Monday, November 30, 2009

Monday, November 16, 2009

En el trabajo

Things have really picked up here as we find ourselves in the last month or so of our first neighborhood of houses. It has been extremely exciting to see them come together and they have turned out nicer than we could have ever imagined. We have floors, ceilings, electrical, stucco, etc. on half of our houses (photos to come). In early November, Miah put in a lot of hours at the worksite installing everything electrical and learning the true inner workings of our construction team. It´s still a toss-up as to whether this helped or hurt his Spanish, since 10 hours a day is plenty of time to practice, but most of the Spanish he´s learned can not be repeated outside a small group of local guys (think crude surfer guy speak).

There is never a lack of interesting stories from the worksite, but here´s one we want to share. We had stopped by for a quick update from the construction foreman and to check on the delivery of some additional materials., but when we arrived, everyone was crowded around one of the holes that had been dug for a septic tank. Slightly confused, we walked over to see what was going on, and upon peering down in the hole saw a cow´s head with horns. At some point that morning, it had managed to fall in the hole and so the guys were trying use bars and ropes to get it out. The poor cow was absolutely terrified, but just watching the entire situation play out, it was quite comical. Fifteen guys were heaving with all their might to haul this cow out and it was doing everything in its power to stay right where it was. We were worried it might have broken a leg or something in the fall, but when they finally did manage to get the cow out, he was perfectly fine as far as we could tell. Needless to say, we were late for our next meeting, but we couldn´t walk away until the rescue operation was complete.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving feast,
Team Wander