Settlin' in

Whew! Its been a busy month. Between trying to find a place to live and my dance with Dengue Fever its been a bit of a wild ride. For those of you who didn't hear I have taken this Peace Corps expereince to a bit of the extreme. I contracted the tropical disease Dengue Fever from a mosquito bite. My fever spiked up to 105. It laid me out in a hospital bed for 4 days and I spent another 10 days recovering in a hotel room, with lingering stiff joints and a rash. There was a lot of TV watching and boredom. The disease makes you very restless but too sick to do anything. I was given the all clear by the doctors in Tuxtla and am back to normal. My experience in the Mexican hospital was great. It was very clean and the doctors and nurses were very nice, even with our limited spanish. Although like most hospitals the food left something to be desired.

But we have some really good news. Weare moved into a house in Acapetahua, Chiapas. Here is a map...

Our office

Acapetahua is a small town. About 10 square blocks and is considered pretty poor by Mexican standards. There is no grocery store, but a local mercado (market), there are 6 tortillarias (small tortilla factories), and a funeral/sports store combination. We have found people in town to be very nice and welcoming to us gringos.

Especially this guy...this is a pretty common site to see people on horseback in town. This picture is looking out our office at the main drag in town.

Here is a picture of the inside of our house. Before we painted. This is the "kitchen". This part used to be outside, they added a roof and 2 walls (using the outside wall of the house next door). And yes our walls are lime green.

Painting the kitchen, nice sturdy sink- good for standing on for those hard to reach places...

Our kitchen, with our new stove. The large blue tub is our kitchen sink. The stove was christened with her first pot of beans this weekend. They taste better cooked on our own stove and in our own house.

The sink works like this: you fill up the tub with water (non potable- you can't drink it) then using a bowl you scoop the water from the large tub to the basin on the side to wash your dishes.

Our potable (drinkable water) the blue jug on the top is for drinking and the jug on the bottom is for cooking. The jugs are 8 pesos ($0.80) each and are delivered to our door.

The view from the front of our house. We bought a slightly damaged futon for 1000 pesos ($100) but she sits nice and folds into a bed. (HINT HINT)...

The view from the back of the house.

After four months living in other people's houses and using other people stuff and living out of a suticase. Its nice to be able to cook for ourselves and walk around neked.