|
|
Sunday, June 10th, 2001. Digging, digging, digging. We were hoping to complete our foundation trench, the foundation drain and even install a temporary faucet from our brand new water meter. Kayoko and Nobuki Omikawa, who are Terri's English students, came and helped us. Our friend Laurie also joined us mid-morning. And our foundation was indeed dug at the end!
However, the water meter didn't work out quite as well. First, we had a very hard time digging through the soil there because somebody had dumped a pile of road fill on top, which contained a lot of rocks. When we finally dug through it to install some pipes, we found that somebody else had gotten into the water meter and used a big rock to break the glass on the meter. Why would anybody care to perform such a meaningless little vandalism is completely beyond us! It's not a very big deal, but still, it was a bummer that it happened.
 |
When we arrived in the morning, we noticed that it had obviously rained the previous day. More importantly - our drain is working properly! The puddle at the low end of the trench is the proof. We were very excited. |
 |
So Ari put on some rubber boots and bravely dove into the water. (yeah, right) It was not hard to dig in but the wet clay was heavy and he sure got dirty. |
 |
Nobuki is working on a scaled-down foundation for our inner wall. He's doing a great job! |
 |
Again, the beauty of this construction process is that even the smaller ones have something to contribute. Nobuki really helped a lot. |
 |
Kayoko is working on expanding some of the trench that was too narrow. She brought her own garden cart. |
 |
Ari in the mud. It's actually quite fun on a hot day. |
 |
Terri and Laurie working on digging a trench for a pipe by the water meter. As you can see there were a lot of rocks. This was not very easy. |