News from the Campos home: Wishing for rain and finally getting it

Starting with July, 2008, we are going to keep a chronicle of what is going on with us here in San Antonio. To read our previous blog, which is mainly about our trip to South America, there is a book called Our South American Journey.

A summary of what has happened, since we got back from South America in May:

(Fernando left for Africa at the end of May. He is helping Eva with her research (for her PhD) on the Colobus Monkey and they are working in West Africa in Ghana. In the latest email Fernando sent us, he said that he and Eva might take a trip at some point to visit other places in Africa like Mole (a city in Ghana), Mali, and Burkina Faso, to name a few. He says that their biggest obstacle right now is securing the visas for the two countries and the fact that they don't speak French.

In an email Fernando wrote in mid-June he said:
....Since you asked about what we eat, vegetables are pretty limited. For one thing we don't have refrigeration, and for another they don't sell many vegetables anyway. We can get okra, tomatoes, hot peppers, onions, garlic, ginger, plantains, corn and various kinds of fruit. There are a few other vegetables that I don't know how to cook, and cassava. Since meat is pretty much out, we eat a lot of eggs, lentils, and beans for protein. I should have brought a bunch of power bars or something because our supply is running out! There's really not much to take out for lunch / snack food......
So, after that email, we sent Fernando two packages, a week apart, filled with power bars, granola bars and dried fruit. He has yet to receive the first package, so we'll wait until we hear when and if he ever receives that first one. He and Eva only go into town on Tuesdays, so it's not like they can check the mail every day. In his latest email, he said that lately they had been getting some rains there and their last trip into town took two hours, instead of the usual 30 minutes, because the roads got so bad. This made them get stuck in the mud a few times.

At the end of June, someone rear-ended the back of Guillermo's truck at a red light. The damage was very minor, (only to the rear bumper) but since there was some damage, the company truck that hit our truck took full responsibility and our truck was repaired in less than a week!

Rebeca and Jason have been enjoying the hummingbirds in their backyard and are really happy that this is a holiday weekend. 3 days off is SUCH a luxury!!! Diablillo (a.k.a- Energumeno) has been his usual little devilish self, going viciously after the neighbor's dog the other day. Fortunately, the neighbors were able to pick up their dogs before Diablillo got to them, but Jason was mortified anyway. The good thing is that Duke does NOT join into these types of encounters, so at least Jason had only one dog to deal with. Duke just stays back and watches Diablillo get in trouble.

Today, July 4th, my brother Andrew is getting married in Warnemunde, Germany. I wish we could have been there with him. Guillermo and I drove to my mom's and my sister Linda's house to check on their plants. On our way to their houses, we stopped at Central Market to pick up a few items. We forgot to bring our own fabric bags for our groceries, and it's strange, but now we feel bad when we are forced to use plastic bags. We have been using our own fabric bags since last summer, back when it wasn't fashionable yet. Today, we saw many people with fabric bags and we felt bad that we didn't have ours with us.

Here are a few pictures from around our house. Notice the one with the rabbit. Where he's sitting, that's how our grass looked about two weeks ago.

It's amazing what a little rain can do, although we've tried hard to stay within our water restrictions.