A wall of stone

I'm having a blast here. There are 8 volunteers on the job and 5 or 6 Portuguese. Most are young but Antoniho looks like he must be 65-70. It's fun hanging out and working with the group. There are 5 French architecture students on the job.

I have been too busy and fried to write! Plus, there is no internet in the building we are staying. The wall is progressing well. The first day on the job was the hottest...102 degrees! Two nights ago we had a pizza party at a house in town with an ancient stone oven. The couple that owned the place make wine and I think I might have had too much wine and pizza. I got up in the middle of the night with bad heartburn and fell down on a short flight of stone stairs in the dark...I thought I might have broken my big toe but today it feels better. 

Yesterday I spent most the day picking a holes through big pieces of granite. There will be two holes on either side of the entrance, holding up a metal gate. The first one went well but after three hours of work on the second one, the stone cracked and Nuno said I had to do another one. I started in on it this morning. Nuno chose one that it is more fine grained than the one that cracked....but it's much harder and the hole was only halfway done at the end of the day today.

Here's a group photo taken while we were hiking through the preserve.

I have to go now, we are off to visit the archaeological museum. I'll try to post again soon.