Monday April 5th - the day before (the workshop)

Another gorgeous day. It started off at a reasonable hour and I basically got right at it foundationing. I got a couple of mixes ready to go, started laying out stone and then met up with Alex for our morning cup of coffee. As I write this, I'm sad to think that this was likely our last ritual for the foreseeable future.

We got right into it, Alex filling in the spaces between stones with me following behind, setting the second course in mortar. I had to let things get a little sloppy but there was time for little else. I had hoped to get into town to get on-line and upload some of these blogs posts but I didn't have any time for that of course. Not much to say really except that we went on with the foundation pretty full on for the next three hours or so, taking our breakfast break around 11:30. It was hard to believe the day was passing that quickly.

Alex had remarked at a change in the weather, highlighting the fact that it was pretty unlikely to see 10 straight sunny days this time of year (the past four had been gorgeous - we had six more to go before the workshop is over). I told him not to jinx us but as the day moved on, the northerly/easterly breeze and on-coming clouds seemed to indicate that our luck might soon be running out. I couldn't help but feel a bit of desperation as we strove to finish the lagging foundation (well, it wasn't exactly lagging, it just seemed to keep growing).

Most of the rest of the day was/is a blur. We stopped for an excellent lunch around 3:30 or so I think and that's when the first carload of folks arrived. Five Athenians - Teo, Maria, Maria, Kostas and Fotini. It was reliving to see things starting to come together. We talked a bit about the building and then set to cleaning up, moving all the existing stone off to the side of the site and roughly grading (removing the rubble) from some of our prime building sites.

Before I knew it, we had a full on crew - I'm still not sure how many people are here. It's hard to tell but the number must be well over 20 at this point. They all seem great and I can feel it's going to be a great week. I bounced from conversation to conversation after our evening meal and through tea and felt like an absolute outsider being one of the only ones not smoking (not really, but I did notice that I seemed to be the only non-smoker here.)

I should be in bed so I think I'm going to get there. Looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings.