We get our internet from across the valley from San Bartolo. An enterprising young man who owns internet cafes figured out how to send out a signal that we pick up from an antenna that looks like a satellite dish. For us it's incredible living in a building over four hundred years old and having internet. We are most grateful to Daniel for his skill and ambition. 

We are still living here in Oaxaca on tourists visas. That means we must leave Mexico every six months. Also as of yet our property is still in Felipe's name. Our goal is to put our property in our names and increase our immigration status to allow us to buy into a health care program, nationalize our truck, obtain a Mexican drivers license, buy Mexican auto insurance, and avoid having to leave the country every six months. 

We've read extensively on the processes of accomplishing these goals, but between working on our house, laziness, and extreme fear of the Mexican bureaucratic system we have failed to move forward. We decided last week to hire a lawyer to assist us.

One day while paying our internet bill in Tlacolula, the young girl referred to Daniel as a licensiado. Having great confidence in Daniel, I called him and asked if he could help us out. It turns out that licensiado in Mexico can also mean completing college in addition to being an attorney. Daniel's title reflected his completion of studies in computer science. I was let down until he informed me that his father was a lawyer. Daniel talked to his father and an appointment was made. Daniel, his father, along with their wives and Daniel's brother came to our house Monday evening to discuss our needs. 

Daniel's father, Manlio, and I hit it off right away. Through our conversation I sensed how well read he was. Apart from law our discussions drifted to many topics. I was amazed when Manlio mentioned the Beatles. We went on to exchange stories about the Beatles and other early music. Manlio and I are the same age but encountering someone here in Mexico that appreciates American music from the 60's was a first. He even has old records from the sixties. 

As far as our legal problems, Beth and I are ecstatic to have someone like Manlio to assist us. More importantly we made new friends. Of course we were invited to their home for dinner. I predict Manlio and I will have mezcal shots and listen to his music collection. 

Beth and I are still assisting the committee in charge of restoring the old organ in Tlacolula. The process has moved to restoring the mechanics of the organ. We were invited to photograph some of the process for the webpage we created. The gentlemen doing the restoration are from Spain. One of the workers stood out from the others. It turns out that he is from Germany. He's lived in Spain for the last fifteen years. The workers travel around the world restoring old organs. They are masters! The work is tedious and meticulous. The gentleman from Germany patiently walked us through all of the processes. His Spanish was very articulate. 

I was surprised that an electric motor was added to pump air. The original bellows are being restored. I guess the motor is an option if no one is available to pump the bellows. 

One of the restored bellows.

A bellows yet to be restored.

We are here in Oaxaca due to a friendship we made in Washington back in ninety-four. A friend of mine was an auto mechanic and spoke Spanish. He called me one day to tell me that there were a couple of men from Oaxaca at his shop. Beth and I went over and met Felipe. A friendship began that day that has evolved into something special. We just helped him celebrate his sixty-forth birthday. The differences between our early lives adds to the richness of our friendship. Felipe is a unique character. To say that he was poor growing up would be an inadequate description. Plants that could be gathered in campo were sometimes all that kept his family from starvation. 

I don't remember how he acquired his first firearm, but I do remember conversations about the pressure of making a kill expending only one bullet. He became an excellent marksman. Today he belongs to a hunting club. He is registered with the government and is allowed to own firearms. When they go out as a group, Felipe is usually the most successful. 

Here's Felipe with a coyote he eliminated.

Felipe with a deer he recently killed. 

Felipe reminds me of Will Rogers. He's a wonderful story teller. Between his growing up in Old Mexico, his experiences working in the US, and his present life back in Mexico, his repertoire of memories is endless. I admire Felipe's resourcefulness, his never wavering ability to keep plugging along, and his keen wit and incredible sense of humor. How odd that one of my best friends in life doesn't speak English!

A word about Felipe's children. All but one reside in the US. They are industrious, hardworking, and caring people. My family is better because of the contact we've had with them. 

One of the organ commitee members is named Alonso. He is a panadero (baker). He too worked in the US as a young man. He and his wife built a home with their earnings. Alonso is from Tlacolula. We've had he and his wife over a couple of times. He invited us to his home a couple of weeks ago to eat pizza. His oven (which he uses to bake his bread) is a dome structure made from adobe and bricks. It must be six feet across and is fueled by burning wood. The wood is burned down to coals before the bread is placed in the oven. The ashes are pushed aside to make room for the pans. Eating pizza from a wood burning stove was a first. The oven sits on a large base that consists of brick, dirt, pieces of metal and ground up glass that are meant to help conserve the heat. 

I didn't take pictures at Alonso's but his oven was very similar to this one.

Alonso likes to talk about his faith. He is Catholic and is very involved in the church. He brought the Priest from Tlacolula over the other day to drink and sing. The Priest from Tlacolula is another interesting man. He loves to sing and play my old guitar. We attended his birthday party last week along with about six hundred other people. He is loved by the community. Unfortunately we heard the other day that he is going to be transferred. 

My cousin Freda and her husband recently built an outbuilding by their home. She posted pictures of some of the progress on Facebook. I was a little envious because the structure was built with wood. The finished product looked great! Wood structures are rare here. The sun is so strong that the life of anything wooden is very short. I've seen beautiful wooden gates that look like hell very quickly. Mickey and his wife, Yadi, want to make a home on the patio side of our house. To do this an additional building is needed to store my tools and everything else that is now in the patio. Mickey and I are sharing the cost of making the new building. The building is being made of cement bricks. Because of the weight of the bricks a pretty secure foundation was needed. The workers had to dig down about a foot and a half in rock before they began laying the brick. Progress is extremely slow and is very physically demanding.

Selverio is in charge of the construction. He lives in Union Zapata but is originally from Vera Cruz. Although only thirty-three Selverio has incredible stories of growing up in Vera Cruz. Their family was extremely poor so Selverio went to work selling bananas when he was just six years old. He also cared for animals taking them out to campo to eat all day. He came to Oaxaca in his early teens because the rate of pay was higher here. He also worked in the US for a few years. Most of his jobs here when he returned were twelve hours a day for around ten dollars. He began helping bricklayers and learning the trade. Our garage/storage building is his first job solo. He and his assistant work from eight to four-thirty. We pay Selverio two hundred and fifty pesos a day (about eighteen dollars and eighty five cents). The rate that we pay our workers has been a difficult choice all along. If we pay the standard rate, we feel that we are exploiting our workers. If we pay more. we catch hell for raising expectations. We have resolved the problem by giving bonuses. We brought down our laptop but rarely use it as we have a desktop. I took the laptop to Tlacolula and had Windows seven installed in Spanish. Selverio's son is thirteen and is a very good student. We gave the laptop to his son to use for school work. A band is coming to Union Zapata as part of a fund raising project for the church. The tickets are expensive relative to the local economy so we purchased tickets for Selverio and his wife. The balancing act is complicated for Beth and I. We are on a fixed income but we want to be fair to anyone that works for us.

Disculpa a mis amigos Mexicanos. Es que todovia no puedo escribo bien en Espanol!!