I'm lucky to have woken up in one piece this morning. At about 3am last night, I randomly woke up to use the bathroom - which is weird because i'm usually a sound sleeper. When i returned to the room where i sleep on the lower bunk of a bunk bed, i found it partially collapsed! A third of the beams that support the top mattress were now on my bed and my still asleep roommate was dipping through with the mattress. Had that have happened while i was asleep, i might have been squashed by morning! I woke him up and I repositioned the beams the best i could until we could get a real repair tomorrow. Both of us had the thought on our minds that we sure hoped the bed would stay. Luckily it did. My group was given a later breakfast than usual since we arrived late, but i still woke up a bit early. I walked to the dining area to find all the people who travelled with us before med rotations (who had been building the houses for the past week). I caught up with a few, and actually got my breakfast early since i blended in with them. Later on this morning, it was time to go to the worksite. My group and I piled into the usual pickup truck and were driven with anticipation of what this town would now look like. When we arrived, I was blown away with the progress. Many of these houses were almost completely finished! The primary colours popped and looked distinctly Ecuadorian. We were on a pretty tight schedule to finish this time around. We are actually giving away most of the houses tomorrow, so most if not everything must be completed today. In my morning shift, I had two jobs. The first was taking a metal spatula to the inside, concrete walls, shaving off protrusions until we had a smooth wall. Myself and 3 others worked together and completed 4 houses before I moved on to another job. If you thought this one was tedious, you have not seen the next one. For the remaining morning shift, i took steel wool and scrubbed the interior bamboo walls to clean them before varnish could be applied. I was so hungry by the time lunch was served back at the nearby resort. We had a fish entree which was satisfying. I got to chill out on a hammock for a little bit before returning to the worksite. Here, i applied a wood sealant to the bamboo for a little while before full on painting the houses. I had my shirt off, and with all the primary colours splattered on my arms, I looked kind of like I belonged in a circus. We worked until just before the sun went down. At this point, it got really dark and we were forced to make our way back. We had a steak-like slab of meat and rice for dinner, and the evening finished off with socializing and $1.50 beers. Tomorrow will be so amazing - the results of all the fundraising and work of everyone will finally be here... providing the makeshift fix the resort made for the bunk bed holds.
The village, partially painted
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