Impressions of the center of the rural parish

At the beginning of this year, we moved from our house in Belén to the center of Malacatos. Living directly in the center of the parish is a whole new experience and it feels like we are entering a new stage of integration and understanding of the local community. Where we lived before, it was a very green natural surrounding with lots of trees and one could say at an almost isolated place. From town, we would take a cab to get to our place three kilometers from the center, and carry all groceries and other things needed to that place. At the moment we live in an apartment building. We share one room and have one shared bathroom. It's not a lot of space, but despite that, I feel that we got so much closer to each other. It's a transitional place from which we are looking for another bigger place in the parish with some garden space. We walk through the different streets and get an idea of the locals and their identity. Of great interest to me is the local architecture, the way of housing, building materials, traditional construction methods, and how patrimonial buildings can and should be conserved to preserve the local building culture and identity of the parish. Already in the last two blog- entries, it became evident, that traditional houses were mostly made by using loam-building techniques. Because of my observations for the moment, I assume that mostly tapia was used before the appearance of prefabricated bloque de adobe. It remains to determine a more specific time of the appearance for the different Earth architecture construction methods.