Monday, February 11, 2008

The "Great Wall" continued

These are the piles of rocks that have been dumped across the narrow calle (street) from my house and in front of the school. With a wheel barrow and a hammer they load these physically on the wheelbarrow, haul them into the area where they are making the wall and start breaking them up for "the wall". They mix mortar on the ground inside the school ground and haul that in buckets up the boards to the wall - which is now almost 10 ft high! The wall doesn't appear that high from the angle of this photo, but trust me, it is. They dug down and made a trench about four feet down in the ground and started the wall that way. I'm reading "World without End" by Ken Follett right now and it takes place in England in the 1300's
There are many descriptive parts about building cathedrals and walls etc. Guess what, they built them just the same way 700 years ago. You seldom see mechanical equipment here, even when houses are built, but rather the bucket with handmade cement going up the ladder when they are working on the second floor. It is quite fascinating. Yes, I do sometimes feel as though I live in Medieval times - but that is better then 10,000 expats! Ha.
On Saturday they worked hard allllll day and I was reconciled to rock dust and hammers forever but they cleaned up and moved alllllllll the rocks before they left on Saturday. All the rocks were moved onto the school grounds. Of course there was still dust and so I, with my trusty hose, tried to settle down the dust from the terrace upstairs. But the heavens helped more with a totally unexpected heavy, heavy rain and hail last night for several hours. You will never know how much we appreciate rain this time of the year to"settle" the dust and help the plants! Yippee................

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