Wednesday build

By now you should realize that the following descriptions may not line up with the photos. My new friend in pic above. To the right is one tired crew and the end of the day. Below that is Cory, Riley, Laura and Josh up on the balcony of one of the apartments.

Below, Carmen, Toolie and Larry work on setting the cement blocks for the patio.

Above is a picure of Karen and her son Patrick. Great kid and hard worker - AND you really can get him to smile for a picture! :)

Break time! Above is Patrick, Karen, Sherie and Cory

Pictures from the morning work site.

Today 3 of us, me, Karen and Larry, went with Adam, our local host coordinator, to a little town just east of Gliwice. We were prepping a room for the team next week who will be coming in to level the floor. Why does the floor have to be leveled you ask? Well, first a little background on this location. It has been a place for homeless woman to come and live while they get back on their feet. Much of the town is built on a coal mine. Because of all the mining, all the buildings are sagging as the ground gives more and more. Most houses have big steel braces on the side to keep them from collapsing. The building we were working on had a floor that was easily 6 inches lower in the corner than another part of the room. Our job was to move ALL the ....let's call it 'furniture' since 'crap' is a little too strong. Much of it was still usable. I will say that there was one table and set of chairs made from what HAS to be the HEAVIEST wood in the world!!!!! After we cleared the room, we swept up the floor and then had to take up all the linolium. We got the job knocked out and it was nice to see the finished product. What is most impressive about this task is that they assigned 3 Type A personalities to a single project and it still got done on time and no one came to blows with another. It really was a great morning and getting to listen to Adam's stories made the experience even richer.....so, what about those tables...THANK YOU Karen!!!

We headed back to the main site with the team for lunch and the afternoon work. This afternoon some worked on more plastor and plastor prep, some worked on the patio and some of us made dry concrete to be used for the patio cement blocks.

I must tell you that Poland has been good for my self esteem. Working on this site with us are several Polish guys that are part of a work crew. Yesterday I was asked twice by one of them and once by another to have a smoke break with them - I don't know, perhaps that has a different meaning than it does in the states - and sense they were only speaking Polish and were standing around smoking and gesturing me over I had to assume that is what they meant :) One of them in particular has apparently taken a shine to me as he came by several times this afternoon to say hi. He keeps talking to me - I guess he assumes that I am going to all of a sudden be able to speak Polish. I have resorted to the old 'smile and laugh' method of conversing with someone when you have no idea what they are saying. By the end of the day, he came up and gave me his phone number. Our team had a good chuckle from that - reflecting on the fact he doesn't speak English and I don't speak Polish, I am not sure what was going to be accomplished by giving me his number. I mean if I did call him, he wouldn't be able to see me smile and laugh when I couldn't understand him. Just my luck, I finally have a guy ask me for my number and give me his and there is NO chance anything can ever come from it! Oh well, like I said good for the self esteem.

More to follow.