Hamburgers for 200, please.

Another eventful day for the PS07 team - and it's only 3 o'clock!

Today, we returned to Madera - home of the half-finished bathroom - to further hone the culinary skills we'd busted out in the mobile kitchen. And while we thought it'd be easier than the manual labor we'd done in days prior, apparently, cooking for two hundred school kids is no small feat. And neither is racing through the community centre dragging blankets weighed down with children. Or, taking running shoe orders - by manually tracing feet - for the same 200 kids. But Warren will tell you about that later.

What I'd like to do is give everyone out there a better breakdown of what we're actually doing - and where your generous donations are going, if you contributed to our cause. By now, you've seen a lot of pictures and heard a lot of stories, but unless you're actually here, it's hard to get a sense of what's going on. So, I'll try to sum it up for you.

While we're down here, we work with an organization called La Vina. Their 'headquarters' of sorts are right in the Golden Zone of Mazatlan (near where we stay). This is the area that most people stay in (and never leave) when they come here. And because of this, most people assume that all of Mazatlan is as prosperous and well-kept as the tourist hot spots.

Unfortunately, it's not. In actuality, most people here live in poor colonials, and hold down jobs making about 40 Pesos a day(about $4 Canadian). So it's those people and areas that La Vina - and Project Smile - work in down in Mazatlan.

Most of La Vina's work happens out of community feeding centres, that they build from the ground up, in these poor areas. The community centres serve as schools, a place to play, and of course, a place to get food.

But, these feeding centres cost money to build, and more money to operate. So that's where Project Smile comes in.

The money we raise helps with construction and supplies for new centres (paint, bricks, concrete, roofing materials, etc.) and things like food for existing ones. This year, it also paid for socks, toys, games, and all sorts of small trinkets that will serve as Christmas presents.

While we are actually IN Mazatlan, we do our best to help out with day-to-day operations of La Vina. This includes construction (i.e. those pesky bathrooms we slaved away on), but it also means lending a hand wherever it's needed. We spend a lot of time cooking in the feeding centres and in the mobile kitchen (which is a glorified trailer with a grill in it), painting, making sandwiches, whatever. More often than not, we also spend time just playing with the kids - be it a pick-up soccer game, or putting on a puppet show.

So that's the just of it. I hope that helps you guys understand what happens down here, and how much impact your donations & support have had. Keep following the blog to learn more about our day-to-day adventures, and remember: Project Smile happens EVERY year. So if you want to help out but didn't get a chance to this time around, get in touch with us when we get back. We're so happy that we can make this happen, and we look forward to doing it again next year!