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Published: January 18th 2012
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Before shots!
The land where we are building the fence! Hello! I know it has been three days since I last blogged, but I am so tired and exhausted! By the way, hump day = Wednesday... today was the hardest day, hopefully it will be easier on Thursday and Friday!The last few days have been on the worksite, non-stop in the heat (today was 43 degrees). Here is a brief description of what we have achieved on the project so far:
- Created the metal foundations by bending metal, cutting metal, creating smaller triangles to go on the foundations and twisting the triangles onto the metal with small wire.
- Carting about 3000 bricks ( a pile 1.5m high by 5m) around a 200m obstacle course, dodging children, cows, rubbish, rocks, burning piles of rubbish and motorbikes.
- Spending hours at a time digging and hoeing holes in the ground for the foundations to be inserted in. These holes are difficult to dig out, as tree roots and other foreign materials (jess found a syringe), litter the path to the perfect foundation hole.
- Mixing cement (manually!) by using a shovel to toss cement, sand and rocks together to form it. We then use buckets to cart
Before shots
This is what we're working with! this mix on top of heavy rocks(which we throw in the holes we dig).
So yes, that is how our working week is currently running. It really is exhausting, though very rewarding. Today, as we were all digging and dirty, four Cambodian school girls came up to us and gave us each a hand drawn picture (their interpretation of what we looked like). It really was heart warming to receive this small gift from these girls, and I don't think they realised how much of an impact they made on us. The picture really drew me back to Earth, and confirmed in my mind that we really were there for these children, to make a difference in their lives.
There isn't too much to write about in the working week, as it is very repetitive and tiring. My hands are covered with blisters, my face sunburnt, my back strained and my hair a bird's nest.... yet I feel so accomplished. We can finally see this fence coming into shape, and it's great to see our hard work paying off.
I'm so thankful to have my family and friends supporting me during this time - the emails of support and kinds words on Facebook really are fantastic. Special shout out to my beautiful grandparents for their amazing email (made me cry grandma and poppy!), my wonderful mother for the creative email, my dad for continuing to make me happy on Facetime and my gorgeous friends for keeping me optimistic and happy.
Currently, I am out at the wi-fi friendly cafe, Blue Pumpkin, with the team and Ang (Amy's friend) eating ice cream! Sophie had to reorder her sundae as they put the wrong ice cream in it... after a 15 minute wait and two reminders, Sophie finally received her sundae, wrong again! That is Cambodia for you though, and it is all fun and games! I must leave you now, as we have another early start (as per usual) tomorrow, and my bed is calling me. Missing you all like crazy, xxxxx
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