Mi Casa

My house is finally done! This was the most stressful project of the past 3 months. I learned a lot about my community from the whole process. I know who to work with, who I can trust, who is motivated, who is lazy. I especially learned that my community needs help with organization, planning, and communication.

How thankful I am to finally have my own place. I can shut my door and be completely alone! What a concept! Privacy is never acheived in host family homes. There is always someone around. Cooking my own food, arranging all of my things on shelves instead of having them in bags, showcasing artwork and pictures and letters. Oh the joy of home ownership! This is actually the first time in my life living by myself. And it's the first time living in a home that I built too. Pretty cool feeling I must say.

Quick story from the day I moved in - huge killer ants decided to move in too! Only hours after I had moved all of my belongings into my house and had finished unpacking my kitchen, a friend who was visiting spotted the creatures rapidly advancing up my walls and towards my kitchen table. "What do I do? How do I get rid of them?" I asked worriedly. "Pour hot water on them," she replied. "Hot water? How am I supposed to get hot water fast enough?" I figured cold water was better than nothing. My friend was as cool as a cucumber as I was frantically running around filling up my water bucket and dousing the floor and walls with water. This helped slow them down, but they just started coming in from other directions. I had lost the battle.

Let me tell you that I really really hate ants. They give me the hee-bee gee-bees. Like real bad. So I kinda sorta broke out into a little panic attack. Tears started rolling down and I didn't even care. I had to move fast so there was no time to be embarrassed. Using my newly developed yoga breathing techniques, I calmed myself down enough to enter the house and pack up my most important belongings (I was planning on leaving site the next morning anyway). I locked everything up and ran to the host family's house that I had been living in during February.

I was fuming mad at those stupid ants. How dare they! I learned from neighbors that they come from the fincas and invade for a few hours. Then they leave. Just as quietly as they came. They go through all the houses and then take off. So mine wasn't the only one infested.

I went back to my house a few hours later and sure enough, they were gone. I did some more unpacking, had more visitors, and finally called it a night.

I woke up the next morning at 5am in order to catch the boat out of site. I switched on my flashlight and took a quick glance around the room. What do I see but those damned ants swarming my kitchen table! Now I told you they give me the hee-bee gee-bees so I only got a quick look, but it literally looked like a pile of them on top of something on my kitchen table. The spot where they were was completely clean the night before. My biggest fear is that there was a rat or something on my table and the ants came in and killed it right there on top of my table. So now I'm going to come back and have an ant-eaten dead rat on my table. Gosh, wouldn't that just be awful.

Anyway, the ants thankfully weren't on my platform where my mattress is. I had to run around the room grabbing my traveling items with only my flashlight to guide my path. Even though I was avoiding stepping near them, they somehow would end up on my flip flop and biting my feet. Oh it hurt and made me so angry! I didn't have time to brush my teeth nor wash my face. It was just a miserable morning to say the least.

Now I'm well equipped with ant killer and methods to take them out. They won't be coming back, I can assure you.