Sunday, February 1, 2009

Home Sweet Home...almost.





One of the biggest projects I have been working on this month is fixing up my soon to been house. It can be a bit of a long process because you have to find a tree, cut it down and then haul it out from the jungle. Luckily the woman who is my landlady had a tree on her farm, so after that got cut into boards we spent two days hauling wood. I can honestly say, I never in my life thought I would be hauling 2 x 4 on my shoulder out of a jungle. But when it is for you own house, it is not hard to find the motivation.
Luckily, we are just fixing it up at you can see from the photos so once the wood was there, it wasn´t to hard. As you can see from the top two photos, we are fixing that corner, which is the kitchen and the front half of the house also got a new floor and window for my sink. The man in the red shorts is my host dad, Martin. It will still be a few weeks before I can move in because we used up all the wood and still need more for the shutters and some furniture. That means going through the whole process again. A bit of a set back, but that is the way it goes.
I have been in Panama for almost 6 months now and have loved living with both of my host families, but I am ready to have a place to call my own. I can´t wait to finally unpack my bags, put up photos and cook my own food. There will be lots of room for visitors, hint...hint!

5 comments:

Anna Peccianti said...

Hi Pipe! This is wonderful news! You are going to make your home so lovely, Pipe! It will be a reflection of you and it will be beautiful! And I can barely believe that six months from now Jenny and I will be walking through its doors! = )

kieran said...

I'd enjoy building a house right now. Especially in tropical Bocas del Toro. You make Peace Corps look like lots of fun.

Martin is also the name of a good boat man down there, but that Martin has a rat tail.

Unknown said...

I love your house! Its awesome! And like Anna said I can't wait to see it myself this summer!

xo,
Liz

Moonjean52 said...

I am way late on the posting...but this looks amazing! can't wait to see it when its finished.

Unknown said...

heh, it's funny, here I am, half a world away.. building my 'home' out of plywood. It so happens my 'home' is inside a shared cement bunker, but it's a plywood hut all the same. My bathrooms are five or six buildings down, I do have reliable hot water and electricity. However the tradeoff comes with occational mortar/rocket attacks.

Won't be too exciting sending post cards back and forth, if I send anything it has to go through the military post. Boo, no fun stamps or cool post marks.

Hope you are doing great.

~HattZ