These couple weeks have been pretty boring. I finished CBT with a rave party, spent a day at the US Embassy, got locked out of my house, received a cell phone (a call would be really sweet), and lastly got my site placement. The place where I will be living for two years is… [cue favorite dramatic movie theme music] well, I’m not supposed to say exactly where it is for security purposes. If you really want to know, email me. I spent most of this week visiting, however, so I can say it’s a great little pueblo in the north-central part of the country with about 1000 people. I have electricity (sometimes) but there is no water in the tap, so it magically appears in a large bucket in the bathroom every time it gets low. This is terribly confusing as the bucket looks like a big trash can, which is where you put the used toilet paper, since you can’t throw it down the toilet like at home. This clogs the already mostly water-less pipes. Messy indeed. Anyway, it seems that this bucket-water originates from the sky and is transferred through drops and a bigger bucket placed outside under the gutter, but I wonder what they do when it doesn’t rain. Besides the water, my host family is great, the town is only a couple minutes by moto from bigger towns with internet cafes and other volunteers, and only 2 hours from the capital. My host dad is a platano/ yuca (potato-like tuber) / batata (sweet potato-like tuber) farmer. Finally, my primary project is working with a youth group, their upstart bunny farm microbusiness, and other family/microbusiness finance. More on bunnies: have 60 of them in my backyard. They come in many different colors. Adults weigh 4ish pounds, 2.25 meat. Saturday I watched my host brother kill, skin, and disembowel a rabbit (white with black spots and big brown eyes), which we ate for lunch (not kosher, but delicious nevertheless. I’m thinking we make an addendum to let them in).
I’m back in the capital now, swear in on Wednesday, celebrate Thanksgiving Thursday, and return to my site for two (2) (!) years this weekend. This is where you make your plans to visit. Bring mosquito repellent.
The picture is the goodbye rave in training.