The week of March 12-19, spring break season at YLM continued with five students from North Dakota State University in Fargo, ND.

The Hinojosa family, who you will be hearing a lot about over the next few blogs, is comprised of Gilberto and Dora, 3 of their own children, and 4 of their grandchildren–9 people in all! The NDSU group is the first of many that are slated to work on the Hinojosa compound throughout the spring and summer; first up was making some improvements to an existing structure on the property; stuccoing was the most time-consuming task but it looks great from the street now! One entire day was dedicated to pouring a concrete slab that will be the foundation for a home addition to be built this coming week. The Hinojosas are incredibly gracious and generous people. They brought water, lunch, and a Port-a-Potty for the servants, and even took off work to help on slab day!

The group’s final day of work was a relaxing one spent doing odd jobs on campus and then shopping at the Mercado Juarez on wheels

Erin putting on chicken wire

I HATE stucco, so I did a lot of chin scratching and pointing

They could have used the latter, but preferred to act like monkeys

Starting the first coat of stucco

Team stucco

Since I don't do stucco, I put the forms up for the slab we were going to pour on Wednesday

Team stucco continues. Erin loves to stucco.

First coat is done

Wednesday, we poured the slab for the next group to build on

Getting the volcano ready

Multiple volcanos, plus Genaro, plus making it thinner equals a 5 hour slab

Mixing in the wheelbarrow

Genaro taught me the mad concrete skills which I now have

Hanna and Erin were the smoothers

Even the family helped out a little

Team slab