Friday's Work

Friday began with a whirl of things to do, and then nothing to do. Rafael had Eben cutting and bending rebar to make the supports for the frame of the second driveway, and while Leslie was helping him with that, the rest of us were trying to finish the shoveling and leveling. We had to wait a while for more supplies to arrive, so the day was very stop and go. While we waited, we went ahead and placed all the rebar in place for the frame, and Rafael measured everything out. Once we had the rebar in place, Rafael decided that about half of it was too low, and needed to be raised even further... so back to the shovels and wheel barrows for us! 

 By the time the slab was ready for pouring and the materials had finally arrived, some pretty dark clouds had begun to form. After all the work to get the slab ready, Rafael decided that it would not be wise to pour the slab with what appeared to be a pretty big storm blowing in, so we called it a day pretty early.

A view of the casitas from below.  

With our work at the casitas cut short with a solid hour or two left in the work day, we ventured back to the UBL and sought out things that might need to be done around the campus itself. It turned out that the House of the Million Women desperately needed the windows and doors to be sanded and re-stained, so we started in on the sanding.   

It wasn't too long before Rafael's prediction about the rain came true and the sky began to fall! Sylvestre, the local handyman (who was also working with us off and on), pulled out a power washer and put Eben to work on some of the concrete picnic tables that grew all kinds of fun stuff in the Costa Rican rain and heat. Even when the rain set-in, Eben simply pulled out his poncho and continued working like a champ! We sanded until there wasn't much point with the rain, and then the rest of us sipped coffee and watched Eben playing in all the water.