HOUSE!

I have my own house and I LOVE it.

It´s a small cinder block box with a tin roof, looks a little bit like an insane asylum or something, but it´s MY cinder block box and that´s all I care about. Seriously, it´s so wonderful to have my own space. The Mennonites who lived in it before went to the mountains to cut coffee until March, so I´m using their bed and stove and table. When they come back they are going to take all that stuff back, so Im going to have to find or make my own. But, it´s in a small Mennonite neighborhood, a little boring but definitely safe.

Challenges in the house are the lack of electiricity and cooking. To cook I have this little gas stove, but no oven or refrigerator. Because the people in my community are farmers I can get onions, tomatoes, cilantro, mustard greens, cabbage etc really easily but there´s no cheese and virtually no meat (except for the occasional fish). And nothing comes premade, so I have to cook everything from scratch. I´ve learned how to make tortillas, beans, I eat a lot of eggs, salad, rice.. oh and I learned how to make doughnuts by hand the other day which was pretty cool.
I have no idea how to cook, so if you have recipes for something PLEASE send them to me, im desperate!!! Of course, the women in my community are hella worried that I can´t cook because what will I feed my husband??!!

So, for water most houses have the equivalent of a hose tap outside and this big bathtub thing outside called a Pila. For water during the day they fill the pila. My house came with no water so for 2 weeks I´ve been hauling water in a mop bucket to my house from my neighbors pila for everything, showering, cooking, flushing the toilet, everything. I didn´t realize how heavy water is nor how much I use in a day. The town plumber finally came and put in my tap outside my house but that night I woke up with my house completely flooded. I have a toilet inside my house and they connected my tap outside to the toilet inside so it will flush without just dumping water in it. But, the pipe burst. It was horrible, I was running around in the middle of the night not able to see a thing looking for somehow to turn of the water system and inside was a huge mess. Almost lost my mandolin.

For light at night I use these 18th century looking gas lamps. It reminds me of something out of a Wuthering Heights or some Emily Bronte novel. Romantic, but can be a little creepy at times.

The other volunteer Ashley came down to La Laguna last night to celebrate and I bought and cooked fish. La Laguna is named the lagoon because it randomly has tons of tilapia lagoons. We went to buy the fish and the guy just fished them straight out of the lagoon, killed them, and then I cleaned them. Fish insides are a lot less disgusting than chicken insides. One good thing about the food is that it´s totally organic, haha. The eggs are for sure quote free range because they are from the chikens out back. And the veges they pull out of the ground when I go to buy them, you just have to know who is growing what and when.

Ashley and I also celebrated with this foul liquor they have here, so I have a terrible hangover. And I´m late for a meeting- That´s all for now.