Construction!
So, I convinced you that our youth center was a worthy cause, and you donated. Then, I announced proudly and thankfully that the entire thing had been funded (thank you again!). And then you don't hear anything else about it...
My apologies. My family has informed me that I haven't been keeping up with the construction updates as I should be. So what is happening. Things are happening. We started work the beginning of April, when the weather began to be kinder to us. Construction is hard, especially when your vocabulary doesn't cover words like "nail bolt" or "wall support." Nothing a crash course in construction related Romanian couldn't handle though... I'm just thankful the word for Spackle in Russian is pronounced "Spack-lov-kah", or else I would have been COMPLETELY lost the first week or so of construction.
The building we inherited for our youth center used to be an old soviet library. It was FULL with old Russian books, that were locked up in 1992, after the fall of the USSR. The rooms haven't been used since, literally -- they were sealed shut for over 10 years. Part of our deal to use the building was that we had to move all the books (and clean the dust from them) to another place for storage. You all know I love and cherish books...and don't like to think about burning them, but seirously it would have been easier to have a book bonfire than to lug them out of the building, across a field and up a circular flight of stairs.... If I thought someone would ever read these old books, I would have been more passionate about saving them. Either way, they are saved -- I hope someone will read them -- and I'm glad we had many, many hands. We also had to move some tanks that looked to have contained gas, and a bunch of paper. It was a lot of work, so it is a good thing we have a lot of youth!
We were then faced with the problems of reparations -- the building although solidly constructed, doesn't have straight walls -- they go in and out, left and right. Fun, right? Not fun to wallpaper, though, until I had some helpful advice from Dad. We are working (my partner and I) with a team of youth -- everyone has ideas, but no one has experience -- usually the learn as we go approach works, but sometimes we need the advice, or we end up wasting materials and time. And we had a leaky roof issue, but that was solved with some creativity and scrap metal. Right now we are continuing to work on construction issues -- the best news so far is that we have windows AND doors!!! Things, are looking up. More updates as they happen.
PS - I know the pictures are out of order, AGAIN - I can't figure out how to put pictures on my blog in an orderly fashion/arrange them nicely? Anyone out there that can help me with that?
PPS - I know I am wearing the same shirt in all the pictures. Not because reperations only took us one day, but because I figured once I got one shirt all dirty, might as well keep wearing it ... That's my American mindset talking.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 5:05 PM.
