French Architects!

As I mentioned in a previous post, we have recently been blessed with the presence of Laure and Constance - two students of architecture here on an exchange program from France.  The have decided that they have too much time on their hands and found our community asking if they could help.  We were of course very excited at the possibility to have two people with architectural knowledge ready to donate their time and skills.  Laure will be staying in our guesthouse for the next couple months finishing this semester of studies and working along with us on Project Alto and Mary Magdalene House.

Today was extremely hectic, prayer at 5:30am, 7:00am breakfast with Br. Luis-Pascal who told me about his trip to Rio de Janeiro where he and Br. Michael Therese met with a lot of different people about the upcoming World Youth Days.  We are expecting about a thousand young people affiliated with the Saint John Community all over the world to be with us in Rio summer 2013.  Of course, we couldn't let that conversation go on too long because I had to finish preparing my class on Aristotle's De Anima that started at 8:30am.  After the class - and making some copies - Laure and I were almost out the door to go to Mary Magdalene House and start taking Measurements when Dona Conça stopped us and said to wait until the police leave.  I groaned inwardly, half expecting our opportunity to be gone, but about ten minutes later Conça came back and told us that the police had left.  Great!  So we took off and got right to work measuring and drawing up the floor plan.

I also wanted to take a few videos to show you the current obstacle we are facing before we can begin any kind of construction.  There is a wall separating us from the parking lot of some government type building - that wall is leaning heavily and needs to get out of the way:

After getting the first-floor done, we went back to have lunch at the Convent.  It was right about that time that Constance showed up - she had gotten a bit lost apparently.  During lunch, we were talking about the issue of whether or not we would have to demolish Mary Magdalene House, and discovered that Laure and Constance know a third Architectural student who has a previous degree in Civil Engineering and would therefore be able to give us a good opinion on whether or not we will have to demolish - we already have two official opinions that contradict one another, so we need a third opinion.

After lunch, I left Laure and Constance to do the grocery shopping for the convent, and as far as I know they were going to go back to take measurements of the second and third floors.  Of course, it was at the store that I realized I still had the tape-measure in my pocket - well, there is still tomorrow if they weren't able to get to it today.

Peace!
Br. Francis Therese