Although the amoebas knocked me out a little over a week ago we finially decided to leave back for our community this last Monday. During our week long stay in the city Melissa was running around continuosly for me making sure I was eating and drinking since the medicine had left me feeling nauseated. The days of school I missed last week due to sickness we found actually were cancelled due to extreme rainy weather caused by Hurricane Felix. So all the work Melissa and I did to get messages to school (since we didn't know the phone number) turned out to be for naught. Once we got to our community I was pretty exhausted and spent most of my birthday (the 11th) in bed resting but by the afternoon I started to regain my strength. It has been good to be back in the community this past week and I feel that just by being there I am regaining some energy and peace of mind.
We just recently brought a few more house items that we are both borrowing and a couple of larger items purchased yesterday to help organize our house. Up until now we have been living out of a couple of suitcases that we need to consistantly keep closed due to spiders, huge crickets, giant moths, cockroaches, mosquitos, tailless whip scorpions, mice, snakes, the occasional chicken, and of course the ever present scorpions themselves. I told Melissa recently that I may develop Shirley's (my sister-in-law) habit of constantly cleaning as it seems to be necessary to keep a house at least temporarily free of insects and rodents. The concerns of cleaning our house stem from not only a health perspective but from a ¨these bugs freak me out¨point of view as well. For Melissa it's scorpions and spiders and I find myself really bothered by the large moths and mice. So far we haven't seen any mice but then we haven't had left any food out of containers yet either, and hopefully neither will change any time soon.
We are slowly getting more involved with our responsibilities in the community. I will be putting together a planning meeting with the youth of our community and hopefully be supporting more of the youth groups of the community than I have been. Contacts are being made and the future looks excitingly different for me with the end of the school year in sight (the school year here runs from around January to Novemeber). Melissa continues to have a busy schedule with the women's group, AMUDESCO, and the meetings were aplenty once she returned. She also is going to utilize her connection with the Casa de Mujeres to start teaching English to a group of women in nearby in Suchitoto.
Stay tunned, stories soon to come!
-posted by Tom
