Feeling Nica and New House

i finally had my ...wow i´m totally Nica...moment the other day. i bought rice and beans, watered my floor and relaxed in my hammock. pretty exciting. i moved into my own house...here´s a little description. the house is 1 room...about 12 paces by 7.5 paces. i have a window on each short wall, 2 doors on 1 long wall and 1 door on the back long wall. the windows and doors are wood and the windows have metal bars on the outside. it has a zinc roof - which is going to be sweet in the rainy season. it´s made of cement blocks and concrete with a concrete floor. so the main doors in on the left on the long wall. you walk into the kitchen part. to the left on the short wall is the fridge, then a small table with my stove (under the window). then i have a wooden bar aka tree branch hanging from the farters with hooks and rope hanging from it to hang things. against the back wall is another table with my water, dishes, and where i wash dishes. in the middle of the wall is the door. in the back right corner is my bed. on the right side wall is my bookshelf - made of wook on top of cinder blocks. on the front wall is another table with cothes and tolietries. going lengthwise through the middle is some rope. near my bed i have some of my clothes hanging from the string with a piece of fabric over them so they don´t get dirty. in the middly of the house is my hammock. I have fabric covering my stove, dishes, clothes, and bookshelf to protect them. i like it because they are all different materials and they are all different colors. i needed some color - too much gray! i put some pictures on the fridge, hung a drawing one of my students gave me in training and put some of the articles people have sent on the walls so it feels like home.

my first 24 hours...first threw water on the floor so when i swept i didn´t die from the dust. then i organized my books, hung clothes, put clothes in a plastic container, went through the beans to pick out the bad ones, put them in water to soad all day. basically i cleaned and organized all day, hung my mosquitero and hammock, watered my plants. i ate lunch with my host family and made my beans with onions and green peppers for dinner. watered and swept the floor again, did dishes and went to my family´s house to watch my tv show...which ended last week :(, read and went to bed after seeing a giant hairy horse killer spider. next morning...got up, watered plants, watered/swept floor, made breakfast, did the dishes, took my bucket bath and cleaned the rice. pretty exciting! everyone is so proud that i can cook and clean like a nica - well maybe not the cooking like a nica but proud that i can cook at least.

so the volunteer before me left a temp guage - not sure how accurate it is but during the day its in the 90s and it was 85 at 6am and that is in the house...can´t wait for march!

thoughts on tortillas...everything here is done by hang. it´s incredible. if i want rice and beans in the us i just dump them out of the box or can and they´re ready to cook. here they ahve to be thoroughly washed and gone through bit by bit to pick ou the dirt, bugs, and bad ones before they are ready to cook. tortilla pretatation blows my mind. right now the men are bringing in the corn and dumping it in piles in everyone´s houses. after that the women will take all the kernals off by hand. next the corn has to be treated and placed in the sun. then it is celaned and sotred. each night the women cook the corn in a huge pot of water. in the morning they clean the corn again and take it to a guy in town that has an electric machine to crush the corn - unless the power is out and then they ahve to do that by hand too. next the corn is mixed with water and made into dough whcih is kneaded. take a chunk, made a ball, flatten a little, pound it out into a thin circle and put it over the fire on a thin piece of metal, flip and wala you have a tortilla. repeat over and over agina. now how many tortillas do you need? well my host family is super small...only parents, 2 kids and me. my mom makes about 60-70 tortillas a day. my aunt next door - 10 people live there - that´s a lot of tortillas. think about that the next time you eat a burrito.

yesterday was a great day..spent the morning on the roof of a new house painting and played football all afternoon. so great. teachers go back to school next week which is exciting. and school starts the beginning of feb. thats about it from here. thanks for all the emails!! love and miss you all!