My house! and hurricane Stan

Just a quick post about my house...

Just got my house painted inside last week. The first guy who was sposed to help me paint it told me to buy this blue color. And the guy took off and disappeared when he found out I was hoping he'd help me paint it for free. The next 2 guys I talked to are also good people, and they were willing to help me out. However, my walls were falling apart; the sheet rock was turning into dust in many places. The whole wall on the right side of the house has been damaged by humidity. So we talked to the owner and he said he'd pay for the labor for everything. Turns out this blue is bright, and oh man it's ugly. I bought 2 gallons of white to mix, and it turned out okay.

I have a living room separated into 2 sections. The first section is empty. Right now I have my table and some chairs in the second section. Then I have a hallway. The door on one side of the hallway goes to my master bedroom. The hallway ends in the kitchen. There is just a sink there. I haven't bought a stove yet. The back door leads to my patio, which you can see the paint worn off. And of course, the wonderful pila. The pila is used to wash clothes, wash dishes, and of course, to climb on my roof.

My bedroom is a decent size. Unfortunately there are not enough outlets for my taste in the rooms for my taste. Finally finally finally, I have a hot shower! I took a picture of my calentador. If you see a black wire in some of my pictures, that's the wire for my calentador. One end is connected to the main power switch of my house, and the negative is connected to the light in the bathroom. Weird how they wired it, but it was the only way. The light in my bathroom dims when I turn on the shower. In the future I will by wirehiders to put them on the wall, and it should be a bit safer, ya think?

Unfortunately, we've had Hurricane Stan and its torrential rains here for the past few days. The country is in a state of natural disaster. There cities that are flooded, a bridge got swept away by a river, other rivers are running over bridges. Thankfully we're not seeing the worst of this storm here in my town. The worst of it here is the highway got blocked by a landslide. 5 people died. I took a picture of the debris. Besides that, we lost power last night for a few hours, and no phones are working in our town - landlines or cell phones. But I have internet! (Theres a story to that too, I'll talk about it in another post) I snuck out today to go visit the girls and to go out and take more pictures of the effects of the neverending rain. We tried to go take another picture of where the tree fell down on the highway, because apparently there was more damage, but today it was taped off by the police and construction trucks were there. I couldn't see, but I assume they were trying to clear the highway. That's two days noone could pass on either side. Only yesterday people were able to pass on foot.

Some houses in the outlying boonies of our town were flooded, and around 300 people are staying in the school. I talked Don Efraín into donating food. Tomorrow the cooperative will buy food, and the comedor will cook it and we will take it to the school to feed these people who have left or forced to leave their homes.

How has this affected us? Well my house sucks. Apparently the humidity has screwed up one wall. If you look closely, the wall on the right side of my house looks like it's wet. It is. I can see the outline of the cement blocks behind the sheet rock! It sucks because I just got my house painted! Ugh. Note to self... never get house painted during rainy season. Stephen told me don't worry, it's Guatemalan pho style painting! Whatever dude.

My house pictures are here:
http://photobucket.com/albums/y256/sleepyt79/Guatemala/my%20house/
Here are the pics of the crazy effects of the hurricane and the rain...
http://photobucket.com/albums/y256/sleepyt79/Guatemala/Oratorio/