One step away from nailing pancakes to the wall.....

Well, that title is not accurate. It refers to a Peace Corps legend about a volunteer going crazy and being found nailing hundreds of pancakes to the walls of her house. I just thought it made sense with this picture. Why, yes, that is indeed a sawfish bill (snout, nose, what?), it came with the house.


We went to Panama City for the first real time this past week, and it was fine. Not as big as I´d have thought, but still plenty loud, dirty, and odd. Everytime we leave our site I´m shocked at the disparity between the rich and the poor of this country. The poor don´t have shoes, while the rich buy $400 Gucci loafers. We have the weird experience of having a foot in both worlds, since we live poor in the campo and yet can still afford (rarely) going out and splurging on a meal that costs $20 a person.

The road to Chitra is truly sporty these days. When we headed out last week, we had to stop and flip the beer truck back over, since it had lost its four wheel drive and tipped over trying to make it up a moderate hill. It took about an hour and a half, but would´ve taken longer had the chiva driver not gotten frustrated, and simply took off with his truck. It was still attached by a chain to the stuck truck, and yanked it rapidly over some boulders and almost over a local guy who wasn´t ready for the speed of it. The guy in the beer truck was livid, I haven´t heard such bad language in front of women yet in this country.

Other than that, time is just flying by. I can´t believe we´ve been here over five months. Sometimes it feels like it has been so busy, but other times I wonder how its gone by so fast without accomplishing much. That being said, we are accomplishing stuff, like building a demonstration coffee solar dryer, harvesting coffee, and so on. We are living in our own house, and fixing it up not only takes a lot of time, but so does simple things like cooking beans. Good news includes the fact that our big bed finally made it to Chitra, almost a month after we bought it. We also will soon maybe have a sink, and not have to do our dishes in the shower. Oh, such luxury!
So, to summarize, things are settling down into the kind of routine that brings unexpected things every day but somehow makes every day go by very fast, if that makes any sense at all. I´m tired, so we are going to go shopping, see a movie, go to bed early, and be ready for the adventurous 4AM chiva ride up the hill.