snail's pace?

we've finally beat the floods. Paw (which will from from here on be known as พ่อ so you can say you know how to read some thai) has set a new precedent for building the house. For the last two days, and for another ten day period to come, we will be working as a crew of 6. We have ordered main components such as doors and windows, roof tiles (all second hand, which has been a really cool experience, and is exciting for elyssa because she gets to wash and paint all 1200 of them), bricks and more. But i'm going to quit talking because i know all you really want is pictures.

I thought I'd first begin with this motivational image. I imagine some caption at the bottom saying something like, "Reach for the sky, even if you don't have arms." This guy was crawling along up the wood forms for the pillars. I had never really looked at how snails move before. They glide at a perfectly consistent pace. Turns out the bottoms side of their bellies are concave; the middle part that is slightly removed from the surface does a wave more intense than any belly dance I've ever seen attempted. I guess it is the waves from the middle part that are actually the part touching the ground and provide a "moving" surface to propel the snail along. Pretty graceful for his outside appearance if you ask me.

Well just as with the pillars, the concrete under all of the walls is reinforced with steel. Because these are interlaced with the steel for the pillars, we did not bother to bring the welder over and do these in situ; we wire tied all of the joints instead. You can see up close right here:

after all of these are done we put wood forms up around the steel on top of the cemented blocks.

then we carried all of the cement over in buckets... fun!

I really included this picture just so you could see some important things: 1A, my posture, 2B, my shoes (this is a shout out to Wynn who insisted I inherit his Chacos before we left. I haven't been able to find anywhere to get boots or shoes my size, so I have done all of my work in these. I have a great z shaped tan now on my foot. Thanks Wynn!), and 3C, my rear ;)

Paw Pen is the mastermind behind the forms and smoothing the cement in them. He is one happy man, and loves to repeat Thai phrases we learn on the job until we learn a new one. One thing is for sure, repetition makes things stick. He and พ่อ have been friends since they were kids.

After all of that cement was done, we disassembled the forms to make new ones for the pillars. All of this was set up yesterday morning, more stabilizers went up after this picture and the pillars were leveled with a long bamboo pole with a weight hanging from the end. It was fun to watch. This day is when พ่อ recruited 3 more friends to get his going. It was fun, tossing the cement up to a guy hanging out on the scaffolds to dump cement into a 3m deep pillar. All twelve pillars are finishing drying right now! We will have a floor layer put in this week.

พ่อ and Paw Pen finishing up the pillar forms.

next week we'll have a bunch of bricks that look like walls hopefully. This project has been a blast, I recommend it to anyone!