Saturday, January 7th - Here's the plaster work from yesterday, still drying. Today we put a special sealer on the plastered wall prepping it to be painted tomorrow. Now that we've plastered the outside, it's time to work on the inside. One of their workers said that it would take them 4 days to finish... Continue Reading →

Friday, January 6th - Now that we honed our plastering skills with those planter boxes yesterday, time to do a whole wall. We had a huge need for concrete today so some of us were mixing around the clock. For plastering, we needed to use smooth sifted sand to add to the concrete The hard... Continue Reading →

Thursday, January 5th - We're starting to get into a good routine now and we take on new jobs everyday.  We also begin to notice the homes evolving as we see our work actually starting to make a difference. Today we learn a bunch of new tasks: New Task 1 - Plastering By the end... Continue Reading →

Wednesday, January 4th - We're ready for Day 2 of the build.  We know we have to work even harder than yesterday if we want to reach our goal. Today we help build a staircase from scratch. Step 1 - Mix rocks, sand, and concrete. Step 2 - Add water and mix Step 3 -... Continue Reading →

On January 3rd, we started our build at the ANCOP site after a morning orientation (history, mission statement, organization structure, goals) with the ANCOP team at the hotel.  We traveled to Las Pinas city where we will be helping to finish ANCOP's Markham Village. We will be helping finish units in block 7.  The entire... Continue Reading →

Before leaving El Dorado, we took time to debrief and reflect upon our day and our work. We had a little bit of time to wash up before our next destination but everyone was afraid to go the washroom because of this: So we headed off to the closest SM mall to find a public... Continue Reading →

After serving lunch to all the kids, we all grabbed a garbage bag and a pair of gloves to do a community clean up. We started off cleaning inside of the GK complex. As you can see above, it was relatively clean. It wasn't until we went into the core of El Dorado that we really... Continue Reading →

After we played the games and handed out gifts to all the kids, it was time to give out lunch.  Thanks to Mike's parents, in-laws, and their helpers for cooking all the food and preparing them behind the scenes while we played with the kids. Canada represent!! We had the system down and was moving... Continue Reading →

On our 2nd day we went right to work as we visited the "squatter" community of El Dorado.  Here's a poster promoting our visit. All the El Dorado kids were so excited to see us.  We got there earlier than planned so we were able to socialize a bit before the formal program. We started... Continue Reading →

We come home very late every night so it's hard to keep the blog updated on a daily basis.  The Filipino traffic is a huge factor.  However, we all amazingly get along and try to keep ourselves entertained (or sleep) during the long rides. Today is the morning of Jan 3rd, 2012.  Here's just a... Continue Reading →