More progress on our house

Regular readers might remember Fernando and Jessie and their 6 year old daughter Aminah. We had bumped into them last year when we heard them speaking English in a local grocery store, and that sparked a conversation.

We had let them know we were back in town, and they invited us over for lunch. It's really convenient because they live in nearby El Arco, and it's only a fifteen minute walk to their place.

Fernando is originally from Chicago, but Jessie is a local from this area. They both speak fluent English and Spanish though.

And Jessie is a great cook!

She made my favorite... enchiladas!

Thank you! They were delicious.

There were a couple of important things we wanted to discuss with them.

First of all, it was only three or four years ago that they built and furnished their home here. So given that we are trying to furnish our place, we wanted to know where they bought cabinets and other furniture. It turns out that it's cheaper to hire a local carpenter/cabinet maker to custom make items. 

And because the actual town of Valle de Bravo is fairly high end, they used a local guy who is based in the countryside a few miles west of here. The craftsmen in Valle are more expensive. 

Here's an example of what we need...

This is our kitchen sink.

It's designed to be set in a cabinet with cupboards underneath. Instead, they just mounted it with shelving brackets. So we want to have a cabinet built to house the sink, with a countertop and shelves/cupboards extending another three or four feet to the right of the sink.

We also want them to build an island in the kitchen with more cupboards/shelves and with a seating place for two. Then we also need some bedroom furniture, and we're thinking a combination wardrobe/dresser will work. So we need two of those... one for each bedroom.

We've sent Fernando some photos of  similar looking items as a guide and he has contacted the same guy they used, and he'll get back to us with prices and timing. The sooner the better. As it is, our "stuff" is basically lying around and we have nowhere to put anything!

The other thing we wanted to talk to them about is Spanish lessons. Jessie is essentially a stay at home mom, and she is bilingual. We don't want formal lessons. We need conversational practice, with someone to correct us when we're wrong. We know a lot of words... but not always the right way to put them together. So, long story short... starting next week, we will get together with her for an hour every day. This will give her some extra spending money, and us the practice we need to get more proficient.

And, our new televisions are supposed to arrive today. Hopefully I can have one of them set up in time for the Blue Jays game that starts at 6:00pm our time!

So, a little bit of progress each day. 

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Nice price drop on the Rove Dual Dash Cam.

And in Canada...

Check out the deals at Amazon.ca.