We woke up on our first build day to a crisp, cool morning. The weather has definitely been cooler than I expected, but I suppose it’s good for working in. When we were separated into our teams I ended up as a #1 so we didn’t rename our team since that’s self-explanatory On my team I had Meghan, Tom, Andrea, Kate, Suni and Chris. Our masons name was Ben, but he looked like Usher so that’s what we called him. Let me start by saying it was the most intense upper-body workout ever!!!

We started by digging dirt into wheelbarrows and taking it to our site. Then we did the same with small rocks. Once we collected everything we needed (dirt, rocks, cement solution), we mixed it all together and poured it into the trenches for the foundation of the home. Then we hauled large stones (also known as ‘logs’) around the house and waited for the foundation to dry. Then in went the stones to start the base of the walls and we placed mortar in between all the rocks. We put two levels of stone for the base of the walls and then dug all the dirt from the middle back into the space of the trenches – once this was done you wouldn’t think we had done any work!!!

“Usher”, who was lots of fun but also a slave-driver ended our day forcing us to haul 40+ wheelbarrows of freshly dropped off dirt and stones for tomorrow. Every time we walked by him he told us it wasn’t full enough – he was hard core. My arms were like jello and I could hardly close my hands by the end of the day. Don’t worry about us burning too many calories though cause we haven’t eaten so much food in our lives and so many carbs – lots of potatoes and rice. Day one – check – a hard but extremely rewarding first day!!