new digs

I´ve now moved to my third home in Santa Eulalia! It´s the house of a Mexican woman (she married someone from here) which was constructed for seven people, and now only houses her and her youngest daughter, who´s 11. The other kids are married and her husband is working in the US. So they have two extra bedrooms (a rarity here.) It´s a sprawling one-story house with an entry room that is considered "outside" (the chickens and dogs are allowed in it), a kitchen, a huge living room with a couple of couches, and three bedrooms. The living room is currently serving as the office for her work, which is with "Mi Familia Progresa," an organization that pays women to keep their kids in school and take them to the doctor, etc. The cleanliness level is comparable to, say, a camping cabin, but hey! It has a stove where I can cook things, I slept great even though the bed is boards with an open-cell foam mattress, and most importantly there´s company. She invited me to stay with her completely unsolicitedly when we were waiting for our van to leave for Temux, and I was happy to take her up on the offer.

What you get to see when herds of barking dogs wake you up early:

A crowd watching a ginseng salesman in the plaza: