El Apartamento

We spent all of yesterday making and hanging curtains. It literally took us all day because Andrewhad to drill into the concrete wall to hang them - something that seemed to get harder and harderover time. Either the concrete was getting more and more solid, or, well.... that must be it. Click here to see the promised photos of the apartment which we love dearly. I must say, I think the challengeof getting out, speaking Spanish, meeting new people, and feeling totally acclimated here would be much easier if I didn't like being home so much.

Christmas Greetings!

Andrew and I are gearing up for our first Honduran Christmas in a few days... it's really hard to believe that Christmas is coming when it's so hot and, well, un-Christmasy around here. December was a busy month for us, as we continue to adjust and find more things to do. Our apartment really is feeling like home (I promise to post pictures soon) and we've been able to have people over for dinner a few times which makes it feel even more like home. I was pretty sick yesterday, just a 24-flu thing, but didn't even mind too much because it gave me the chance to just lay around the house and enjoy some hours of quiet by myself.

This past weekend we went with the whole MCC team up to Cerro Azul Meambar National Park which is right by the biggest lake in Honduras, Lago Yajoa. There are ten of us MCC workers in Honduras (along with 2 small kids) and we have team meetings three times a year where we can get together, relax, share some stories, and get a few games in. The park was beautiful and my first experience being up in the cloud forest. It rained the whole first day we were there and was actually pretty cold (we did a lot of sharing of the few meager warm clothes a few of us had brought). The second day cleared up a bit and a bunch of us went on a 4 hour hike up the mountainside... we went up among huge ferns and tropical plants that I'd never seen, and stopped by a big waterfall on the way back. Pretty idyllic - plus it met a serious hiking craving that I've had for a while. We often go on the "coke sign hike" - the paved, urban hike up to the huge coca-cola sign on the hillside facing San Pedro Sula; but there really isn't any substitute for getting away from the city and on a "real" trek. You can check out our pictures here.

We'll be celebrating Christmas with MCC friends Josh and Maria - the other childless, host-familyless couple here in Honduras. Although we're surely going to miss family and friends from home, I'm excited to celebrate Christmas in new ways... for instance: Andrew and I will be performing in the Christmas choir at the local mennonite church on Christmas Eve. Always a real treat. We've had 3 performances so far and we just keep getting worse. I really can't say why. After that, we're heading to Marcos' house for Christmas Eve tamales. Marcos works part-time at the office here and is a favorite of mine - he has daughters my age and feels kind of like a Honduran dad figure. His youngest daughter told us we're going to wait until EXACTLY midnight to eat our tamales - we'll see if I can make it. It feels good to be included in their family Christmas, and I really do feel blessed to be here right now.

Merry Christmas!

Just give it a good Thanksgiving push!

Thanksgiving came and went with little fanfare here in Honduras, though, inidentally, the only Thanksgiving email I received was from a Honduran amigo here in San Pedro. Anyway, Darrin (one of our country reps), Amanda and I spent Wednesday through Friday in the mountains of Danlí and Trojes visiting an MCC partner who helps subsitence coffee farmers diversify their crop load for when coffee prices drop. Getting up to the projects is a trip, but it's worth it.

First, a four-hour-bus ride from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, a one-and-a-half hour 4 X 4 truck ride to Danlí, a 2-hour car ride from Danlí to Trojes, and two more hours on muddy cliff-side roads out to the project site near the Nicarguan border. At one point I was pretty sure we weren't going to make it...


But we did, and were treated to some of the most amazing mountainscapes and charming farms I've seen.






These coffee farms tend to be built on steep sides of mountains, which present huge challenges in planting gardens. The MCC partner teaches farming techniques, such as using sugar cane, which has thick, deep roots, to help anchor the soil.




In the picture below, the farmer was drying his corn inside his living room because of the recent heavy rain.
We were greeted warmly by the families. At the first house we visited we enjoyed fresh sugar cane juice with a squeeze of sour orange. In the pictures below they are sending the sugar cane through the press.



While it was hard to know that my family was gathered around the turkey in Goshen on Thanskgiving Day, and I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the chance to be in Central America, experiencing a very different way of life than I had in the US. And though Thanksgiving is not observed in Central America, a poor farm family invited us into their homes for a delicious feast of free-range chicken, potatoes, rice, and corn tortillas.

It was a very good Thanksgiving.

