Day 18: Tuesday, June 14th
We were back to the old grind of things. We woke up, ate breakfast, and headed to the site. We checked out the curing process of our floor slab after being poured a couple days earlier.
Quiz time! Do you remember what curing is? Think about it… you better not be looking it up… you’re right! It is the practice of adding water to concrete (after the initial hardening state) to strengthen the concrete. How is this done to a floor slab? Great question! Wow, you’re such a nerd! The method of curing the floor slab requires a very weak mortar mix (sand, cement, and water) to be placed on the perimeter of the floor slab (it needs to be weak since it will be removed later after curing is complete). This acts as a small dam to allow water to sit on top of the slab. This is done for 10 days to ensure proper performance. This meant the team was done with construction. Since there is nothing that could be done during the curing process and the team only had two days left in-country, we decided to put in all our efforts towards community engagement.
We had scheduled visits to nearby schools to have the opportunity to interact with kids from other villages. The first school we went to had kids from 1st all the way to 8th grade. The 1st and 2nd graders were in one room, the 3rd and 4th graders in another, and each grade after that had their own classroom. We sat in with the 8th graders who all shared their names and what/who they want to be when they grow up. Their teacher started quizzing them (just like I did, you) and asked, “Who’s the president of the United States?” One kid answered, “OBAMA!” very confident in his answer. None of us corrected him.
The second school we attended only had 1st-4th graders. We sat on the floor alongside with them as they read some of their reading exercises to us. They were adorable. Then they sang “London Bridge is Falling Down!” Honestly, I wanted an encore. The team sang back to them. Guess what song we chose? “The Eyes of Texas,” of course! Hook’em horns! We recognized a lot of faces as kids from Sirupinayur and we didn’t get to see the faces of some we expected to be there. It was unfortunate the circumstances that some kids were placed in that didn’t allow them to attend alongside their neighbors.
During the midday, Sarah and I headed to the ENT doctor one last time! That’s three times and counting! Just a refresher, I got a killer ear-infection! We went for the last follow up just to ensure everything was alright before I headed back to the states. I still couldn’t hear out of my right ear but hey, it was an adventure! The ENT doctor wasn’t my greatest fan since I asked so many questions. Oops. In the end I convinced him to follow us on Instagram! Yea, we are best friends, I guess.
The team headed back to the village. We collected all the kids and did a gumdrop activity with them. They built little structures out of gumdrops and you can imagine, things got a little messy! The activity evolved into kids trying to build huge skyscrapers of candy! They all deserve to be engineers.
On our drive back the craziest thing happened. So a little bit of backstory here. One day on our drive back to the house (this was earlier on in our trip) the team spotted a monkey. He was just sitting there right by the side of the road! Everyone saw it (except for Zia)! We freaked out and I really don’t know why but it probably had something to do with the heat exhaustion. Everyday since, we would drive by the same spot to see if the monkey was back. No luck. However, on this ride back WE SAW IT! Granted, it wasn’t in the same spot but we were 55% sure that it was the same monkey! Funny how things come full circle. It was as if that monkey knew our stay here was coming to an end.
Once the team was home we discussed and planned for our final/closing ceremony. Who would speak when? Who would say what? Decorations we would buy? Snacks and food? With the help of our cultural advisor Janet, we were able to coordinate all the logistics. Later in the evening the team met up on the roof to reflect our time in-country. It felt overwhelming. We were getting comfortable and everything felt right (except for my ear), and now we have to leave? Everything was coming to a close, but I knew that the team’s hearts, the community’s hearts, our host family’s hearts, and our NGO partners’ hearts will always stay open to each other.
Ayah Alomari
PUC India 2019
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