Day 27 - June 21 - Roof Complete!!!!

Hello all. Today, after a delicious breakfast of iddli and sambar, we headed down to the site to see the slab and beam of the roof poured. The roof concrete was mixed with the help of a gas powered mixing machine and then the concrete was hauled up to the roof with an interesting pulley device. I was really looking forward to doing some physical labor in the sun, but there wasn't much we could help with during the process. Some of us students took turns sieving sand for the mix, which was fun once we figured out the proper shoveling technique. The mixing and pouring of concrete was handled by the construction team. It was important that the roof and slab be poured continuously from start to finish to ensure it would all cure somewhat uniformly. The pour lasted from around 11:30 am and was finally finished at 5pm, with only a small break for the workers to have tea and wudu. The workers put in hours of hard labor and now our building is finally up to roof level! The roof pour has always been a planned milestone for our project. When working on schedule in the spring semester, I used the pouring of the grade beam as the marker of our first day of work and the pouring of the roof as the marker for the last day. Although we are in our final week of implementation, I didn't feel like time was running out until I saw the construction team bringing up the buckets of concrete for the last unfilled corner. After the concrete was completely poured, the workers smoothed the surface and packed up to go home to their families. The wet concrete looked like a calm reflecting pool in the light of the sunset. Over the last few weeks, PUC Team India has built a building as well as friendships with a community who will soon be halfway around the world from us. In a few days, we will be moving on and going our separate ways. I have mixed feelings--a lot of satisfaction as well as melancholy. I'm sure we will enjoy our last days in town. In the evening today, we had the older boys from Packianathapuram over as guests at the CASA center. We made them grilled cheese and fried PB and J because they didn't get any when we served those dishes for the block party we threw last night. Before the boys arrived, the power went out at the CASA center, so we ate dinner in the dark and then for a good while we sat in pitch black discussing how to prepare fried sandwiches with no power! Luckily the power came on just as the boys arrived. Sowmya, Devamani, Kiera, Nina and I took turns in the kitchen to fry up a platter of buttery grilled cheeses and PB and Js. We all had fun talking, playing frisbee, and eating sandwiches with the boys. -Erin