Time for my sad face...

When I'm asked how good my Spanish is I usually respond with something non-specific like, "Well, I'm learning more every day," or "I can understand more than I'm able to speak." I am in the fuzzy zone which is somewhere between beginning-intermediate and whatever comes after that, also known as "Level Dangerous."

Level Dangerous involves a lot of reassuring head bobbing that communicates that yes, I understand what you are saying to me even if you're not getting much else in the way of feedback. And, most of the time, I DO understand what you are saying to me. Until I reach Overload. Overload is the state someone in Level Dangerous reaches when they have maxed-out their listening comprehension. This can happen unexpectedly. I have found that I'm more likely to reach overload when I'm in a small group and I'm not the only one expected to listen in Spanish. Constant eye-contact, a friendly smile, and slow reassuring head bobbing is very important when in Overload.

This usually works just fine. Usually. The system breaks down when the speaker strays from friendly, informational, or happy topics and onto other more serious and sometimes even sad territory. This can happen without warning. The other day a woman was telling Andrew and I about how her brother had been married for a long time and was not able to have children. His wife, pregnant with another man's child, eventually left him and went to the states. Up until this point we had been talking about the photos of her cute grandchildren that were posted all around the house, and I was still wearing my happy face. Belatedly, way too far into the sad brother story than was socially appropriate, I realized it was time for my sad face and a slow side to side head bob. I can't wait to be in Level Almost There.

MCC Honduras team pictures

This Friday was the despedida for Jeff, the volunteer whose work we are taking over. We went to Fred's Kitchen and delighted in various international cuisine offerings, including European vegetarian crepes, Thai-ish peanut butter chicken, and American cheeseburgers. Here are some team pictures to give you a sense of our work environment.

The MCC Team (Center to left around table): Jeff Eschleman, Maria Eley-McClain, Adam Lawrence, Sarah Winter, Caleb Yoder, Darrin Yoder(with Caleb), Julie Aeschliman (with Lucía), Andrés, Amanda, Josh Eley-McClain.

In the paila of the Nissan.

Josh, Jeff, Maria.

Sarah and Simon

Jeff leaves on Friday, so I guess we have to hope we have gleaned as much of his encyclopedic knowledge about Honduras as possible. Everywhere we've gone in the country people tell us how much Jeff has meant to their lives. He will be missed.

The globalization of war

Today, while waiting at Charlie's Chicken for a chicken sandwich and side order of tajadas, a friendly middle-aged gentleman approached my co-volunteer, Josh, and me and greeted us in labored English: ¨Hello. How are you?¨ It isn't uncommon for a Honduran to approach gringos for a rare chance to practice what English they know.

Anyway, this led into a conversation about how he learned English. Apparently he worked in security at the US Embassy in Baghdad a year ago and was one of the many guards responsible for securing the premises in the Green Zone. His salary was high -- about nine year's worth of work in one -- but it was dangerous and thankless. Josh said he has heard that the job did not include insurance.

This man was not the only Honduran sent to Iraq for security work. According to this article there is a contingent of at least 600 Hondurans who were essentially outsourced as private security for American interests in Baghdad. They were to be paid between $900 and $1,500 a month for a six-month tour in Iraq. In this report, the salary promised that was promised to a Chilean mercenary was not what he received, but the worker did not see the contract until he was on the plane for Baghdad.

Incidentally, this chilling line from the first report was also eerily similar to a comment the man at Charlie's Chicken had made: ¨The instructors 'explained to us that where we were going everyone would be our enemy, and we'd have to look at them that way, because they would want to kill us, and the gringos too,' an unidentified trainee told the AFP wire service. 'So we'd have to be heartless when it was up to us to kill someone, even it was a child.'

As is generally the case with globalization, the Honduran security workers were not compensated as well as their US counterparts. According to yet another article, which talks mostly about Colombians used as private security personnel, the Latin American mercenaries were paid half of what their American counterparts received. In the report quoted above, the American secuirty personnel received more than 10 times what the Chileans did.

What does this say about how we value a person from a developing country compared to a person from a developed country? They are both doing the same work in the same dangerous situation, but the Honduran mercenary is essentially viewed as less valuable. Yes, $1,500 a month is significantly more than the Honduran worker would make here in Honduras, but to me the salary in this line of work is essentially the value of someone's life.

