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.