Supplies, Construction, Progress, Exhaustion

I'm completely exhausted, barely able to keep my eyes open as I write this blog post, but I am happy. The last two days have been fantastic, much better than I expected. Yesterday, Nurbol, Altinbek and I, went to the market and bought almost all of the construction materials for the project. We were there for over two hours and I could barely feel my hands but we got most of what we needed. That was satisfiying enough in itself. Today, I went into work at 9:00 AM and Altinbek and I started building the new wall that basically creates the new room. At 12:00 we had about a quarter of the wall up and the layout for the rest of it sort of figured out. I was impressed and suprised. For lunch I walked the mile or so to the other side of town where Nurbol lives. After surviving a near attack by his shaggy (all bark, not much bite), I had lunch with him and his sister, prepared by his mother, who is very sweet and kind. I transferred about 35 of my movies onto his computer and then we headed back out into the cold to walk to the children's center. We got there, met briefly with Altinbek and headed to the market again, this time to pick up the door and door frame and some new screws. From about 3:00 until 9:00, we worked hard, getting almost the entire wall up. We still have to put the glass in for the windows, secure a few areas, cover one more small area above the door, and then it's on with the paint.

We've discusses a few options and Nurbol suggested asking a local art teacher (who is known to be an excellent painter) to help paint some sort of mural or design on the outside wall of the new room. We're going to talk to the children's center workers and the student council and see what they think and figure things out from there. Once the construction and paint are done, we need to clean up and make sure the electricty is as problem free as possible. After that, we'll be buying furniture, decorations, flooring/carpeting, computers, and a printer/scanner.

I'm very happy with how fast and smooth the process has been so far(since we got the grant money) but we still have a lot of work to do and lots of training sessions, classes, and meetings even after that. I feel a fire and energy in me that I haven't felt in a while. It's been frusrating waiting impatiently for this project to come together but now I'm finally seeing things moving and it feels really good. I know that this is going to be an amazing resource for Olgii's children and I am going to work as hard as I can over the next few months to make sure it's completed perfectly. I'm exhausted after a long day but I know that I will fall asleep with a smile on my face and wake up motivated and ready to go tomorrow.

I'll try to write a better blog post tomorrow or this weekend when I'm a bit more rested. More details and pictures to come. :)