The reality is globalization allows us to outsource all of our dirty work to cheap labor -- t-shirts, car parts, and killing.

Soy yo, el gringo

Two days ago I drove for the first time through the crazy streets of San Pedro. Amanda and I had to drop off our monton of clothes at Bubbles, the local laundromat. The drive went well; I even sneaked right across the insanely busy Avenida Junior during the beginning of rush hour. We dropped off the clothes, left my name -- Andres -- and returned to the truck to head home. Of course the truck wouldn't start and we didn´t really know what to do. The nice ladies at the laundromat said we were more than welcome to leave our truck in their narrow parking lot until we came up with a plan, but if we left it there overnight, they said, it would be gone by morning. So we helplessly walked back to the office to find help from our older and wiser MCC friend, Jeff. At about 9 p.m. all of the folks in the office who were here for Connecting Peoples meetings we´ve had this week walked down to Bubbles to push start the truck. It took some doing, and must have been a funny site to see a herd of gringos pushing a beat-up Nissan truck down the road with every dog in the neighborhood going nuts, but finally the truck started and we all hopped in the back.

It´s times like this, when I feel helpless, that I feel the most self conscious of the fact that I´m different. No matter how much I try to blend in by not wearing shorts, trying to speak Honduran Spanish, etc., strangers will always recognize me for what I am -- a gringo. But it´s endearing, and it gives me character, I think. I have never been more aware of that fact before yesterday, when Amanda and I returned to Bubbles to pick up our clothes. Oddly, the woman recognized us and didn´t even have to ask my name. She had the bag of clothes waiting for us at the window. While walking home, I noticed a piece of tape on the bottom of the trash bag that held our folded laundry. I assumed it said ¨Andres,¨ the name I gave to the woman when I left the clothes. But no, the the label was even more simple and descriptive -- ¨gringo.¨

Labor abuses in Honduras

Honduras is known for its cheap labor. If you look at the tag on your shirts, chances are many of them were manufactured right here in San Pedro Sula, where wages and operating costs are low. Most of the plants, however, are reported to be fairly well run, and the jobs are highly sought after as some of the best paying jobs in this economically depressed country.

But this report put out by the National Labor Committee on labor practices in one Honduran Alcoa auto parts processing plant is absolutely shocking. According to the report, workers were systematically abused and denied basic rights guaranteed by the UN and the International Labor Organization. Here is one of the more disturbing excerpts from the report:

At Alcoa, it is not uncommon for workers to have to urinate, or even defecate, in their clothing after repeatedly being denied permission to use the bathroom. The bathrooms are also dirty, lacking lights and toilet paper. Workers who take “too long” may be pulled from the toilet by guards. There have even been cases of women being made to disrobe and lower their underpants to prove they were having their period so they could use the bathroom more than twice a day. Workers arriving 15 minutes late can be punished with the loss of two-and-a-half or three days’ wages. With as little as ten minutes notice, workers on the night shift can be ordered to remain working for another six hours, keeping them at the factory from 4:15 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.—nearly 14 hours. All overtime is obligatory and those who object can be fired. Many lines work this mandatory 13 ¾ hour shift five nights a week, putting them at the factory 68 ¾ hours a week. Especially in Plant III, where the air conditioning has been broken for nearly a year, fainting is common as factory temperatures often reach 104 degrees. Supervisors yell at the workers, “Hey, Donkey, move!” or “Work, you prisoners!” Security guards patrol the shop floor and if they see someone resting for even a few seconds, they will poke that person with their baton and order them to keep moving. Especially at night, workers take strong caffeine pills to stay awake and race to meet their high production goals, as well as pills for muscle pain, and later sleeping pills in order to sleep during the day. Production speed-ups are routine and arbitrarily set by management. In June, workers were told they had to increase their production from nine harnesses a day to 12. This was a 33 percent increase in production, with no wage increase.

Fortunately, this report has attracted some international attention after Alcoa fired all employees who were recognizing their legally guaranteed right to unionize. My hope is that this international awareness will turn consumers´heads to the realities of cheap labor here in Central America, encouraged by so called ¨fair-trade¨agreements. I guess we need to ask ourselves a very difficult and complex question: Are these human rights abuses a fair trade-off for cheaper auto parts?

These are a few of my favorite things...

