The House

Well, we have spent a lot of time this last week getting our house ready. We finished making the bed. They even made us a nice headboard (carving designs with the machete of course). We spent almost 2 days planing wood for the bed, shelves, a new door, a little table, and maybe a bench. It was hard work but kind of fun. I´ll post pictures when I can.

We came in to the pueblo today to finish up our community diagnostic, which looks pretty amazing, but we also had a bazillion errands to run too. We got some things for the house: dishes, cups, silverware, a skillet, a blanket, sheets, and so much more that I can´t think of right now. We shopped until the bags were too heavy to carry and then we went back to the hotel. Anyway, we came out today to get things done before Aimee´s visit next wednesday. She is going to bring a carload in when she comes and hopefully she will make it all the way in this time and won´t have to leave our things at the tienda on the other side of the river 40 minutes away... Well, we got a message from her today saying that she is going to have to move the visit back because she has to have minor surgery the first part of that week. It is kind of disappointing to have to change the date again but I know she can´t help it and that will give us another chance to come out of site and get the rest of the things for the house. We are going to try to start our trip back early tomorrow (we always try but usually end up hiking back in the dark anyway).

We have a big junta day planned for this thursday. We usually have 20-25 people come and help when we work on the house. We have juice breaks and a big lunch. We are going to mix the mud and grass for the quinche and repair some holes and smooth out the walls of our house. They are also going to pour the concrete in the shower and hook up the tubes and whatnot. They mentioned replacing the door too. If we get all of that done we will be able to move in when the quinche dries. Yesterday Clemente (the owner of the property) and his family and friends came and harvested more coffee and limpeared (cleared the underbrush with machetes) all the way down to the creek. We raked 3 bucket loads up for our compost. We harvested a bucket full of Japanese oranges. Chana (Teofilo´s daughter) climbed the tree and threw them down. They are so delicious and easy to peel. We saw that we have a mandarine tree too. It is past time for those now. We have a mango tree. Those will come in April, May, and June. They have had mango trees for a while there but they never bore fruit until a couple of years ago when it started getting hotter. Lee says I should write about the tick so that is coming next...