20 Days in!

Yep, today marked the twentieth day of our little adventure, and it's time for an update.

As far as work went today, it was mostly more of the same: cutting rebar to various lengths, though we also got to cut bundles of wire into 6 inch segments with the hack saw. As you can imagine that's not very effective.

But we've had many interesting events as well.
Yesterday we went to the Mercado Roberto Huembles, an open air/ flea market center that sells just about anything imaginable from food to art to other novelties. It was a very interesting place, and it seemed safe as long as you kept your wits about you. The market itself is half outdoors and half an open air ware house like many flea markets. There were entire sections devoted to farmers goods; meats and vegetables and fruits (also their horrible salty cheese). One interesting area was devoted to shoe repair, and the workers were repairing everything from tennis shoes to the common leather work boots.

While there, Tim and I each bought hand made hammocks (rather large ones I might add)
which we haggled to 20 each. Sorry that I don't have any pictures, but we plan to go again before we leave and I'll take a camera then.

Another interesting and ironic story, Tim was yelling at me for smashing ants today, calling it "senseless destruction of life." 20 minutes later we walk into the Suni building and he starts screaming and says his chest is burning, pulls off his shirt and finds that an ant has bitten him 4 times on his chest and shoulder. Tim doesn't protect ants anymore...

Sorry this is short, we only spent about an hour at the market, so I'll write more about it and give pictures next time we go.

Also a side note, these geckos are everywhere which is good for us as they eat the bugs. They do however make a loud, bird like call at night. I'll try to get a clearer picture later.
Until then - Jim

Addendum:
The other day I had allergies and the guy at our host family noticed and wanted to give me "limonada pura" which is a local remedy. I took medicine before but I said sure to be polite and because this translates to pure lemonade. Little did I know he meant half of a glass of pure lemon juice...