One activity we did during MCC orientation in July was the Meyers-Briggs personality test. I found out that my love of making lists pushes me over the edge into the "judging" category, and out of the "perceiving"category, which I was formally so fond of. So here we go...

The little things that can make any day exciting:

1.) Kissing. I love it when women I've just met give me a kiss on the cheek as a greeting or farewell. It's more of a cheek brush with a kiss to the air... it makes me feel accepted and even a little loved. It's even better when they kind of grab my elbows with both hands and hold on for a little bit. Why don't we do this in the states? Why all the awkward half-waves?

2.) Fruit juices. One can purchase an amazing assortment of fruits for just a few lempiras (18 lempiras = $1), so it is possible to experiment with a blender and any number of combinations of fruits. There are also many, many fruit juice mini-restaurants around, which will juice fruit for you, blend it with ice and lots and lots of sugar for around a dollar. We've discovered that it's worth it to ask for a little less sugar than normal.

3.) Walking. I am definitely a little nervous about the city buses; traffic is intense and so biking isn't a good option, so I'm thankful that I enjoy walking.

4.) Snack food. Specifically, baleadas (flour tortilla with refried beans, cream, and cheese, folded in half with pickled spicy veggies to put on top), and pasteles de pollo, otherwise known as empenadas. Very tasty.

5.) Amiga. The special Friday section of the La Prensa, San Pedro's daily paper, which is just for women.

6.) TV. I feel guilty for including this, but I have watched more t.v. here in 5 weeks than I did probably all of last year; mainly when we've been staying with host families. I think it's helping me with my spanish.

7.) Cool, breezy evenings.

8.) Rain.

9.) My spanish teachers, who are usually fairly patient with me.

10.) Two potential new friends, who also happen to speak pretty good english, but seem patient with spanish-learners (PTL).

To be fair, I'll include an abbreviated list of some things that can make a day in Honduras not quite so exciting:

1.) Exhaust, and traffic in general.
2.) Fried food, every day, every meal, everything fried, then fried some more.
3.) The practiced "come hither" look that so many men seem to have down, that has caused me to start being a sidewalk-starer.
4.) Sad, sick, and miserable-looking street animals.
5.) The big things: poverty, homeless children, unemployment, environmental degradation... all things that shouldn't be tritely tacked on to the end of an abbreviated list. All things that I'd like to write more about in the future when I'm not tired from a 4 hour bus ride and ready for bed.

Goodnight from San Pedro...

La Ceiba -- Honduras's girlfriend

After a brief stay in San Pedro Sula, we headed to the north coast last Thursday to explore Tocoa, Trujillo, and La Ceiba. La Ceiba, the third largest city in Honduras with 100,000 inhabitants, is affectionately known as Honduras's girlfriend. I don't quite know what that means, but the guidebook explains Honduras's three largest cities this way: in San Pedro Sula, you work; in Tegucigalpa you think; in La Ceiba, you party. We haven't partied yet, just like we haven't really worked while in San Pedro Sula, but I can easily say that the North Coast is my favorite part of Honduras so far. To be fair, I have yet to see Tegucigalpa, but we'll had there this weekend. On Thursday we explored the old colonial town of Trujillo, and ate ceviche in a restaurant right on the edge of the ocean. It was so close to the water that I would expect that during high tide the water comes right up to the first row of tables. It was painful to not be able to swim, as we caught only a quick lunch before heading back to Tocoa but at least have some good itineraries in mind for visitors. The rest of the weekend was spent attending the Honduran Mennonite Church's National Assembly. Most of the pastors from Honduras were there, so it was a good chance to get to know some of Honduras's Mennonite big-wigs.

Since then, we've been in La Ceiba taking classes at the Central American Spanish School. Classes are four hours in the morning, leaving the rest of the day for study, relaxation, and exploration. Today's afternoon activity was one of the most unexpected surprises so far. We had previously been told to hit La Ceiba's Butterfly and Insect Museum, as it houses one of the best collections of Honduran butterflies, moths and insects, so we decided to spend our afternoon there. Upon entering we were greeted by a gringo named Robert Lehman, who graduated from Goshen College -- Amanda's and my alma mater -- in the 60's. After graduating from Goshen, he worked as an elementary school teacher for one of the American schools owned by the Standard Fruit Corporation (now Dole) and ended up staying. Throughout his thirty plus years here he has amassed an amazing collection of more than 14,000 specimens from 101 countries. He spent many of his nights out in the mountain jungles with a black light and white sheet, collecting moths, beetles, butterflies, dangerous moths, and other creepy crawlers. I got the sense that he no longer collects in the mountains, but is now an avid trader of insects throughout the world. He is currently awaiting a shipment of 700 butterflies from Poland.

