well here i am again after a few more weeks of being here. right now i am enjoying the new years festivities on a tropical island in the caribbean (what a suprise), it is only a hop skip and a jump from where i live. the only difference is the tourist and the partying, which i must admit is a nice change of pace. this blog has several pictures that i really liked and have some comical and asthetic value. this one with me and the little girl is in my families house before dinner, she is the cutest little thing and she loves the camera. the next one as well i like a lot because she loves to play with my arkansas hat and i figure it cant hurt spreading the hog nation. her name for now is chi chi which means little baby. it is interesting because they usually dont give a really small child a name until they are a little older because they are never sure if the child will survive the younger years of their lives.
i am sure that yall are sick of seeing the sunset pictures, but the thing is that they are so increadible here, i dont know if it is being so close to the equator or what but the are amazing down here. this one was taken from the kitchen of my families house, not bad view for washing dishes huh.



this village that you see is called cayo de agua, it is a small island about a twenty minute boat ride from my house. it is a small sleepy village of about ten or fifteen houses, there is no electricity and no running water or sanitation. i am thinking about getting a project started over there if we can get the funding, if nothing else just go over there and relax every once and a while. as you can see from my host dad taking a nap in the afternoon after lunch there is not much going on over there but really that is how they like it, and i think that i agree with them. it is a lot like my site in that everyone gets around in canoes and lives off fishing.


this next picture really makes me laugh when i see, not because this girl is funny because she is not, if anything she is rather serious and shy, but i think that is only around me. this the girl that they (the people in my village) proposed that i take on as my "wife" what ever that entails. they felt bad for me because i had no one to cook, clean and wash my clothes for me. she is really nice but i kind of felt bad for her being put in that position, but i really dont think she cares because i would provide the home and all meals which really isnt a bad deal. but people in the past, volunteers that is, have had a lot problems with relationships gone wrong. it is not like home where you can slip away into the masses, here everyone knows everyone and their business, so it can be really damaging to my work the have a sour relationship in the community. it is no big deal because there are plenty of other places to go for women if one is so inclined.


The last photo is my favorite, one because of the sun burn and two because this is the girls father. he is the local shaman/priest, he saw me with my sun burn and started laughing really hard because he said i looked like a boiled lobster. so he disappeared off into the jungle for a while and came back with some thing for my burn and it healed right up the next day. he is a really resourceful guy like that, maybe it wouldnt be so bad having hi, as my "Uuhh" which is father in law, he could come in hany from time to time.

















anyways that is about all for this time, i will post something else before i leave. so until then have a good new years and i want to see a big win out of the hogs.
tuchi

Wow, I am not really sure where to start, it has been quite a while since I have written anything. There is good reason though, the largest storm in the past five years blew in over thanksgiving, so i have been stuck out in my site for almost a month without leaving. Although that might not sound like a long tiume it is, actually it is fairly rare for a volunteer to stay in site a month at a time. Most people take a break about every three weeks and some much more often than that. But it was a really good thing for me to be out there that long, i made some rather large strides in the construction of my house. I am learning alot about carpentry, at leasts the very basics because we dont have much in the way of tools to work with. I am pretty much building it by myself, i have help from some people when the wander up the hill to see what i am doing,

so they will hold a board in place for me if i need it or they will hold the level. But other than that i am doing on my own, it is a pretty awesome feeling building my own house with my bare hands. All i have for tools are: a hammer, hand saw, level, square, machete and nails. But as you can see from the pictures it is going well, i am amost finished with the skeleton and am ready to put the boards up, all i have to do is wait one more week to let them dry so they dont crack. The picture that you see below is when i had a junta (day of work), i bought ten pounds of fish and a bunch of rice and lentils and we carried wood all morning till it was done and then we had
fish fry in the afternoon. There were actually more people than are in the picture but they hadnt made it up the trail of about a mile and a half through the jungle. Anyways all that has been a great experience.










The next picture that you see is of the site right next to mine, it is about a thirty minute row on a nice day. The guy that lives there is from Louisiana (huge LSU fan), it is nice to have a fellow SEC fan next door because we talk alot SEC football. I row over there is my canoe about once a week to take a load off and have a few drinks because there is a place there that sells really cold brews, which is really nice after a week of carrying wood and working on my house.














The next photo is of a community that i have been assigned to work