Inspiration

Last night after reading and preparing for this morning's devotion, I couldn't quite sleep. I flipped on the light and started sketching and fleshing out some ideas that had been rolling around in my head after it became evident yesterday afternoon that my initial idea for the dorms would be impossible given certain restrictions of the site. After a few minutes of drawing, at peace with my progress, I put down my pen, flipped off the light, and fell asleep to the sound of rain on the metal roof.

Today was perhaps the busiest day so far. After breakfast, devotions, and our morning team meeting, I went straight to work drafting and developing the sketches for the dorms. As the rain cleared up mid-morning, the other architects and I decided to take a more extensive walk through town to take stock of the architecture, take photos of details, and research materials and methods of construction. We arrived back for lunch as the rain started up again.

After lunch, I glued myself to my laptop and worked diligently to flesh out the basics of the building in a way the client could understand. On an intense mission such as this, we have scheduled client meetings every afternoon, and so progress must be made or else decisions are delayed, and completing the schematic design in time would be impossible. My first meeting with our client to discuss the specifics of the dorm design went well (previous meetings were mostly about programming--what goes into the dorms--not what they look like). At this point, I just continue moving the design forward as quickly as possible and detail as much as possible before the end of Friday. I'm not ready to share quite yet, but maybe by the end of the week, I'll post some images of the dorm design.

In other news, today was Glyn's birthday! Glyn is one of the structural engineers on the team--he and I are working together on the dormitory.

Here's an action shot of him blowing out his candles. In some sort of South American/Peruvian/Spanish tradition, everyone claps and counts, and the person having the birthday is supposed to blow out the candles when you get to their age. To protect the particular parties involved here, I won't tell what number we counted to!

And here are a few other photos from the day's activities.

This is a shot of our typical morning team meeting. Each team member describes what they accomplished the previous day, what the hope to accomplish during the day, and what materials and information they need from the other team members.

We walked past a market where we saw these cool flower pots made of old tires.

Ah, the mighty coca leaf. Good for tea, chew, and...um...cocaine.

And here are two more photos to close out the day which I hope speak for themselves.