Oh the wonderful days here..... Not to hot, but wonderful sunshine with the mountains rising up around us. The nights are COOL and I think I may be making a market run soon to purchase some necessary items including a hat, thicker socks for evening relaxation and maybe even a sweater. On other travels I have always regretted having to much, but being so stationary it would be nice to have a bit more of a wardrobe option especially for the chilly evenings and mornings.

We have had some very productive building days and have made great strides on the future sauna. The building medium is going to be cement, but mixed with sand to make a plaster with which we are able to build very thin but strong and well insulated walls. The framework is iron rods secured in a concrete foundation and wire mesh woven very tightly together, like making sewing stitches to create a strong base to apply the cement plaster. The technique is referred to "ferro cement" (ferro being spanish for iron). There is a picture above of building the iron framework and also one of the whiskey bottles we are using for the windows . Ferro cement structures are used to create beautiful sculptings as well so it will be really fun to create some of the accents which will be the final creative touch. The chicken palace is also looking beautiful! Yesterday we put the final plaster on with which we used natural clay pigments and iron oxide to create lovely earthtone colors. The thatch roof goes on soon and then the chickens will be soooo thrilled they will lay bountiful amounts of eggs!! I will load pics of that as soon as I download them from my camara.

We did sacrafice one of the roosters on Thanksgiving which we were all involved in (in above picture we are plucking it) and made a stew out of it so everyone could savor him. We also baked breads, pumpkin pies, frittatas, scalloped potatos, mashed potatos, fudge cookies and the biggest hit, benoffi pie which is an english dessert consisting of boiling condensed milk in the can until it carmalizes, sliced bananas and whipped cream!!! I am still recovering from sugar overload!

Being a week and a half into my stay I feel completely settled and am enjoying all of the interesting people and stimulation. Most nights we have educational movies, permaculture talks, integrative living conversations and so on... There are so many of us interns that are interested in either creating a sustainable living center of our own, or taking bits and peices to create some kind of sustainable business. Obviously I am still unsure exactly how I want to incorporate it all in the future but am loving every bit of information and opportunities along the way!