Making a Home

I haven´t written to the blog in a while because I didn´t have anything positive or witty to say. The honeymoon portion of the culture shock has passed, and I´m am starting to feel very pessimistic about everything. With that being said, I will try to look on the positive side of how we´re making Nicaragua our home.

Our house, as you have heard before, is full of spider webs, spiders, bugs, lizards, mice, and bats. Well, thankfully the bats are gone, and no mice actually live in there... I´ve just seen a few. Alejandra thinks that I´ll get over my fear of critters after a few months and I´ll just stomp ´em, but it hasn´t happened yet. All the mujeres get a huge kick out of hearing me squeal when things come across my path. I know ¨No hace nada¨ but I´m still freaked by all the critters.

Anyway, C.J. and I have been working to make our house less of a bat cave and more of a home. We cleaned out a few old drawers from a falling apart piece of junk, that was at one point some sort of dresser or armoire, and are using them to put our books and other odds and ends in. We also bought a plastic table from the ex. volunteer coordinator, who also gave us some other misc. items she left behind. The best improvement to our house though, is the gas stove! Alejandra and Marcio had an old gas stove from a previous volunteer that was just collecting dust. We cleaned it off and it works great. Now I can have oatmeal in the morning instead of all the fried goodness that Alejandra makes. We also found out that you can buy American cheese here (C.J. was so happy), so I made him a grilled cheese sandwich and Ramen noodles when he was sick.

Speaking of being sick, C.J. and I seem to alternate days of being sick, with neither of us being healthy at the same time. Right now it is C.J.´s turn - he has a bad cough from inhaling too much paint thinner while we were painting the solar ovens. On Wednesday, I got to find out what it´s like to puke in an outhouse. I don´t recommend it. I didn´t want to stick my head in the hole, which smells like you-know-what, so I hovered about 18 inches up. That was a bad plan... half my lunch ended up all over the seat, my pants, and shoes. To add insult to injury, this was during a business meeting, so I had to quickly clean up and return to the meeting with wet pants. How embarrassing.