Filling in the walls

I figure I’ll start out with the most recent progress – here’s what I left with you the last time I posted (about 2 weeks ago)


Since then, this is what the community has come up with:


The end gable is filled with bottles and has its first layer of stucco; they also started stucco’ing the lower parts of the wall. But we’ve already advanced way past this point.


The sun makes it a little difficult to make out the progress, but both the end gable and the entire back wall have their finish coats of stucco. The workers are placing bottles in the second level, and since I took that picture on Wednesday the remaining squares have probably already been filled in and have their first coats of stucco. We’re moving right along.



Some recent events…..above are some pictures from when we invited a bunch of local community leaders out to the project in hopes to dispel some of the mystery surrounding building with eco-bricks. They seemed pretty impressed, which is nice because most people look at me with incredulity when I tell them that we’re building with trash. Usually, they have to see it in order to believe it.

I’ve been getting my hands dirty, of course. Here I am up on the scaffolding, tying bottles to chicken wire:


And here’s the square that Don Miguel and I finished:


These next few pictures can give you another vantage point from which you can see progress. First, the “before”:


Then, the “after”




Gotta hand it to our head mason Frainer; he’s pretty good with stucco and a trowel.

Here’s a couple of community members pitching in with another part of the wall:


Bottom line is, things are going awesome. Here’s another “before” picture of what our school will look like from the front:


Final thing – we just confirmed today that our inauguration will be Sunday, August 21st! It’ll be a big party and some people are saying that we should slaughter a cow, but I’ll wait to see it before I believe it ☺ Regardless, there’ll be lot of different people present, including the Municipality, folks from the Peace Corps administration and some special Hug It Forward VIPs. I’m really excited - just one month to go!

Significant progress

Hey all – Bottle School progress has been going really fast, and I’m a little remiss for not sharing any photos, but it’s been so dang busy around here! Let me give you a quick visual summary of the past month:




Pretty crazy, right? This is what happens when you don’t post for a while! We’ve made awesome progress and we’re starting to look at late August for the inauguration. Currently we’re working on placing the bottles - here’s how it works.

First, cut yourself a length of chicken wire (cedazo) to match the opening between the columns and beams, weaving ¼” rebar through the edges like so:

That’s Chris Barry, head mason Frainer and community coordinator Don Miguel – see how they’ve interlaced the rebar through the holes of the chicken wire? Next, they’ll pull the chicken wire tight against the beams and columns, using the “pins” already poured into the concrete as braces:

Next, all you have to do is bend the pins back with a hammer, while someone pulls the chicken wire nice and tight. Now you have the surface onto which you’ll attach your bottles!

Attaching bottles isn’t rocket science – all you have to do is use plastic string. Watch this clip for an idea of how it works.



It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it….

Here’s our first filled square!

Now the school is really starting to take shape – pretty much the entire first floor has been filled in with bottles:

The kids are cute:

The nice thing about how light the bottles are is that it makes our bottle schools safer for earthquakes – a definite concern in this country.

Here I am with my state-of-the-art sun protection system :)

Things are going great! We have about 3 or 4 weeks of work left, and then classes can begin. I’m both excited and thankful for how smooth the whole project has gone thus far!

Goata get a hold of myself (so bad)

As of this morning, I own a goat and he looks like this:


I know I was all confident in my last post that he’d be here within like 48 hours or whatever, but this is Guatemala and nothing ever goes to plan.

(I recently heard some great advice – “you can start enjoying your time in Guatemala once you rid yourself of any expectations. Just go with the flow and you’ll be much happier than if you had a schedule ”)

As you can see, he’s already pretty big, which is ok because that’ll mean more goat stew later on. I’m hoping that he likes to eat ☺

I also know I was supposed to get a baby goat, but that one got sold and so I went to this butcher with no front teeth who acts as the local goat guru and he lined me up with a replacement. So here’s my new pet (?):


He’s kinda cute, right? I think he’s pretty cool looking at the very least, although a bit feisty (definitely gotta watch out for those horns>

The twist here is that I don’t have space for him at my house, so my bottle school counterpart Don Miguel will keep him in his yard. I’m fairly confident that this arrangement will work out, as the village only has 52 families and pretty much everyone knows:

A: Me
B: the fact that I own a goat
C: and that I’m working to bring the community a school

So there’s the gratitude factor, which I hope will go a long way towards keeping my goat safe. Furthermore, I’ve made it common knowledge that I intend to turn him into a big community feast in about 6 months, so I’m hoping it’s in everyone’s interest to keep him fed for the future. Also, the kids like him!


I found the neighborhood kids checking him out when I finished helping with the bottle school this afternoon, so I let them take him out for a walk. “Just make sure to put him back in his pen when the rains start,” I told them.

Ok - most important part of this post - my goat still doesn’t have a name! What should I call him???

I'm getting a goat soon!

What you see in front of you is my future goat's future home :)

Don Miguel and I built this shed in his backyard, seeing that I don’t have room for a goat where I live, unfortunately....

