Upside, downside

For about two weeks, our house has been a construction site. Our friendly neighbors and landlords decided that the time had come to put a new roof on our rather plain house. (Yes, outside it was plain jane; inside, it's glorious; but the truth is, it's really Gloria's house. She's the daughter that lives in the Silicon Valley area in California.)
Gloria has good taste, and she wanted her house to have a traditional techo tejas, the terra cotta tile that characterizes many Mexican rooftops. The corrugated metal lamina wouldn't do.

A master albañil (bricklayer) was hired to plan and oversee the work. The workers for the most part were members of our landlord's immediate family; Mateo, Chucha's husband; Armando, their son-in-law, and Beto, their teenage son. For a couple of days there were also a couple of temporary workers, hired mostly to peel the red cedar logs that were to provide much of the support structure.

Well, this is one longish story that is going to be made short. In about two weeks of some noise and mild disruption, all of which we suffered cheerfully (the most significant being that our Internet reception was down for the last week), the work was substantially finished last Wednesday.

To show our appreciation, I'd been baking and cooking cookies and pastries for the workers and family on a fairly regular basis, but on Wednesday, we made a comida of vegetable minestrone, vegetables in a light pickle, lasagna; and for dessert, fresh pineapple accompanied by Chucha's chongos, rennet milk curds cooked in brown sugar syrup. I think that we all had a good time.


And, on Friday evening, our ISP man, Bolívar, came and worked under rough conditions to successfully restore our Internet service. Next, the outside of the house will be painted a light blue. It's like living in an almost new house. We hope to contribute to its improvement by redoing the kitchen sink, getting some repairs on the bathtub (a remarkable item in a Mexican bathroom), and starting to repaint the interior.
All in good time.

(Speaking of time, yesterday was the first year anniversary of our renting here. Today, we signed a new lease for another year. The rent stayed the same. And, to top it off, the men are painting the house a lovely sky blue.)