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I have been at site for 2 weeks now.  I can’t describe how strange that is.  It feels like I’ve been here for so much longer.  When I arrived here I’m not going to lie I had a moment, the kind of moment where you say to yourself, “What am I doing here”.  It lasted for about 30 minutes and then I was good.  It was partly because I was alone for the first time in 10 weeks, partly because I was suddenly expected to be a functioning volunteer, partly because there were herds of cockroaches and spiders the size of my hand, there were  many reasons (mostly the cockroaches and spiders though).  Anyway I went for a walk in to town to get my bearings and everything was good.  The people on the way in to town were so friendly and welcoming I forgot I was worried very quickly.

In the time since then I spent most of the first 3 days cleaning and painting my house.  I guess I’m a nester because now my house feels like it is 100% mine and I LOVE it.  I have a great house and I am so comfortable there it really is my home now.  I am so glad I took the time to make it my own place.  The biggest issue as you might have guessed were my new roommates, the cockroaches and MASSIVE spiders.  Let me be clear, I’m really not exaggerating, there were 30-40 cockroaches at any given time in my kitchen, even in the middle of the day, my bathroom had 10-20 also at all hours.  This is what I chose to focus on first, little did I know it was going to turn in to my very own bad horror movie, Attack of the Zombie Cockroaches.  Dun, dun, dun…  I wish I was exaggerating.  I sprayed the house, excessively, with insecticide and left for a few hours.  When I returned it was night time and I saw their bodies all over the place.  I really didn’t want to deal with it yet so I left them for morning.  They were dead, on their backs, legs curled up and everything.  Ok, so morning time, I go in to the bathroom and make my way around all the dead bodies.  As I am sitting on the toilet I look down and see the bodies between my feet is starting to move!  It was coming back to life.  I looked around at the rest of them and saw that many of them were starting to twitch too, I was out numbered, by a lot.  I had to act fast so I put on shoes and ran around my house stomping on the evil cockroaches.  I never want to hear that terrible popping, crunching noise again, that morning I heard enough for a lifetime. 

I have had many not terrifying experiences as well.  I love going to the market now.  It started as an intimidating, claustrophobic place, but now I love it.  It is one of the only places in town that you can interact with local women.   They all stay at their houses, which now that I am doing all my own cooking and cleaning I understand why, keeping a house running here takes all day and then some.  In the market though, after you get over the craziness, you can interact with them and it’s a lot of fun.  They know me now, I’m trying to learn their names, they know what I like to buy and help me find it.   We joke around now and it’s really become one of my favorite places to go. 

Peter, one of my site mates, and I went to find Teddy the poyo tapper the other day, it was better than ever.  We found him in the jungle and followed him around as he climbed and tapped the palm trees.  It was so cool, I can’t even tell you.  We talked with him about his life and he took us through a bunch of tiny trails through the jungle while we sipped on fresh poyo.  Watching him climb the trees was terrifying, the harness he uses is just a bunch of sticks tied into a circle with him and the tree trunk in the middle.  He leans back against it that’s how he keeps from falling out of the tree.   Scary. 

I have been getting to know the teachers that I will be working with as well.  This is nice.  I have one teacher that comes over and spends time with me on the patio and this is really nice.  I had dinner with her and her family the other day and it was great.  It can be a little intimidating to make new friends here with the differences in culture, but little things like that help a lot.  The family that share the compound with me are really nice.  They are always kind and helpful.  It is also really entertaining to be so close to them, I can watch how they are and how they do things without being involved. 

I’m going to wrap up here by saying that I am so excited to be in my new home.  It’s a great place and there are some really wonderful people around me here.  Hope everything is going well for all of you!

xo