, as mezcla is the mortar, and has different proportions of cement, water, and gravel, plus lime is added.