You never know where you'll find a Maple Leaf.

As for the rest of this week, we'll have two more days of classes at the Central American Spanish School, and head back to San Pedro Sula on Friday. A Learning Tour from MCC in Akron will be meeting us in Tegucigalpa on Sunday, before which we plan to go to the Honduras National team game against Panama. It's a tough life.

Pictures from Copan Ruinas

The street our host family's house was on.

The same street, looking the other way. We took this road up the mountain one day and were surprised by the quick change from middle class houses to extremely poor clay homes.

Another typical street in Copan.

A toucan in Copan's beautiful tropical bird sanctuary.

Our new friend, Eric Shultz, talking to the birds.

More touristy bird shots.

The president leading the Independence Day parades. The streets were packed with school children who paraded on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The corn maiden.

Dulce Maria, our cute-as-can-be host sister, is on the right. She attends the bilingual school in Copan, and had the honor of holding one of the school's banners.

Dulce Maria; Ernesto, our host father; and Amanda at the Saturday parades.

The Guacamaya Language Institute.

The goose in our back yard. At night, when the roosters were screaming away, the goose would get into the action with her sad-sounding honks. We called her Honker.

Ben Beachy, our first visitor, surprised us our second weekend in Honduras.

Dulce Maria on our beloved study hammock.

A women's weaving cooperative located in the mountains outside Copan. We took horses up to a village where La Pintada -- descendants of the Mayans -- live and work. One of the horses kicked Amanda on the way up. She wasn't happy. Neither was Amanda.

One of the girls at La Pintada wearing my sunglasses.

A typical afternoon of studying in our room. We studied a ton. It was great.

The temple at the beginning of the Mayan ruins in Copan. They are spectacular, but unfortunately our memory card filled up so we didn't get many photos. They got bigger later.

Andrew and Karla, his language teacher, out in the garden. Classes were from 8 to 12 every morning with a break of at least half an hour in the middle.

Amanda with Nelly, her teacher. Sometimes she gets frustrated.

Amanda, Eric, and Andrew, outside of the school on our last day. Somehow Andrew and Eric always dressed the same.

The teachers: Luis, Julia, Karla, Enrique, Nelly

The fam: Ernesto, Sarah, Dulce Maria. Not pictured, Sonia, the 22-year-old daughter.

A long weekend...

Hello from Copan! So far I have let Andrew do all the writing - the public nature of a blog has been a bit intimidating for me, but here goes...
We´ve been attending language school for over a week now. I´ve never been so motivated to learn something in my life, but I am finding language study to be tedious and frustrating at times, with exciting moments when something finally clicks or I remember the word for "around".

We actually only had four days of classes last week. Friday we had the day off because it was the beginning of the Independence Day celebrations, which lasted all weekend. We watched kids parading around the central square in school uniforms and band costumes and all kinds of interesting get-ups both Friday and Saturday mornings. After the excitement of the parade on Friday morning, we realized we didn´t have much to do except study for three days. Andrew and I were both sitting around our room Friday afternoon when it started raining pretty heavily. A few minutes later the power went off - and stayed off for the rest of the evening. We sat in the dark, books in hand, for a few minutes before making our way to the kitchen where our host mom, Sara, was kind enough to give us a candle. After playing Farkle and various card games by candlelight for the next few hours Andrew wondered out loud what our friends at home were doing... this marked the beginning of our first home-sick, or at least friend-sick, thoughts of our friends and family since we´ve been here. Up until that point I think we´d both been too busy with daily things to think of home much. Nothing like sitting around on a Friday night in a new country to bring out some lonesome feelings!

Amazingly, we got a phone call about 10 minutes after the power went back on. It was Ben Beachy, of course, a friend from college who just happened to be working in San Pedro Sula for 10 days and had the smarts to figure out how to reach us at our host family´s house. He wound up taking a bus from San Pedro the next morning and so we spent the next 24 hours happily catching up with him before he had to take the bus back the next day. We never expected to see a familiar face quite so soon in our journey but it was a very welcome surprise!

