May 26th: The Foundation is almost complete!

An awesome work day! Today, Amanda, Greg and Patricia worked on plastering the temple wall and basically finished it. Now, we just have to wait one day for the local workers to plaster the corners of some columns that sit in the wall (it’s a tricky job) and then we can paint on Thursday! At the Trades Training Facility (TTF), the remaining 12 of us worked on leveling soil just in the front of the building for a small slab of concrete exterior to the facility (an entryway/porch for the building). We also poured concrete for another internal foundation line. We only have a few left to go before the entire foundation is complete! I hope we can finish this before we go, but even if we come up a little short, it will be basically completed upon our departure for the fast-approaching cultural tour.

After work, most of us quickly came back to Wavy Ocean for a shower while a few went to the internet to get some emails out of the way. We caught tuk-tuks to Ranjith’s (Anil’s brother) house for a cup of tea. His house was beautiful and it was very nice to be able to meet his family just as we did at Anil’s house last week. Everyone is so welcoming, and we were all very grateful to have been invited over to his home. On a side note, it was also nice timing to have gone to Ranjith’s house today, as I have had some strange blistering sores on my face for the last week, and we found out quickly that Ranjith’s wife is a doctor! She wrote me a prescription for some antibiotics (i think it’s some serious razor burn plus a secondary bacterial infection-yum).

For dinner, the group has really been enjoying eating out, so we went back to a restaurant that we ate at last week (Samagi, just down the road) and had some nice seafood fried rice, deviled chicken and fruit salad and ice cream for dessert. After the meal, we walked back to Wavy Ocean and most of us watched a movie - I couldn’t believe that there was a movie that no-one in the group (but me) had seen, especially considering how many avid movie-watchers we have amongst us! It was a nice way to take it easy in a little thunder storm, and everyone enjoyed the movie too (The Fall).