New highs, new lows.

Well, I ate ants today. To be fair though, they were boiled. I have been saving this package of Lipton Noodle mix for about two months now, waiting for the right time to break it open. Well, apparently I waited too long. I saw the whole in the package about a month back, and though I knew what that meant, I just ignored it, placed the noodles in a Ziploc and hoped for the best. Now, I am sitting here, eating Pasta Alfredo with Ants. If they are really big, I try to pick them out, but a couple of times I only managed to get half, so I guess in a country where you are always fighting to get protein, it is just best not to over think it. Eww, I just found a grub. Grubs are not okay. I am not to that point yet. I think I might feed the rest of this to my neighbor. He is staring over my shoulder watching me type this, and I find it kind of annoying.That is one thing that is still trying about this whole thing. The little kids just cant get enough of the Gringa. There is a little girl that comes into my house every day (Never asks to come in, by the way. Knocking hasnt reached this country yet. To be fair though, I think doors are a recent addition.) named Carina, and no matter whether I am washing my face, reading, napping, whatever, she just sits and watches me. I am willing to take some of the blame though, because in lieu of a sofa, I installed a very comfortable and very colorful hammock in front corner of my house (were going to call that the living room). It is the closest thing to a swing that these kids have ever seen, so now my living room is the new hangout for anyone under the age of 13 within a 200 yard radius of my house (that constitutes about 15 kids on a regular rotation). And we dont want to disregard friends of these younguns, or the kids that just happen to be walking by on their way to the market. I think that the word is spreading. My neighbor asked me today if I would give him the hammock when I leave because he wants to get married. Apparently it is much harder to get a woman to move in with you if she will have to sleep on the floor. I briefly questioned the possibility of investing in something more substantial (ie: a bed), but that seemed to be a little too much of a commitment. I am entertaining building a rope swing out back just to cut down on the traffic, but we will see how expensive rope is first. One good thing that all of these visitors have brought me though is a new friend. Her name is Carolina, she is 17, and she just got back from visiting her aunt for the summer in Santiago, but now she is living with her Grandmother, my friend Andrea, who is just the cutest little hunchback you ever met. Anyway, she apparently is the president of the youth group of which I had heard rumors, but never actually could pin down the existence of. The group was on hold for the summer until Carolina got back, but I get to go to my first group meeting this evening! I am very excited. I talked to her a little bit last night about starting up a youth girls volleyball team, and she was pretty pumped about it. Apparently they used to have one, but it disbanded a couple of years ago when the captain moved away. There is already a boys baseball and basketball team in the town, and they get to compete against other communities and everything, so it would be nice for the girls to have something to do. Every now and then one of them wants to go running with me, and whenever I go down to the river, I try to teach my neighbor Juri how to swim, but this could be something a little more substantial. I will let you know how it goes. Another not-so-welcome new arrival is Pelu. He is Geronimos new friend, and I can not keep this mangy mutt out of my house. He belongs to Caridad, my neighbor, but he is intent on joining up with Geros set-up, as he seems to have gathered that Geros living situation is superior to his own. I have already had to drag him out from under the kitchen table by the scruff of the neck and literally kick him out of the house 4 times today, and it is only 4 PM. I am expecting at least 3 more of these episodes before I go to bed, more if it keeps raining. For the last three days, I have woken up to find him sleeping on my front porch, waiting for either the door to open or for Gero to come out and play. I wouldnt mind so much, but he has this really long hair, and no one bathes him because he is afraid of water, apparently, so he is covered in fleas, ticks, and mud. I dont think that he is a good influence on Gero, who has only this week started taking daily baths with me in the river. He is a great little swimmer, undeterred by the current, and it keeps him much prettier looking and nicer smelling.Another recent development is that Annelly, one of my English students, is 3 months pregnant. She is 17, but she has been married for 2 years, so everyone says that it is about time they started having kids. I went to her sisters wedding last weekend, too. Angeli is also in my English class, is 15, and is now married to a 25 year old. I am just not used to that being considered normal. Everyone thinks that it is completely absurd that I am not married. Another girl in my English class, Glenny, is my age and has 3 kids. The oldest one is 8. I try and tell them that where I come from it is more common to wait to get married until you are older and have a good job, but that doesnt seem to be sinking in. The fact that my parents were 28 when they got married doesnt seem to convince them that I am not a freak. Not to worry though, everyone is on the lookout for a nice Dominican man for me to marry. I dont think that I will have to wait much longer to reach my full potential as a Dominican baby maker. Mom will be so proud.

Finalmente!

