Chicken Little and the Flower Massacre

As you can see I redesigned the blog a little bit- I hope you like it!

Chicken Little was right- the sky is falling! Friday night Ryan and I were awoken by part of our bathroom ceiling falling. It's not bad- it's just a hunk of plaster- but I have a feeling it's going to be a pain to repair. They'll have to redo the whole ceiling. Does anyone know how long it takes to plaster a ceiling? I'll multiply that amount of time by two and have a rough idea of how long men will be working in our bathroom.

Here's a photo of the damaged ceiling- it's really just plywood behind a thin sheet of plaster. Do you like the little pile of plaster pieces?





I believe I've mentioned before that gardening down here is a bit brutal. Lawns are mowed almost to the dirt with weed whackers (no lawn mowers here) and gardens are maintained with a machete. I'm sure that you could maintain a nice garden with a machete, just trimming back the excess and making sure you always have beautiful plants around.... but that's not the way it works here. They wait until the garden is overgrown, spilling over the fence and across the pathway, and then they move in with their machetes. They spend all day hacking away at the garden until all that is left is a bunch of twigs. The lucky plants still have some leaves. Then the garden is left alone for a few months until it is once again overgrown- things do grow fast here! It is a bit depressing and shocking to walk into our complex right now. The freshly weed-whacked lawn has huge bare patches and the flowers are just sad! Here are some photos of what we jokingly called the flower massacre.