After a long day of traveling yesterday, we arrived in Belize and were welcomed at the airport by Pastor Betson. Our bus ride to his house from the airport included picking up 30 students from the school fresh off the soccer field. We then dropped them off at the school, then headed to the Pastors house for a delicious first meal with the Pastor and his wife, as well as another couple from Winnepeg, who is also staying in the house.
This morning we headed to the school around 8:00 where we begun with moving 300 concrete blocks from the ground to the second floor of the school. This was done with a rope and pulley system. Calvin and Jordan were on the ground, one running the rope, the other loading the blocks on the rebar hook. They were then recieved by one guy on top with a couple others carrying them to the 2 second floor bathrooms.
The block was used to build the partition walls dividing the bathroom stalls. Today we got 11 walls started about halfway up.
We were fortunate to get to use the edmonton team's concrete mixer to mix most of our mortar. The guys found it comical that we built most of the school mixing with a shovel, and now for the small finishing touches, we got a mixer. :)
The crew from edmonton is a rotary club, they have been working on a playground which they tore out of a location west of Calgary. The structure no longer met Canada's strict safety standards, so they shipped it to Belize. They were working with a local rotary club and contractor which allowed them access to some tools like the mixer.
That was today.
See you tomorrow!
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