Archive for May, 2007

Here are few of the responses I got after I sent out the diamond mine email. If I had the foresight, I would have saved all of my voice mails and put them here as well. The responses were great, ranging from “NO, don’t send your money to Nigeria” all the way to “we are [...]

Jet Blue flies right into Aguadilla from JFK and has had pretty cheap rates so Summer and I have been booking most of our travel with them. Summers flight out last week had mechanical problems so she had to wait 3 hours for another plane to be flown in from Ft. Lauderdale. The worst part [...]

I spoke with Josh yesterday. He and Brian are at the house while I am home testifying at summers trial. They have been working hard to get the house up to electrical code (brian is a master electrician) so we can pass electrical inspection. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much surf since Brian got down there..but [...]

Josh, Summer, Jerry and I drove up to the highest point in Rincon last week to have a traditional dinner with one of Jerry’s friends, Matty. She cooked us Pastellas, rice and beans and some pork. The dish is a traditional dinner and we really appreciated Jerry and Matty inviting us into their lives to [...]

We have water, a toilet and a shower! After about 7 days of running around and meeting local plumbers, Summer and I hired a guy named Hoche to finish roughing in all of our plumbing. He is a member of the Vargas family (the family that surrounds our house) and he also gave us the [...]

I got down to Puerto Rico last Monday (5.14.07) and things have been a whirlwind. Stefan has been taking care of business, BIG TIME, and shit has been happening. We have running water, a toilet and an outside shower already!! This is huge, since I was expecting running water to be a month or two [...]

After quite a few estimates, we decided to get our plumbing done by Hoche (jose) Vargas. His family owned the entire valley we live in at one time and now Summer and I are surrounded by the Vargas family. They have been very welcoming and have offered their help in every way possible. We had [...]

Today I went over to the house to open it up and finally see the inside of it with natural light (as opposed to a flashlight). I really didn’t think it was going to be that bad, but, I didn’t really factor in the fact that it was my first real day of manual labor [...]

I met with a local plumber, excavator and carpenter at the house yesterday. The neighborhood, Rio Grande Vargas District, is very family oriented. The Vargas family owns pretty much the entire neighborhood because it used to be their grandfathers sugar cane fields. As 12 kids grew up, grandpa sectioned off pieces of the land for [...]

Finding a truck was one of my top priorities this week. Rental cars are expensive and we are just throwing away money by renting a car somewhere we are going to move. I found out about this truck before I even flew down to Puerto Rico. It was a “friend of a friend” type deal. [...]