Hello all. Finally a few pictures. The first picture is my house. I really like it, though I must admit it's pretty big for just one person. As you can see it's a nice, solid structure. Those Catholic missions like to build stuff out of stone, which is pretty cool. To the right of the house you can make out a big concrete tank which holds my water supply and that for the other houses around. It catches rainwater from the roof of the big house in the background as well as getting fed from a spring on top of the mountain. The brick part of the house is the walled in courtyard, which is really big and probably my favorite feature of the house. It's a good place to sit outside while cooking or looking at the stars or something. Also great for parties.

The other picture is of the valley I live in. My house is to the left of the tree with the purple flowers. This picture was taken during the dry season so there's nothing in the fields there except for some banana trees. During the rains there's a lot of corn, tomatoes, cabbage, and a bunch of other things going there. The picture is taken along the road that goes to the school so every day I walk across that valley. It's quite a nice commute.

The last few weeks have been pretty good. St. Patrick's Day was every bit as much fun as that holiday should be. We even avoided a fight to the death between the volunteer with Irish Catholic roots (Clare, named for the county in Ireland) and the one with Irish Protestant roots (me). Guinness truly heals all wounds. The week at school has been ok, except my kids have gotten a little lazy and bombed a test I gave them. I'm going to have to push them to get their act together. The national exams are are a really big deal here and they're a long way from ready. Who would have thought that 14-year-old girls would be short-sighted?

I had a dinner at a neighbors place last night with a bunch of the teachers. It was to celebrate the one month anniversary of the birth of their latest daughter, which is traditional to do. It was a nice time, but the best part was how the new baby's older sister, Sharon, who's three, finally overcame here fear of the scary bearded white guy. All it took was having a little neighbor boy come by who was obviously terrified of me. Sharon decided to show him how afraid she wasn't by coming up and climbing on my lap. I think after that she realized I wasn't so bad, despite white skin and a hairy face. So there you go, a little understanding spread by the Peace Corps, with quite a bit of help from some desire to show off.

The only other thing that's been going on has been heavy pressure from my headmistress, my students, and other teachers to apply for a one year extension. I was surprised to find that a big part of me really wanted to stay an extra year, but I decided not to, so I'll be back at the end of November as planned.

That's all for now. Have a good Easter everyone.