Quake Weekend 1-- I'll be MIA

Today marks a week already since the earthquake. This I cannot believe. Last night we had dinner again with Michele and Johannes and we remarked that we had done the exact same thing a week ago before the earthquake and I think it made us all slightly nervous. However, it's daylight and so far everything is still in its place, at least here in our apartment.

I'll be gone for a couple of days because we are going to the farm to start clean-up and rebuilding. We finally have a design for the house that we have to completely rebuild. Actually, it's going to be very interesting because it's an eco-design: it's going to be a straw-bale house. The advantage of straw-bale is that it's cheaper than regular wood-framing AND it has an insulation R-value of 30. THIRTY! To give you some idea of what that means, in Ohio, the US government recommends a value of 4. The house that was there before was adobe, which had an r-value of, like, 1, so I will be very interested to see how this affects them this winter. We are happy that although they are very inconvenienced right now, the new house will go up quickly and will be much warmer and more comfortable for them when it's done.

So I will be in touch next week when we return, and I promise more photos of the clean-up effort.