Namaste friends! I woke up at 5:30 and did yoga before breakfast. It was incredible. We went to work at 7 AM and worked until it got hot. Everyone is working so hard. Madan said progress was really good. We sung "Boyfriend" by Justin Bieber and like every Michael Jackson song. I feel like the men working with us think we are all crazy! Work is so much fun; we all love it!
About half the team went into town on tuk tuks to exchange money for our first weekend excursion coming up! I stayed at camp with the others and did some laundry. We have detergent and buckets with a tap outside. We hang it on a line in the courtyard. We also tanned on the roof! This trip I am getting tanned for sure ;).
After lunch I was standing in the courtyard and could see all these animal feet through the gate so I ran outside to the street and it was like a hundred sheep being herded to the farms that are just past Youth Touch. Madan's dad who was sitting there laughed so hard at me. Embarrassing.
This is a bird's nest that is built on one of the shelves in our open air dining room. I'm so in love. The mom and dad hang around while we eat, protecting their babies.
At four we had tea and Madan gave us a lesson about India. I learned a lot of cool things like the king who had the Taj Mahal built cut the workers' hands off so they would not build anything as magnificent again. He talked about how people tour to the tip of India to visit the meeting of three oceans (the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea), but if you look on map they're really all the same body of water just with different names. He gave some background information about each state. I thought it was really interesting that the northern states will give up a lot of things for traditions and customs and he thinks that the southern states have a better life because they don't do that as much. He's so soft spoken and can tell a great story so we all loved the lesson.
After that we went back to work. We are now finished laying the rocks of the whole foundation. The next step is for the construction workers and contractor to smash the rocks to smaller pieces and put water on them. Then cement and this special sand is laid. One water tank is full and delivered to the work site, as well as the cement, but the electricity went out last night and the second water tank could not be filled. Ideally it will be filled tomorrow morning and delivered before we get there at 7. Then tomorrow cement will be laid! It has to be really strong to hold the three floors.
For dinner we had dal and rice, fruit salad (bananas, papaya, and grapes), chapati, lentils, and french fries! We all freaked out. They were so spicy and delicious, and gone in like .2 seconds.
Big day tomorrow :)
Torry Harris
DWC Student Team Leader
Sikar, India: May 2012
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