Non-market day

This is a 180 degree view of the view from our house on a non-market day.  To the left you go up the hill to lots of covered shopping areas, and down the hill (to the right) there are lots of vendors on the side of the road, all the way to the hammock and around both corners.  Right in front is where they sell rice and beans.  We live pretty much in the center of where all the action occurs.

The road out in front of our house is a dirt road... dirt and rocks.  I took the kids out in the stroller for a walk a few days ago and I have decided that the road is much too rocky for a stroller.  At first I didn't think so, but it is.

People here generally do not throw their trash in the garbage can.  There are a few around but they are not used much.  The neighbors here will sweep the garbage that is left in front of their homes into piles downhill from their places, and when the piles get large enough they will have a little fire.  

There's been talk for quite some time that they were going to pave the road (it would include putting in a sewer system), which would help eliminate the garbage in the road problem.  They've been talking about it for well over a year.  When I got here they said that it was going to happen in January, but I talked to Abuela yesterday and she said that they have spent money badly and no longer have the 9 million lempiras ( just less than 500,000 dollars) to get the job done.... so we'll have to suffer with the dust and garbage in the road for a while longer.

If you go straight up the hill in front of our house you get this view:

Marco's parents house is the blue/green one and ours is the tan one next door.  On the far side of our house is an empty lot with a metal roof and concrete floor.  Vendors us it during the market.  The rest of the time it sits vacant.  Maria and Orfito (Gerry) and a few other neighbor kids will run around sometimes.  In the field on the right that is fenced, wasn't fenced when I first got here.  The first market I went to it was open and there were a LOT of horses parked there (when I got to 27 I quit counting). I guess the owner didn't like that too much because he put the fence up shortly after we got here.  Now the neighborhood kids use it to play soccer.