¡ Ay, Dios Mio!

From 9-25
It would be nice if there were no such thing as cockroaches, rats, spiders, scorpions, mosquitos, or cow poo.
I have a serious problem with all of the above.
The cockroaches are even getting into my dresser. Yesterday I pulled my hairbrush out to brush my hair, and i had a cockroach crawling on my head. Gross! I am fumigating my house this week so it should get better. And I saw another scorpion, even bigger than the first one! Yesterday I also saw a huge frog in my house- the frogs here are bigger than any i’ve ever seen. People here eat them. Haha. They also eat horses sometimes! :( Why would you want to eat a horse? You can ride it to take you to get all kinds of good food!
And last night I could not go to sleep because the rats were making so much noise. I really need to get a cat! I heard them shuffling around plastic bags and running through the metal tube that was up near the roof.... In the past when I heard them I just stayed in bed and kept sleeping- because I there’s really not too much I can do about them if I’m not going to kill it. They are fast and I couldn’t catch and kill it if I wanted to. And if I wake up to chase it out of the house it will just come back in... because the houses here have a gap between the wall and the roof leaving it open to such wildlife. It’s very neccesary for air flow though- since this place is so hot and there is no air conditioning. Well, after trying to drown out their noise with my iPod and that not working, I ended up sitting in my mosquito netted bed shining my flashlight on my unwanted visitors, watching them walk around like they own the place- and I decided I finally had enough. I was done being chicken. Because the more I laid there and put up with it the more concerned I became about what they were capable of. For example, a fellow volunteer has said that she was in her bed at night and had the rats crawling on the outside of her mosquito net. I never want it to get to that point. So I got up and turned on the light- which immediately makes them run away. And I started banging things to scare them off and moved the bags and the metal tube that made a lot of noise. I noticed that had eaten a lot of the poison I left out for them. So, I guess that’s good.
I have a hard time hurting animals. Even if they are gross, mean, scary, etc. For example, the cows that stand in front of my door. I stand and wait for it to move. But when my host mom comes along and sees me standing there waiting on the cows she comes with a giant stick and whacks it really hard in the head. And it moves really fast. I guess it’s a big animal, and it probably doesn’t hurt it at all... But I prefer to just give it a little nudge or politely ask, “Can you please move, cow?” I am slowly learning how to handle this.
It’s been raining all weekend so I haven’t been able to get out into the community much. We were on a standfast this weekend because of the hurricane, so I had to stay in my site. I bought a stove on Friday and a minifridge- YAY! But i haven’t been able to go shopping for food yet. Oooooh I can’t wait to eat some sandwiches, cereal, and the macaroni and cheese I will hopefully be getting in the mail. My house is slowly coming along. No one has ever lived in this building as a house before- it was just a storage space before. I’m going to paint it eventually.
I went to mass at the Catholic church with my family this morning. They had a live band and everything- not too bad. But it’s not something I want to do every Sunday. The priest’s sermon was funny. He was preaching that about how you should be happy with what you have- And he went on for a while about beans. Saying “What’s wrong with eating beans for breakfast lunch and dinner? Eat the beans. Love your beans. They will sustain you.” Oh Salvadorans and their beans.
Then later in the afternoon my host mom asked me to go with her to the neighbors house to pray “just for a little bit,” she said. So I’m like- sure.... and we go to the little metal shack house at the bottom of the hill to pray with the neighbors. We get there and they tell me to sit in the hammock, in the middle of the room, in the middle of all of them. Sitting in the hammock was not the best idea- because what was only supposed to be a short visit turned into well over an hour of prayer. And I was tired, sitting in the comfy hammock, dozing off. I was tired! And it’s not like I can participate. I am not Catholic, and I dont know how to recite all those prayers and chants, and I dont know the songs. The plastic chair would have been a better idea. I hope I can decline the invitation next time.