Back in Cozumel

After a month of being at home in England (via New York) I am finally back on my little Island with my BF. It was wonderful to see my BF again as the month appart was very difficult (thank goodness for skype!).

Its taken a week for me to get relaxed into the pace of life here again, get over my jet lag, get back into a healthy eating and exercise regime and get my stuff in some state of organization. Those of you who know me well will know that I am not a happy bunny when things in my life are not in a state of good order. Just before I left the Island the external hard drive on my computer started to overheat. Good timing, in a way, as I was able to buy a new drive in the US and bring it back with me. The frustrating thing has been setting the thing up. I'm almost there and for now have worked out a system for cooling my old external drive down with fans while it is at work. Life is returning to the kind of order I can deal with. The Archers (my favorite radio show) is again accessible and I am happily able to watch my favorite TV shows again. I'm back at yoga and meditation and my yoga studio has added three new classes which I am really excited about. Work is slow but set to pick up by the end of the month, which gives me a nice easing in period. We have a tropical storm approaching us right now, which is bringing a lot of rain with it. Great weather for tidying the apartment, cooking and getting some work done on my computer.

Apart from seeing my BF the most exciting thing about being back has been seeing the progress on our piece of land. BF worked hard while I was away, buying materials, organizing contractors and generally supervising the building of the wall which will surround our property. The wall is 2.4 meters tall (the tallest it can be without a more detailed and costly planning permission than the one we have). Anyway building work has gone well. All of the labor has been paid for and we have most of the materials. Here is the foundation of the wall:
The wall that you see on the right hand side of the back of the land is on the property behind ours and we plan to build our wall right up against it. We don't want to share any wall with our neighbors so that we can do what we want with it. Here is the first part of the wall built:
The gaps you can see have now been filled with rebars and cement to make the wall strong. The contractor has also made it round most of the back of the property and part of the other side. It has been an expensive job and has taken probably as much materials as it will take to build the ground floor of the house. When the contractor is finished building the wall he will cement over it to make it look nice and protect the bricks. We'll build the front part of the wall with rocks so it looks nice and doesn't need to be painted every year or so. We're very pleased with it as we both like our privacy. It will be wonderful to sit in our own little private back garden:)

Unfortunately the tropical storm which will be with us into next week has put a halt to building work for the time being. I am pretty calm about this though. A friend advised me to keep all thoughts of finishing our house out of my head. He said if you get excited about completing in any kind of time frame you will be faced with dissappiontment after dissapointment. Very good advice - slow but sure, I'm just excited that the building of our new home is underway!