Progress on new property

The pace picked up this week and a lot of progress was made. We hired two teams to work at our new property. One was the electrician who installed a new pole and is wiring our new "first house", aka the cabina. His team consisted of himself and his 4 year old son, Marco. Marco was extremely cute! Every now and then he would yell out to the other workers telling them to keep working, or to work harder. It was funny. The other team spent this week digging the ditch and installing the new water pipe and breaking up a concrete sidewalk along the "big house". They also tore down the ceiling in the cabina, which left a gaping hole into the next door sable. They filled the hole with four concrete prefab panels. The cabina looks much better with the dropped ceiling removed. Everything is going quicker than I anticipated and all will probably be done this week.

Tuesday the electrician brought his older brother Juan to meet us. We were invited over to his house for lunch. Juan's family lives in a small town just outside of Santiago de Puriscal called Barbacoas. This was quite the cultural experience for me. We were greeted by and introduced to three generations of family members. We enjoyed a typical Costa Rican lunch prepared by Juan's wife. Juan showed us pictures of his family at various parties over the years. One of his daughters is learning to speak English. She has been studying for only 8 months in a fast track program sponsored by the government. I was extremely impressed with her skills and inspired to put more effort into learning Spanish.

After lunch Juan took us to see a friend's house that he had landscaped and then to his countryside property. We all had a good time. Juan especially liked being able to practice his English and helped us with our Spanish. I was happy with this encounter because from what I have read in the guide books, Ticos rarely invite strangers into their homes. Juan did comment that we were not like typical Gringos. Usually the Gringos are too busy to take time to relax and be willing to see new places at a moments notice.

We finally arrived to the 21st century with the purchase of a cell phone this week. This is our first cell phone. We never had one in Seattle and used to joke that we were one of the last holdouts for the new technology. With all of the driving we are doing we decided it was a necessity and it's good to have because the phone at the new property isn't functioning yet.

All pictures on this week's blog were taken at the new property. The view is from the back yard of the "big house". The spider... I have never seen anything like it! It was about 3" long.