I can't tell you how excited we were to walk into our house in Mérida and see total chaos and piles of rubble! It was the best! Finally, work has begun and we can see things happening.

For those of you who have seen the 'before' pics, things are changing. I love the openness of looking from the kitchen straight into the yard without those little 1950's rooms in the way.

There is one wall still standing on the left that will go but it is supporting the roof so until the columns are in and the roof supported it is a shell still.

I had to transfer a sizable amount of money this week and discovered that Homeland Security is paying attention to folks like me. Boggles my mind. How is it that international drug cartels can move millions of dollars around with seemingly no problems but I have to provide utility bills in my name to move a few thousand?

Whatever! It is a slight problem as the electricity is not on at the house and won't be turned on until later in the project. Makes sense to me, they don't want it on until demolition is over and the majority of excavation is done.

The water is on though and now I just have to figure out where to go to get a copy of the water bill in my name.

They are doing more than demolition, some of the rebar is in for the 2nd floor and they are laying concrete.

Neither of us have been on the roof, there was no way to get up there before. So, it was exciting when Henry told us that we have a gorgeous view of the Cathedral from the 2nd floor. He says we can see the whole front of it and that since it is lit up at night, it will be an even better view then. I will brave the ladder sometime next week and take a picture.

Because we are in the Centro, the middle of a busy city, they bag all of the debris and store it until they have enough to fill a big truck. Then they haul it out in the evening.

They have about filled the first room with these bags of debris. We have our truck in the garage, we needed a place to store it while we were over at the coast. Our current issue is that the RV park here wants to charge us for every car we park here so we don't want to bring the truck over. We need to pick it up though as they are running out of storage room.

The plan is for Mimi to take the truck over to Akumal on Tuesday. Her brother is flying in then and they will stay in the condo for the week.

I've signed up to take a week of spanish, 3 hours a day, and will stay here in the RV. They will come over on Friday so Scooter can see the house and then we will all return to Akumal on Saturday.

One added element is that Carnival starts this coming Thursday and runs through the weekend. Good in that it is a wonderful event, one of the largest celebrations in Latin America. Bad is that streets are closed and traffic is horrible.

This excavation is for the foundation of the stairs, the downstairs half bathroom and the pantry.

This is inside the main part of the house, can you see the long, tiny roots coming down from the ceiling? I guess it leaked.

This area is not going to be covered by the 2nd floor, but it will have a propane tank, water tank and other stuff on it. It needs some work!

There are 2 of these old pineapple shaped, glass light fixtures in the house. We asked the guys to save them for us. Some of the other ones in there don't look as old and I am going to let them go wherever. I don't know if or where we will use these but I didn't want them destroyed.

We've also saved some of the old hand made hammock hooks and rings. We'll put them back when the walls are redone.

At the end of the first week of work, I'm pleased.