Today was our first day of work at the school. After having breakfast with Sanong, the school director, a few of the students parents showed up ready to help us get the school ready to paint.
We distributed sandpaper and masks to all those willing to help, and began sanding the majority of the school’s exterior walls. We were hard at work till lunch time and made a lot of progress thanks to all of the other workers.
At lunch we started talking to Sanong (with a lot of help from google translate) about his priorities for the school’s improvement other than a new paint job. With monsoon season on the way, and the school’s lack of access to a lawn mower, we began to realize that all of the efforts towards repairing their soccer field would be in vain. Sanong said the best things for the kids would be playground equipment and more school supplies. Finding a distributor of playground equipment proved to be difficult with the language barrier so we reached out to the directors of other schools in the area to see where they got theirs. We made some progress on finding playground equipment and will pick back up with Sanong at breakfast tomorrow.
There is a storm coming tomorrow. It is supposed to be one of the worst storms the area has seen in 60 years. We will hold off painting tomorrow, but other than that the locals do not seem very concerned about the storm in general which is comforting… I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!
A good first day working, and many more to come!
Love,
Juan and CJ
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