Today, I went with a group of students to restoration for the second time this week. We were reconstructing an old house, which required quite a bit of work including moving stones, and putting mortar in between the stones to keep them in place. The only thing that was different was we had two students from William Knibb Memorial High School who came to work on the project with us. When they arrived we were all a little nervous to meet them, but it was still exciting to get to know them and work together with people our age living in Jamaica. While going around to introduce ourselves, we noticed that they used different names for the grades they were in which gave us a new perspective on how things that seem so simple to us can be so completely different in international countries. After this, we told them about what we would be doing and the goal for this site over the course of this trip. We gave them a tour of Good Hope Plantation and gave a brief history of the different areas and the work done on the plantation, then we headed back to the site to start construction for the day.
Working on something like this you realize how important the tiniest details are. Every block has to be put in in a perfectly straight line, exactly level, or else you have to lift it back off, fix it, then go back over it again. It is a lot of work. The work we mostly did would be putting the mortar in between the stones to make sure they stayed in place. We did this along with the other students. Once we started to talk to them a little more it was interesting to learn about all the sports and games they play, for example, in school how it is popular to run track and field, play basketball, or play netball. It seems like for a lot of things we were all pretty similar, like how we all listened to similar types of music, or enjoyed playing hide-and-go-seek tag during lunch. Then there were other things that were different like the movies we watched or even the way we dress, which to us often seems like just a minor detail. Looking back, it was such a great experience getting to work with people our age, and getting to learn about the difference in the things we are so used to at home and the way things work here in Falmouth.
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