Oh the Lovely Weather

On Monday we had the Corner Stone Laying Ceremony for our big upcoming project, the Blue Sky Build 2012. We had invited some guests, mainly people who are giving us money, as well as the governor of the district where the houses are to be built. The program was planned to be short and then everyone would get to help lay some bricks.  Well things did not go according to plan….thanks to the weather.

It was one of the most miserable weather situations I have ever had to experience (and I honestly can’t think of a worse situation right now). The wind was atrocious. It was fiercely blowing frigid air. Then it rained. Then it hailed. Then it rained again. Finally the precipitation stopped and it was just the wind but everything was freezing. I had my hood up the whole time and sunglasses on because there was dirt and sand blowing so hard. My hands were frozen and I couldn’t move my fingers very well. I was unwittingly chewing sand the whole time. When I finally got back to the safety of the car after standing outside for 2 hours my face and clothes were covered in dirt and I was damp. Add to that the almost 2 hours it took for us to get home because of traffic and the whole day was terrible, not “I want to kill myself” terrible, more “hysterically laughing because this is so ridiculous” terrible.

Overall the ceremony was alright. A lot of the scheduled guests didn’t come (can’t say I blame them). The bricks got laid, but it was not a pleasant experience. It wasn’t very organized even without the weather’s interference. But it’s over and as soon as I got home that night I got directly in to a really hot shower for 40 minutes.

The bright spots of the day included a. Melissa who is visiting from the regional Habitat office this week. She’s awesome and I love her. 2. Two of my recently made friends were at the ceremony because they were representing New Milestone which is supporting our project. And d. after I got home and showered my friend Flower called me on Skype, but my home computer doesn’t have a camera or a microphone so I could see and hear her but I could only type my responses to her. She had gone to an American import store that was having an awesome sale and she showed my all of her purchases, it was amazing and it made my night as she paraded her spoils in front of the web-cam.

Suffering through the speeches.

Laying the bricks.

Billy (our volunteer coordinator), me and Melissa.