The smores were great last night!!! Yesterday I went with the group that was working on building a house with Habitat for Humanity. In the morning, we had to mix the cement for the entire floor of the house. It was very difficult but also very interesting to see how they do it. Without machines to mix cement for them, we mixed 14 wheelbarrows of sand, 6 100-pound bags of concrete, 4 wheelbarrows of rocks, and a bunch of water together to make the cement. We combined all of these things together in a pile on the ground and used shovels to mix it together. That only made half of the floor, so we had to do it twice, but working together we were able to get it done before lunch!! After lunch I was mixing cement again while some others used it to build the walls of the house higher. Shoutout to Josh and Jack for teaching me all about superheroes while we worked! I am very sore from mixing so much cement yesterday, but luckily today was an off day. We had 3 lectures this morning which were all very interesting, and we had the afternoon off. I spent my afternoon talking to some Witt alums that are spending the next month in Lesotho, and then exploring the village. When we left to walk around the village a bunch of kids saw us passing and joined us and they took us to the river which was really pretty and a super fun adventure. We got to sleep in today until 9am, which is why we spent the night hanging out by the fire! We also had a peace corps volunteer named Jeremy hang out with us and tell us all about what he does in Lesotho, it was really interesting to hear how his past 9 months here have been.
P.S. I could not be happier than I am here! The people and views are unbelievable
-Emmalee 鉂わ笍
Day 5 Blog (Allie)
At the pre-school we've largely moved on to painting details for the interior of the school. We started on a large mural wall depicting animals and houses in the mountains. There are also going to be paintings to help the children learn numbers, shapes, colors, emotions, parts of the body and the alphabet. The front wall of the exterior of the school is still being worked on but when it's done it should be very colorful and pretty.
Day 6 Blog (Allie)
In the morning a few different professors from the National University of Lesotho came out and gave us short lectures about Lesotho political history and its medicinal culture as well as how climate change impacts the country. We had free time in the afternoon鈥擲ome people went into the village while others stayed behind and relaxed at the lodge. It was a nice day to journal and read.