The views

I don't think we can really call this building, but just over the hill behind where the house will be (i.e. 2 minutes away) there are some pretty spectacular views.

Just like the rest of the northern hemisphere, we've also had incredibly low temperatures recently, meaning that the mountains have more snow on them than we've ever seen. Steve took advantage of the sunny mornings last week to take a few photos. Here you can see the Pico de Orizaba (left, Mexico's highest mountain) and the Cofre de Perote (right, our 'local' big mountain).

Courses, Christmas and computer viruses seem to have gotten in the way of updating our blog, but finally we've found the time to get round to it. Since our last post at the end of November there has been a lot of progress: foundations are down, drainage systems have been put in, we have running water and the garage walls are now being built.

We've not got a picture of the walls yet, but here's what it looked like a week ago...

There's also a very exciting picture of our drainage system in the garage! The brick box will have a grate over the top of it eventually and should collect the water that runs down the hill before (we hope) it goes into the garage. The tube that you can see at the bottom of the picture will be behind one of the walls - the holes are so that water can drain into it through a layer of gravel into the tube and help prevent the wall from getting too wet (something the house we're living in at the moment could really do with!).