Painting project

While we are busy here in ministry, it seems as if this blog mainly tells you about the everyday-ness of our life in the tropics. I hope it is fun and you are enjoying it. Allan often blogs about things going on in the clinic and our newsletter is usually ministry related, but here is where I get to tell you about how we live. Adjusting to a new culture is... well...for lack of a better word, an adjustment. Since we arrived one of the things I have wanted to do is get the inside of the house painted. They haven't been painted since the house was built and being white and having many children living here over the last few years plus the windows open at all times they looked a little dirty and dingy. This is also our new home and so I wanted it to reflect us and our style and taste. So we have embarked upon having some painting done. My first obstacle in this project is that we can't just go down to our local Home Depot and gather up all the paint samples we think we might like to choose from. The only place I have seen paint chips is at the ACE Hardware in the big mall by church. Those samples are bound together and bolted to the counter top so there is no taking them home to check them out or even see them in natural light. Being very indecisive in most things, paint colors included, I knew this would never work. In came my best friend, Amy to save the day. She went down to her local Lowe's and mailed me about 150 chips in the colors she knew I was interested in. Who knew there were so many choices in kaki's, golds, and yellows! The next step of the process involved finding a painter. We had a recommendation from another missionary and so we contacted a painter. He agreed to come work for us beginning the following week. But "that week" never really materialized as we were pushed off again and again. OK so far hiring a painter is not much different from hiring a contractor in the States----except he spoke English about as well as we speak Tagalog so having a conversation was a laborious process. Our next painter recommendation, never really panned out. Finally we had a recommendation for a Filipino pastor. Currently, he and 2 others are here painting the walls. The next obstacle was actually buying the paint. As I said ACE was the only place with paint chips and also the only place with color matched paints similar to the states. Unfortunately their prices reflect this and when painting a whole house we decided to go with a cheaper option...the local paint store. We have now been to this store 3 times getting colors mixed. It is always a very interesting experience. We have a great opportunity to use our Tagalog since there is very little English spoken in the paint industry. We also get to watch them take our paint chip and mix the paint by hand. He pours a little red, adds a little yellow, now a little black or green or whatever and then stir, stir, stir, muscles bulging. It is amazing how close he gets to the color. The problem with this method is, there is no going back for another gallon of that color - so get all you need now! We had them mix up 10 gallons of our main wall paint. They did it in the back in a big bathtub. Mixing all at once. It has been an experience watching the artistry of paint mixing. So far I love all the colors!