My living environment...

I haven’t had a chance to paint you a picture of my new living conditions yet…very simple. It’s kind of like I’m camping! I have a great room with two beds and a cabinet for clothes and then a little dresser for food and such; plus my own bathroom with running water, toilet and shower. I love sleeping underneath the mosquito net…although I haven’t experienced a big problem with mosquitoes or bugs in general…it does make me worry less about bugs crawling on me in the middle of the night! I’ve always hated bugs/spiders/etc. I don’t have a TV or radio (although I brought a few DVDs to watch on my laptop and have some limited itunes); no mirror except the tiny one on my little Razor phone from home. My shared kitchen consists of a fridge, sink, dresser for dishes and food staples and a hot plate with two burners. When the power is out (which happens almost daily) I get to use a karosene burner thingy and also my karosene lantern to light my room at night. Finally, to wash clothes, I soak them in a laundry basin with soap and water for about an hour, then scrub them a bit, rinse a few times to make sure soap is out, squeeze out all the water and hang. Just like camping…don’t you think??? And not too bad at all!

Now, for what I really wanted to tell you about today, about the most amazingly pleasurable experience I had this morning...the happiest moment I've had since I arrived…a hot shower! Now, it’s not the kind of warm shower you are imagining, as it was a bit of a process…but I am just so excited that I can make it happen on a regular basis (at least I hope!) because mornings are a bit chilly here! First, I tried just putting the water heater on, got out of bed an hour early to turn it on and waited an hour to give it a chance to warm up…but it was still cold. SO, I made several trips with pitchers of hot water from the sink in the kitchen (still can’t figure out why it gets hot in there so easily but not in my bathroom), filled one of my laundry basins up and set it on my toilet. Then, lathered up and showered by pouring pitchers of the hot water over my head and ducking slightly into the cold shower water to even out the temperature. It was truly amazing! I stood there smiling and said to myself, “the smaller things in life really ARE what make us so happy.” What an exhilirating start to a gorgeous day here…