We got a roof!!!

The Highlights

· More friends…
Spending time with friends is always a pleasure…

-Thanks Fernando for the lovely afternoon-


-Thanks Debi for your time to educate us re: composting-



· Our new apartment.
It is only new because it got new paint, a big clean up and new energy. Something we enjoy doing: improving our living conditions constantly, our surroundings… even when they do not belong to us ;)

-BEFORE-





-AFTER-





· Our Volunteering efforts, with Hogar Nueva Vida.
August 10^th, we taught the first out of four workshops at Hogar Nueva Vida.
“Envisioning my Future” will be a series of workshops with the objective of assisting young adults of the program Amigos in Hogar Nueva Vida to better plan for their future. A variety of topics will be covered from: Defining their hopes for the future, exploring what it takes to be successful in high school-responsibilities, discussing obstacles to reaching their goals which may include and others. During the course of the four workshops we will deliver practical and simple tools/activities that they will use to create a tangible plan by the end of the fourth workshop, understanding major categories of a well thought out plan: Career, Finances, Health and Social.
We will invite everyone to participate in a competition to create a Ten Year Plan and a Vision Board; the best selected one will win a prize.
The workshops are delivered in English and Spanish forcing Brian and I to coordinate greater efforts to work together ;) I love it!!!






· Our Renovations Project: Centro #1.
We are full throttle into construction so please excuse the short update. Lots of monitoring…

1- More of the unknowns.
More unknowns keep coming up but they are being managed with proper change orders and lots of communication which seems to be something that people are not used to do or fan of, I force them ;)

-More beams and columns are needed in this area-



Did you ever hear of a pool without a proper filtration system?, well… I thought it was not necessary until the client pointed out the importance. Being a Project Manager does not mean everything is obvious to him or her but as long as there is communication and timely actions the project can succeed.

-A filtration system? I am glad it was explained to me on time-



2- Interesting knowns.
Building a cistern should not be difficult, except for in Yucatan you find rocks after digging for 30 centimetres… not that easy.

-The cistern… so we do not lack of water-



Brian had a great idea to build our own faucets and we will…
-Why not?-




The guest’s bathroom is bigger than ours ;)
-Welcome guests!!!-



3- Our stakeholders.
So far our stakeholders are cooperative and how? By engaging them…

4- The beauty.
The new roof… The pictures are self-explanatory… but if you wonder about the construction please send me an email and I will explain.
The system used is called “vigueta y bovedilla”, although in this case a lighter material was used to replace the “bovedilla” and a stronger material was used to replace the “vigueta”. At the end of the day the workers enjoyed a meal made by the contractor and we did too.
By the way, if someone tells you that Mexican workers are lazy and don’t know what they are doing… my comment on that… Who is the boss? What is the boss willing to do to correct the situation? Is the boss willing to work with the workers to lead by example?
Last week, Deya did a little bit of clean up (for example) and that was enough to keep the expectation up.

-Viguetas-













Regards,
Deyanira MD.