Update for May 29th -

They call me "The Stucco Queen". So today started out 40 degrees colder than the other days and a lot wetter. We had a pretty good bit of rain in the morning, but I was lucky enough to get a job working under cover. Angelina and I were on "stucco duty" which was great because we learned how to not only make the stucco, but apply it as well. Our 'supervisor' Nelu, spoke no English, but that did not slow us down. He was great and I just loved to here those words "forte beine" (pronounced fortey be en yay - and I am sure I did not spell it correctly). At first, I thought it meant "Dumbass, you're doing it all wrong" but thankfully what it means is "very good!" So any time he said it we felt good about our work. He did tell Emil - our regional host that "the girls are quick learners and did much better as we continued to work. One of the pictures above is of me and Jonut (pronounced "you noot"). He was teaching me how to hold the mixer and make the face just like Arnold in Terminator 2 - ha ha. I have also attached a picture of "Team Stucco" - me, Nelu and Angelina.

Okay, so at times I did wonder if I was getting more stucco on me or the wall. :) While Angelina and I worked on the stucco, The others were working on prepping the house for drywall and then working on the drywall itself.

Work almost had to come to a sudden stop for what I call an “injury timeout” when I thought I broke a nail. But alas I sucked it up and played through the pain! Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do!”

Along that same line, several of us volunteered to “take one for the team” when it became apparent that we were going to run out of bottle caps – you see, we uses bottle caps when nailing on the Styrofoam insulation to the OSB along with using the cement. See the picture above. Anyway, we were willing to go drink enough Ursus, the local beer, to provide us with the bottle caps necessary to finish the job.

We continued to play with the kids at lunch - they loved the bubbles that Carol brought to the site. As the week went on, more and more kids would show up.

Thankfully the rain slowed down in the afternoon and we were able to get a lot of the

house done. I can also tell you that soup for lunch that day was a much bigger seller then it was on the first day when it was 90 degrees :) I also noticed that we were each drinking 8 - 12 bottles of water every other day, but today we went through A LOT more coffee :) Speaking of coffee, Valer - one of our supervisors -noticed early in the week that I was A LOT more productive if I had my morning coffee!!! He would say "you have coffee yet?" before he would correct my work, ha ha.

One of the more poignant parts of the trip came and the end of today. Emil, our local Habitat host, got two of the guys to take me, Andrew and Angelina on a tour through the blocks and their apartments. Walking over to their side of “the blocks” you could see a pie of garbage (see picture) that had formed from people just throwing their trash out their windows. One of the men told us that once the pile was nearly 2 stories high and someone rode a horse up it. The land where we are building the houses had to be cleared of garbage and it took 150 truckloads to do it. The ground was then disinfected – twice. So we go into the far side where Romero and Zoli have apartments. They are two of the families that are seen as somewhat leaders in the community. They take good care of their “apartments” to the best you can in that situation. They don’t throw their garbage out the window, but take it to the dumpster and they are trying to help change the culture around there of the proper way to take care of your property. The only pictures of the inside of the apartments I took was that of Zoli’s family kitchen and one of Romero and his family. I did not think it was right to take pictures of the inside of their homes. Suffice it to say, the rooms were small and there were only a couple of them – the kitchen, a ‘living room’ and one bedroom and bathroom. It is not uncommon to have 10 people living in one of these apartments. I love the picture of Romero and his wife and kids because of the pride on his face – both in the picture as well as when he showed us his apartment.

Laura, I gave the toy tools you gave me to Romero to give to his little boy as a thank you for taking us on the tour. That was neat because I did that back at the work site and had Emil translate for us. As depressing as it was to see how these folks had to live, it was inspiring at the same time to work hard on our house – not that we needed much more inspiration. But you really realized how Habitat’s Global Village impacts and rebuilds an entire community. Granted, they have a long way to go, but it’s a good start.

As we threw our tired bodies into the van to head back to the hotel we realized it was Friday and therefore, we had earned the right to happy hour. Andrew, Marsha, Scott and I headed down the street to one of the local places. And, as you can see in the picture, the sun came out! It was a nice way to wind down the day. Well, off to dinner. More to follow....