Internet Day

Saturday brings extended internet hours, so I wanted to take the chance to post a few more pics.

Jonathan and Evelyn have been loving it here – playing in the dirt with rocks, chickens, dogs. They've been such good sports too – haven't complained once about the heat. Jonathan has been amzing us with his appetite! It must be a combination of the heat and all the exercise he's been getting, but he eats three helpings of rice and beans at every meal!

The other day our work at the bridge was interrupted by a request for help from one of the market truck drivers. He had somehow tipped his truck (which was piled high with bamboo he'd harvested and was preparing to sell at the market) over onto its side. We brought over a winch and were able to tip it back up, and when we returned in the afternoon, the truck was gone. What often happens (and by often I mean every day) is that the trucks are so heavily loaded that they can't make it up the hill on the far side of the existing stone bridge, so they stop there and block traffic in both directions while they unload the bamboo. It takes hours to unload, move the truck and then reload, so you're totally out of luck if you'd planned on crossing in the car. Yeesh.

Here are some shots of the bridge foundations. The first is a shot of the soil anchor reinforcement, which I spent my first couple days here assembling. The second is a shot of the soil anchor formwork. The cage of reinforcement sits in here, and we'll fill it up with concrete next week. This last shot is the threshold on one side of the river. We built these two masonry colums and then filled them with reinforced concrete. The steel piece on the top is called a saddle, and the handrail cable will come up and over it. The traffic will walk in between these columns. Pretty cool, huh?