This week's adventures.

So, a lot of little things have happened recently. Here are some pictures to prove it.

In this photo you will see trash, a bulldozer and black smoke. This is actually just outside our compound. We had petitioned the city to come and clean up this alley for months. It is full of trash that burns and smolders, and is generally disgusting. An answer to our requests came in the form of a bulldozer. The bulldozer arrived and made one pass. It pushed tons of trash to one end of the alley where a man spilled fuel on it and set it ablaze in a billowing black smoke column. This was a welcome sight. However, half way through the next pass, the bulldozer broke down and was eventually drug away on a flat bed trailer. The vast majority of the trash remains.

Thankfully the black smoke was down wind from our house or  we would have left. 

These are our plumbers. After three days with no town water, the water suddenly came back on in the middle of the night. The new surge in water pressure was enough to break through the walls of some severely rusted water pipes. I found the leak in the morning after discovering there was no water pressure in our home despite the water meter spinning like a top. 

The guy on the left spent the whole day digging up the old rusted pipe.

 Water works the same way here as it does in America. However, plumbing is very different. They use PVC and PVC glue just as in the USA, however they don't use connectors. They either put threads on the end or they heat up end with a fire and flare it out so that it fits around the other pipe. In both situations they still use glue. They use one other thing that I have never seen before. They use hair. I believe it to be synthetic, however it is still seems odd to me. Where ever there is a connection they take hair and wrap it around the pipe with the glue and twist it into the joint. I was unable to comprehend what this does for the connection but it seems to work just the same.

Here is the PVC glue and the bundle of blonde hair that the plumber uses in the joints.

The pipe was in very bad shape. After digging up the initial leak we realized that at least one whole section of the pipe needed to be replaced. As the pipe was exposed we realized that more and more of it needed to be replaced. It was so bad that by simply pushing your thumb into it would produce a new hole from which water would leak. In the end he replaced about 60 feet of pipe. It took them all day. In the end it only cost about 40 dollars. Not bad for two plumbers and a day's work.

Here you can see the rusted pipe. Who knows how old it is.  At some point some of it was repaired with old inner tube wrapped around the pipe until the leak stopped. You can see the old inner tube still wrapped around the pipe in this photo.

We celebrated Valentines day. Tab made sugar cookies and white, pink, and red frosting. They were delicious. We had our Australian friends over and they got to decorate some cookies. Or, as they say, "Ice some biscuits." 

Tab made this cookie special for me.

 We also went swimming at the pool! Lucky for us they just got the pump fixed the day before! Unfortunately, they hadn't turned it on yet. We swam with our friends for a bit then went home. I found some sun glasses in the bottom of the pool. They are so cool.

Our friends came with us this time and we might go back next week!

 I like Lizards. This dude hangs around the guard house. He is about a foot long and is actually quite bright yellow and purple. He doesn't like having his picture taken.

If someone can find out the lizard species that this is, I would love to know.