Okay, it has been a while since you heard from us, way too long. If you know us, though, you know we have been busy, so busy. Since the beginning of this year, Gerard and I both filed for and received our Nicaraguan residency, registered our business, ViVerde SA (Sociedad Anonima) in Granada. We almost completed a large renovation and addition to the existing main house with hundreds of design details, and we developed an assisted living program for my mom, Edna with all of the necessary staff and protocols to provide for her medical and daily needs. Obviously, we couldn’t have launched into all this if Gerard hadn’t already spoken pretty fluent Spanish (remember that he is French and they have to have not one but two foreign languages). I am speaking Spanish too, badly, but I do communicate with staff all day long. My French does help, it is so similar, but now Spanish has pushed French right out of my head.
Our daughter Brett earned her permaculture design certification (PDC) in Costa Rica and unlike most of her classmates, she actually had her own farm project to design right away. She measured and mapped the topography of the property, plotted buildings and trees, determined where the water runs and the sun hits, and then drew beautiful maps of what we have and what we want to add. Then we got to digging, propagating, and planting. This rainy season, we put in over 40 new fruit trees!
In January we started a project to renovate the existing main house and add on a new kitchen, dining area and upstairs classroom space. We have experience building in the U.S., but here it it so different, mostly concrete, ceilings covered with cane, metal roofs covered with clay tiles, and when it rains, it pours, so gutters need to be custom engineered to handle the water. We have learned so much! And every day, we had to stay ahead of the contractors in design details or we could easily have ended up with things we would not have chosen. People work six days here, Saturday being a bit shorter, so crews were around most of the time and there was plenty of noise all day long. We knew it would be stressful and it was, but we did it, we stayed on top of things and we are thrilled with the results.
We’re always looking for art projects; Brett and I gave this sink a facelift with a colored concrete design.
I cannot forget that we got a new boxer puppy, Mario. Eight month old Dulci’s maternal instincts immediately kicked in.