At any rate, I'm pretty excited. I’ve wanted a goat for a while, but I knew I had to build his shed first. So - now that THAT detail is out of the way I’m planning on going up to San Marcos and getting my goat THIS WEEKEND (should be awesome)

Everyone should know a couple things – first of all, it’ll be a male goat. I thought about getting a lady goat buuuuuut it probably wouldn’t have worked out for various logistic reasons. Second, this will be an eating goat – in about 10 months he’ll be butcher bound and we’re gonna have jerk stew for dinner. Lastly, I don’t have a name picked out for him…..yet (!!)

I’ll be posting a picture of him soon and I would love to have your input as to what he should be named. All submissions welcome.

Ok, so that’s the most important part of the post, but I figured I might as well include some pictures of the building process (Don Miguel’s kids helped out too). Here we are splitting bamboo for the fence; Don Miguel cracked each piece with the axe:


And I pulled them apart (arrrr)


Here the kids and I are sawing the corner support posts:


The basic frame:


Starting to come together:


Lashing the bamboo slats with bailing wire:


Done! This will be a goat house in like 3 days. I’m pumped.

Making progress

Things have been going great with my bottle school – we finished pouring the first set of columns on Tuesday, and we’ll probably start with the horizontal beams in the next couple of days. But it’s been a while since I’ve posted pictures; let me start at the beginning….

First things first, you have to dig a big square trench. Here's where the school is gonna go!


I dug out some of this dirt a little while ago; the afternoon rains make it thick and heavy (chopping it up is no piece of cake). So you have to take an occasional break:


Of course, at some point you’ll need to get sand delivered (for the concrete):


Then you’ll place the rebar for vertical columns and move onto pouring the cimiento corrido (honestly, I’m not even sure what this is called in English, but it’s the base of the building's foundation, the stretch of concrete running along the bottom of the trench):


Then you lay a few runs of cement blocks on top of the cimiento corrido, completing the foundation (you can’t use bottles yet, unfortunately :) ) That’s my program supervisor Carlos Julajuj on the left and community coordinator Don Miguel on the right:


Next thing you do is fill in some dirt and prepare the solera de humedad, which will be poured around the horizontal series of rebar running along the top of the foundation:


Jumping ahead, you can see how much progress we’re making:


On the day this photo was taken we finished the columns, which are formed within a wooden “box” into which you pour the liquid concrete. The novel aspect of bottle school construction is that you install a series of pins in both the soleras and the columns while the concrete is still wet - future pictures will illustrate why. Here’s one of the village kids helping out, putting pins into their holes at 20 cm intervals:


That’s our head mason Frainer mixing cement:


I had to help out, of course (shirt on my head = sun protection):


Then the wet cement goes into the column form:


All and all, things are going good. Tomorrow morning we’re going to deliver a bunch more rebar to the site, which should keep work moving at an even pace. People are motivated, costs are staying low thanks to collaborating organizations and everyone’s support means we’re making great progress. These kids can’t wait to get their new school!

Slight insomnia or la pereza?

It’s been a while since my last post, maybe around 3 weeks, but I feel bad so here it is, 4:16 in the morning (I couldn’t sleep for other reasons) but I figured I might as well take advantage of stare-up-at-the-ceiling time, the dim glow of street lamps that paint my room.

(I also moved recently – I used to sleep in near complete darkness, light seeping in from behind a couple of room dividers, but now my entire room stays faintly awake all night.)

Part of the reason I haven’t been writing is all the rushing around. I changed houses, my supervisor came to visit, I’ve been traveling for the last couple weekends and frankly, things are just starting to seem banal. When I’m walking around my town, buying fruit in the market or eating fried chicken in my comedor, it doesn’t immediately strike me as an interesting thing to share (or so it seems). Then I realized, while laying in bed, that maybe I should just describe my state of mind.

For one, Peace Corps is starting to feel normal. Living in Guatemala – yes, it still makes me smile when I say it or realize it, using it as a refrain with friends to explain when something ridiculous happens. But it’s also more and more normal – I just passed 10 months here in-country, and I guess things seem less novel. You just shrug off bucket baths in the dark with cold water. You sleep through the late, late night crowing of roosters. You try to ignore the booming explosions of fireworks – I can hear a 30 foot roll of Black Cats going off right now, which means that someone’s birthday has begun. You just sigh when your new landlord lags for days on promised repairs, or you return to your new place and the floor is inexplicably covered in a ½ inch of water. It’s just Guatemala.

Then I write this stuff down and I realize, “Oh…that is kind of amusing.” :)

One other thing, about the traveling I’ve been doing recently – it’s tiresome, just the sheer hours I spend on rattling, janky buses, barreling down roads full of potholes or around fallen trees or piles of landslide from recent rains. It’s 6 hours to Panajachel, or about 7 hours to Antigua, which are the two locations, respectively, where I spent the past couple weekends. That’s each way, and then I have to go back home, and that’s why I spend so much time loading up my phone with podcasts. Here are some favorites, all available on iTunes (lemme know if you have any suggestions!)

Al Jazeera
KCRW’s Left, Right and Center
The Economist
APR’s Dinner Party Download
The Nation’s The Breakdown
Talk of the Nation
This American Life
Slate’s Culture Gabfest
KEXP’s Music That Matters
Elevator Hip-Hop
ProperlyChilled.com

Also, here I am at my new place, having just taken a tuk-tuk across town with all my possessions.