Water Blogged

Busy Busy
There has been so much going on these days that I'm having a hard time sitting down to write. I've been busy trying to get papers in order to bring to the Honduran consulate next month in Chicago. I've requested April 25th-27th off work to make this trip. I am packing the kids into the car along with a dear friend and we are driving to Chicago to stay with another friend who lives there so Sister Sprout and I can go off and see the consulate and begin the process of applying for residency in Honduras. Pray that they don't deny me or say I'm missing something!

Rainy Days
So the weather is finally taking a warmer turn. We even broke 80 degrees this past Monday. That was such a teaser for summer. But now the rains have started and just like they say, the rains will bring the green and the flowers that we desperately need after a dead and gray MN winter. My dad's tulips are starting to sprout in the front gardens and every day little Brother Sprout walks by and points out the "babies" as he calls them because they were explained as "baby flowers". Now they are just "babies" to him and he's so excited to point them out every morning and night when we walk past. They grow a little every day so I enjoy watching him discover things about the earth this way and at some point I'll have to explain they are no longer "baby flowers".

Speaking of rain, it's an understatement to say that it rains a lot in Honduras. It can be quite scary for some when the rains come fast and furious. Here is a news article about a recent rain in Honduras. heavy rains It killed two and left 25,000 missing. I don't really understand what that "missing" means. Not sure where they get those numbers from? And where do they all go when they are missing? Probably just made camp somewhere trying to stay dry. I haven't seen any further reports about these 25,000 missing so I'll take it to mean that everyone found their way home once they could cross whatever waterway was blocking them.

Water Topics
Did you know that it was World Water Day in Honduras a few days ago? I didn't. My favorite Honduras blogger wrote a great article about it here.

Also a water equipment company in Minneapolis has offered up $4.6 million to help a state in Honduras with getting clean water. This will be helping about 220,000 Hondurans have access to safe and clean water solutions. I can't remember what the percentage of population in Honduras is that doesn't have access to usable water, but it's actually quite high when you look at the number of people living in rural communities. So this company is taking on the challenge. Check out the news article here. Kudos to the hometown!

Everywhere we went while in Honduras, we didn't have an issue with the water. I've read that the water can be turned off if the demand is too high or it can be rationed and only on for a few hours a day or even only turned once a week or less!

But the question now is- will we have water in our new home?? Papa went to a town meeting on Sunday morning in Copan asking the city counsel to allow us to have access to the community well water. We were denied. Turns out the counsel men are comprised of mostly farmers or people who are only interested in helping the farmers. The community well water is cheaper than the regular city water and is un-metered. Not sure how they can get away with that, but it's a small town and they have figured out how to make sure only the select have rights to this water line. So Papa will have to go back another day and ask another group of men about getting city water. I also don't know what the difference is in the water other than the price and the fact that the well water is un-metered. I'm assuming that most of the water in the town is from the city and as yet, I haven't heard of any issues with the water.

I think I'll go take a bath now.

This Land is Our Land

It's official. The land we were pursuing is ours! I'd give you more specifics, but I don't know the exact location and size. I've been told it's about 30 meters x 32 meters. I can't remember the exact conversion from meters to feet and I'm too tired to look it up right now; but 30 meters is almost 100 feet. Now we get to start the planning on how to build us a house to live in and we surely don't know the first things on how to go about building a house in the tropics of a 3rd would country. Somehow we'll figure it out, but I hope we have something to move into at least by next winter. We'll be renting during the building.

The land was bought and paid for on Tuesday 3.13.07. On this day, Papa hired 2 men to put up a temporary fence around the property lines. We are just one lot of many that had been divided out so we wanted to be able to have the property lines clearly marked for when the water lines, etc start to be run in or if our neighbors start their construction they won't "accidentally" build onto our property.
These two men that put up the fence were paid $15 each for the 2 days of work. Crazy huh?

On another note. A HUGE amount of my thoughts have gone towards what kind of house to build. Now there are two kinds of houses. The kind I want and the kind that we can practically afford. Trying to find a happy middle between these two is going to be interesting to find. I'll write more about this later since it's late already and I need to be asleep.

We are very excited about our little piece of land we now own.
It is the sprouting of another root placed into the ground in Honduras.