Cement laying, what a major part of building!

Don't we take cement mixers for granted?! To make the flooring of the bike shed, we carried 32 buckets of sand (yes, there are no wheelbarrows here!) to a pile, and mix, with a shovel, 4 bags of cement mix that weighed 50 kilograms per bag for each pile of cement to be laid. We made a total of six piles, along with two smaller ones. It was hard work! We then had to make a well in the middle of the pile to accommodate water to slowly dampen the cement mixed with sand. Each pile of cement mix took us about an hour, and that only covered 2 square meters! A team effort was required and was sure met. Although I don't think any of the team members were too keen on becoming cement layers any time in the near future!
After that, being rather exhausted, we spent a large amount of time playing with the children at the centre. Laughter has no language, that's for sure! We were blowing bubbles, kicking balls, jumping elastic and pushing swings for these gorgeous children. We were lucky enough to be taught a few Khmer words, especially for body parts and play equipment. But this was not the best part of the day.
As we finished the buildings, we were privileged to a rare blessing from the Monks of the work site.This is a tradition for their religion, each new house or building must be blessed before it is used, it was described to us as what we would call a house warming. They were very accepting of us not understanding their culture and explained it to us, step by step, through their blessing. It was a very special time, as we were all blessed, but we also had the opportunity to experience a major part of their  culture.
We were all exhausted after this third, huge day of building, but the vibe through the team  was beautiful. I assume that each team member was not only pleased with their own effort for the three days, but also the outcome that their hard work had achieved.
I think that's about all for the third day of building. There will  be more posts to catch up the lost days, so stay tuned!
From Kirby  :)
Ps. Robbo reminded me to inform you all of the pot holes in the road leading to the centre. Put it this way, the road was only 32 kilometers long and it took us one hour and 15 minutes each way. Some were big enough for the mini bus to fit in them. These pot holes were certainly against Shire regulations!