And now for the announcement you have all been waiting forI am moved into my house! Sorry, I forgot to take a picture, because I just got my camera back, but they will be forthcoming, I promise. I have to give the majority of the credit to my sister too though, because she finally broke the cultural barrier and came to visit me! She was here for a week, and it was wonderful. I took her to the beach, made her sit in the back of a most uncomfortable van, ride a motorcycle with a very large backpack on, use a latrine, bathe in the river, and sweat her blonde head off. Everyone in my village really liked her too, which was a mixed blessing. Everyone was ecstatic to meet her, but of course I had to hear how much prettier she is than me, and yet another lecture on how I should let my hair grow out. To be fair though, I think that after moving day in the Dominican heat, my sister was contemplating chopping her hair off too. She didnt speak Spanish much while she was here, but she listened a lot, and surprised people every now and then by responding to something, thus indicating that she knew what they were talking about. The pinnacle of the visit was moving me and supplying me with most of the necessities for sustainable living. She was a trooper and very supportive- though I think her encouragement was mostly fueled by the possibility of being able to sleep on the new bed with the new fan. My bed in my host mothers house was significantly less comfortable with significantly more rats living in the boxspring. I thought that might put her over the edge when we were packing up my room to move too. First, I found 4 rats living in my sweatshirt that I hadnt used and had been hanging on the wall for three months. Next, my host mother killed two of them by stomping on them as they scurried to find another hiding place. And the icing on the cake was the nest of baby rats (I am conservatively guessing over 10) living in the bed itself. I guess that explained the pee smell! Allison stopped entering my room after that, and took on a more supervisory role in the moving process after that. Nevertheless, ever since she has left, the standard greeting around here is Hi Eli, how are you? And your sister? When is she coming back? For some reason they all thought she was coming here to live with me, and cant understand why she isnt here anymore. I am done explaining the $500 plane ticket to them, but they just cannot fathom the concept of living alone. I dont know how they can really call it living alone though, since my walls are made of palm fronds and my two neighbors can talk to me through the walls from their houses without raising their voices, but again, I am tired of explaining that too. Now my main goal is to establish a system of boundaries with the muchachos that have taken up residence in my living room. If the door is open, I have at least 1-2 kids in my house and 2 on the porch in full stare mode, watching my every move. Joel, my next door neighbor, is the worst though. Yesterday I literally had to stand in the door way blocking his entrance for a good 15 minutes before he went away. I have already declared my room off limits, but the rest of the house is fair game, and he has been eyeing my bicycle ever since I moved in. Demasiado intruso, according to the neighbors. But what are you going to do? I still need someone to go fetch me things from the market, right? And I am learning who I can count on for things though, and my three ladies who live around me have really come through for me. Whether it is giving me buckets of water until my gutters get set up, bringing me food every day, holding up the shelves while I nail them to the wall, or inspecting my house before I go to bed to make sure that it is bien seguro, I know that Nelly, Rosita, and Caridad have my back. I like it a lot better too, because I dont feel beholden to them, and I can eat whatever I want. It is a much nicer system. I have already lost 2 pounds too, so that is making me feel better. And to be fair, this is the first time I have lived on my own too, so I am learning a lot. Two days ago I installed my own electricity, which while I dont think I could get a job at General Electric, I was pretty proud of. Leon, my neighbor, strung some wire from the electric pole to my house, and I installed the switches, lights, and a plug! Nothing has caught on fire yet, and while one of the switches is just screwing and unscrewing the lightbulb with a towel, I was pretty proud of myself. I was dubbed electricita by Caridad, and everyone was very impressed. However, the next day I sawed a long plank into shelves and hammered all day long, and eventhough Rosita was helping me, Caridad asked me if perhaps I was half man, half woman? I didnt know what to say to that so I just laughed and called her mala. That seemed to be appropriate. Tomorrow I am experimenting with cement in order to make a shower in my house (read: a small wall of cement blocks in the back corner of the house with a hole in the floor so the water will drain in the back yard, and I can pour buckets of water over myself somewhere besides the latrine and the river), and I cant wait to hear what Caridad has to say about that. Luckily we are in the hurricane season and there is a lot of rain these days, so I can put off putting up the gutters for another week or so. I am also having a stand off with my landlord over the front porch, because it is collecting water, and he doesnt want to put a drainage pipe in. I am withholding $60 until he does it though, so I am hoping that I will win. That is about all from the home front, but just to let you all know, I am planning on coming home in December for 3 weeks, so if you are able, I would love to see you all. Also, the cacao cooperative I am working with has started packaging the organic cocoa they have made and is selling it for $4 a pound, and I will be bringing lots of it home with me, so let me know. I packed it myself.