Asi es la Vida

The most recent construction on the farm is a new chicken coop.  Julio and I had been hoping to build a bigger and better one for a while, and the prospective work group of EMU college students was the perfect excuse to build one; the students would help build it and contribute some of the funds.  Who can argue with that deal?  I told the accountant that we must have the building materials before the group would come on Monday, February 11 or we could not start the project.  He agreed and purchased the lumber, wire and nails immediately.  "Hurray!" I thought.  "We can finally make some progress around here."

Axal, Natanael and Raymundo helped me square the area and dig the post holes for the new coop.  It was fun and a good applied math lesson on the Pythagorean Theorem.

Raymundo, Axal and Natanael measuring the distance between prospective post holes.

Natanael and Axal digging post holes.

 Monday morning dawned fair and we began by tearing down the old chicken coop, so we could recycle some of the old boards in the new construction.  My thanks to all those from EMU who helped with the construction and my apologies for not getting any pictures of you guys on the job.

Oscar (from maintenance), Cesar, Julio and Ernesto working on the coop.

The following week, another group of gringos arrived from Canada with MCC.  A number of that group enjoyed clearing land by machete and we accomplished much with their help.  Thank you!

One of my favorite projects is composting and the compost piles here are processing very nicely.  Last week, Manuel, Minor, Raymundo and I gave the piles a turn.  It is good excercise, and there is nothing like the warm, sweet smell of properly decomposing compost!

Minor and Raymundo forking away.

 

Stefan and Manuel taking a quick brake.

Other pictures from the farm:

Pigs are not my favorite creatures in the world, but Bezaleel bought 4 squealing and smelly, pink piglets.  They are good garbage disposals for the leftover food from the kitchen.

Artemio is one of my best workers.  He may only be 11 years old, but he does the work of a person 3 times his size!

Jiberto weeding carrots with me.  Pray for him, please.  He is a 16 year old wishing for more freedom and chafing at the bit of school regulations.  I hope he will not make decisions he will regret later in life.

Domingo, Moises and Jiberto hard at work.

Miguel, Alan and Genner gladly moving a rock for me.

Walter, Julio and Genner trimming bananas.

The crew from Primero Basico: Artemio, Herson, Miguel, Alan, Adolfo, Mateo, Genner and Jorge.

 

February 28 signified another year completed for me.  I was able to celebrate two times:  once with the Groffs and again with my host family.  I could have celebrated with the students too, if I supplied the goods.  Some how they knew it was my birthday.  "Where is the cake?" they asked.  "Give us tamales!" others persuaded.  Some threatened to give me a bath, but I managed to remain dry all day.  My host family asked me what special food I would like for my birthday.  "Would you like cake?" they asked me.  "No thankyou."  I replied, envisioning the wimply feather-light cakes here drenched in sugary icing.  "I would like to eat tayuyus!"  For those unfamiliar with them, tayuyus are like bean burritos, spicy peloy beans inside a tortilla crust and when lathered with fresh avocado, they are certainly party food!

A nice birthday dinner with Galen and Phyllis.

A tayuyu with avocado!

 It is the custom in Guatemala for the celebrant to give gifts, so I gave a checkers game to my host family, complete with a board I cut and painted, and bottle caps I begged at tiendas.  I have missed playing checkers at home and wanted an activity to get the children away from the TV on rainy days.  Timing could not have been better because it rained from my birthday until the following Sunday.  We have had plenty of games since then and the children are learning rapidly.  I have been beaten by Mario and Axel a few times and must consider my moves carefully, which is hard to do some evenings after a long day of work!

Checkers!

A challenging checkers game with Axal.

And how old am I?  I have told my students and host-children numerous times, but they seem to forget easily.  The other day, Ingri was following me around the house and asked again for the nth time how old I was.  Hoping to get some peace and quiet, I gave her this math problem to figure out:

         3               2

√ 64 + x -2 = 576 + x - 47x

" My age is x." I told her.  "Solve for x and find out how old I am."

She lift for five minutes and then returned to ask my help in solving the problem.  I should have foreseen that, but it turned into an algebra lesson for the entire family and was kind of fun, I must admit!