We are getting in good walking shape here - we usually wind up walking the steep cobbled streets downtown at least three or four times a day. We decided to explore one of the roads that winds up into the mountains the other day and found a whole new, less-touristy and much more impoverished side of Copan. I´m still trying to get used to the fact that we are really in Central America. It´s helpful for me to just walk around and soak it in sometimes - it´s easy to get caught up with studying Spanish and kind of forget what a big turn my life has taken in the last two weeks!

I tried to upload some pictures to jazz this up a bit, but the computer here at the school is pretty slow and it was taking too long - we´ll post a bunch of pictures from Copan when we get back to San Pedro Sula. Our stay here just got extended another week, so we wont be getting back to the big city until probably around the 29th or so. Yay! More classes! Hopefully my head can take it.

Copàn Ruinas

Compared to the clogged, loud, busy streets of San Pedro Sula, Copan Ruinas - where we are currently taking language classes - is a bonafide paradise. The cobblestone streets are silent at night, and this morning a thin cloud of mist hung low over the mountains that surround the city. I feel lucky to be in this beautiful place. My host family is a working class family of four who rent rooms to tourists and visiting Hondurans at $10 a day, which includes three meals a day, and two clothes washings a week. The food is wonderful. Last night was a typical dish of small corn tortillas, a dish of refried beans, scrambled eggs, and sweet plantains. I was so hungry after our four-hour bus ride (on which we were treated to the gruesome film Blackhawk Down) which arrived at 2 p.m. I didn´t eat until 6:30. I did get in some good soccer, however, as we watched the Honduran national team tie with Costa Rica at the director of the language school´s house. We met him on the school steps right before the game started, and he was anxious to whip us off to our host family right away so he could enjoy the game. When he found out we liked soccer, however, he invited us in.

The last few days have been spent in team meetings with other MCCers in Honduras. It has been gringo central so far, as we spent the last few days enjoying good food, conversation, a visit to the MAMA project (more on that in another entry) and a soccer game between two local Honduran teams. We have a wonderful team of engaged young adults who are scattered throughout the country. The country reps and Amanda and I will be the only ones in San Pedro Sula, but our job will take us to other parts of the country often, so we´ll see other MCCers regularly. It was great to make new friends, but now we need to meet some Hondurans. My host family is a good entry into the Honduran culture. I have found that the Hondurans I´ve met aren´t as outgoing as Cubans. In Cuba, I felt as if I made friends instantly. That may also have been due to the fact that Cubans were always trying to sell us something. I believe that Hondurans are just as friendly as Cubans, but maybe a little more reserved. It may take some work to feel accepted as part of the culture. I look forward to attending the Mennonite Church in San Pedro Sula. I believe we´ll make friends quickly there.

I hope to post some pictures from Copan later this week. It is just such a beautful place, and I´m sure I can´t capture it in photos. We also hope to explore the Mayan ruins, hot springs, and the spectacular hiking, so there may be some good pictures to share soon.

Honduras

Amanda and I arrived without delay yesterday at 3 p.m. We entered through customs with minimal confusion and were greeted by Darrin Yoder, one of our country reps; his two-year-old son, Simon; and Jeff Eschelman, who is currently doing our job. After dropping our baggage off at the MCC office and guest house (where we are staying) we drove to Darrin´s house to meet his wife, Julie Aeschliman, and their newborn daughter, Lucia. They live in a clean, efficient house in one of the neighborhoods north of town. We had a wonderful meal of fresh fruit salad and tostadas with pinto beans and fresh vegetables. The electricity went out in the middle of dinner and was still off at the guest house when Jeff drove us back. No matter; we found some candles, got ready for bed, and slept a total of 12 hours. Not bad.



I´ve been surprised that there is almost not talk of the hurricane here. It did minimal damage, besides some localized flooding, and there have been no reports of mudslides. I´ll be anxious to see if there is any mention of it in today´s paper. My mind is absolutely swimming with new sounds, sites, words, and I´m sure it´s going to take weeks until I feel completely comfortable. Until then, I´m just happy to soak it all in.

Today is going to be hot. We were spoiled yesterday with overcast skies and a nice breeze. They say the pleasant months should be here soon.

Thanks for the e-mails wishing us well. I´ll continue updating as I have time. I find blogging to be cathartic.