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The biggest visible difference today was the painting of the walls inside the courtyard. John H., Marlene & Wilma were very busy covering the porous stucco walls with gallons & gallons of paint. It was very difficult on some portions as the stippling was very dimensional. Even with a very plush roller brush they had to go over each section many times. As you can see the end result is very dramatic and now there is just one colour all the way around. If you click back to Monday's report you will see the "before" picture.

Anne Stewart was in the classroom playing "BINGO" with the children. The kids had a card with two rows of numbers and the idea was to get a full card. Anne has a little bit of Spanish in her list of talents and was calling out the numbers in the native tongue. The funniest part was when she mispronounced something because the kids were quite quick to call out the correct pronunciation! Anne & I had a good laugh! I was thinking "Who is teaching whom?" Finally a young boy completed his card , yelled "Bingo" and came up for his prize.

Roger & Aletha were busy installing doors in the Medical Center examining rooms. There are four or five rooms to do and they are making good progress. Aletha looks very competent with that hammer and chisel as she mortises out the space for the hinges.

 

Verla is out in the courtyard under the shade of a natural grapevine covered arbour cleaning up some countertop sinks to be used in the examining rooms. I will have to ask her what she is using because they are coming up looking like new.

 

Meanwhile, over in the Medical Center, Greg and Eric are making headway with the suspended ceiling. It's quite an undertaking as the space is so large. They don't have the traditional water-level that is normally used on a job like this but as is usually the case down here you have to be flexible and figure out a work-around. After much thought they have devised a way to get it all leveled out and I'm sure it will look great in a few days.

The tiling of the hallway of the examining rooms is almost done and the grout should be applied very soon.

Every once in a while our task master allows us a break. Here is Aaron Penny catching a few rays by the pool. Too bad there's no water in it! Although Donna tells me the rehabilitation of the pool keeps getting higher on the the to-do list. Somehow I wonder if it will ever get to the top.

 

Penny has been going class to class again with a craft project. This year the kids are making Cometas - Kites! These are really quite cute. They are small in size - about 11" long and they actually fly! They are attached with only a 6' piece of nylon fishing line and the kids run around with them. Believe me, there's lots of wind here and they don't have any trouble staying up.

This little boy, Isaac, in the picture above, was so grateful and so pleased with the kite project that he felt he wanted to give it all back. So he gave Penny a piece of art that he had made. Penny said her heart was so touched that she just had to remember the moment with this photo. I'm sure the art will end up on her refrigerator! If you've ever been over to her place you will not be surprised at that!

Dean & I have had quite a challenge with the computers for the lab. We thought we were ahead of the game getting 14 units running but have hit a brick wall getting the language program to run. The problem is that the sound card is not recognized. We thought we could get around that by going on the web for updates. Not only is the sound card a problem but the Network card is not working either which then prevents us from connecting to the Internet!
                                        How frustrating is that?

The first year that our team went down to Nicaragua we helped finance the drilling of a 1000' well on the property. Larry & Donna have made this water available to the neighbourhood by laying a pipe under the highway over to the new warehouse where people come to fill their containers. Some have small 5 & 10 gallon jugs and others bring much larger containers by horse and cart. There is a very small charge to fill the larger drums & barrels which helps to pay the electric bill for the pump each month.